Nolan Bushnell Quotes
102 Nolan Bushnell Quotes
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The big problem with interactive storytelling is a basic conflict. When telling a story one wants the listener to abandon his body and space and be swept along in a new place, time or world. When you ask a person to make a decision, you push that person back into his own body.
Nolan Bushnell
[On his father dying when he was fifteen years of age] I closed my father's business down at 15. He was a cement contractor and had several contracts that were still outstanding, and I finished those contracts, ran the crew, and finished it up before I started school that fall... It was extremely hard, all of a sudden going from childhood to adulthood in 24 hours.
Nolan Bushnell
Curiosity is something that I've always had.
Nolan Bushnell
I have 8 children, and they keep me very busy. As the old saying goes, they keep you young and make you old.
Nolan Bushnell
Right now I have 15 projects that I would like to be able to be working on in some way.
Nolan Bushnell
I really look for curiosity because I think curiosity is that forcing function that gives people knowledge and capability.
Nolan Bushnell
I'm proud of my contribution to the video game business.
Nolan Bushnell
I essentially see a problem and then invent to fit.
Nolan Bushnell
If you don't hire at least one or two people that are smarter than you are, then you're a terrible manager and I don't need you.
Nolan Bushnell
I've always got to force myself into completion. I really like being the guy with the machete hacking his way through the jungle never to go that way again.
It's nice to put the team together, get it running, get the structure in place, get finances working, then leave it. Then just come back and sort of pet it every once in a while.
Nolan Bushnell
[On kids today] I think that they should try to be a generalist.
Nolan Bushnell
When I start a new company, a lot of times there are people who worked for me previously and the world has moved and they haven't. They haven't kept up their skills. And so they were totally adequate and competent 10 years ago. And today, they're obsolete.
Nolan Bushnell
[On whether he knew when he invented his first video game that it would take off] Yes I did, but I didn’t think it would do it quite as quickly.
Nolan Bushnell
It was a dream I had, and I always felt that it was going to win. I just didn’t realize that it was going to win quite so quickly.
Nolan Bushnell
I had a HAM radio license when I was ten years old and a bedroom that my mother said was dangerous to man and to beast.
Nolan Bushnell
It was constantly a tinker’s world for me up until I discovered girls off course.
Nolan Bushnell
[On why his very first game Computerspace didn’t take off] I loved it, all my friends loved it. But all my friends were engineers. It was very difficult… It was one of those games which was very difficult to play.
Nolan Bushnell
I realized that people didn’t read the instructions. Nobody reads the instructions.
Nolan Bushnell
The game had to almost be able to play itself so that people would know what was happening. So that was how ‘Pong’ was formed.
Nolan Bushnell
[On the cost to start Atari in 1970 (Syzygy) (Had to change it to Atari by the time they incorporated it in 1972 due to the name already being taken)] Two hundred and fifty dollars… I mean inflation has taken it’s toll… It actually cost five hundred dollars, I cheat a little bit because I had a partner and he put in two hundred and fifty himself.
Nolan Bushnell
[On someone saying that Newsweek said his net worth was $70 million dollars in 1982] Figures never lie but liars often figure.
Nolan Bushnell
[Meaning of Atari] It’s from the game of GO. Which is an applied way of saying that you’re about to be engulfed… It’s saying to your opponent, hey I’ve made a move, you’d better do something about it or I’m going to take your man.
Nolan Bushnell
[In 1982] There are always those people who are very, very afraid of the future.
Nolan Bushnell
[In 1982] The middle ages had the people who wanted to burn books… They felt that books were changing the way of life and old values…
Nolan Bushnell
[In 1982] Computer phobia which is real, has taken a certain scapegoat in the video game.
Nolan Bushnell
Computer games are the training wheels of computer literacy.
Nolan Bushnell
The step from game playing to computer programming is so small…
Nolan Bushnell
The problems of excess are always something that is with us. Excess is excess.
Nolan Bushnell
In the excess anything is a problem.
Nolan Bushnell
I believe if you have moderation in all things, you have a better life and that includes video games.
Nolan Bushnell
[In 1982] I know that video games are good for you.
Nolan Bushnell
[On getting into the Pizza business] I wanted to have entertainment and pizza parlours had the big Wurlitzer organ which were very successful and I wanted to have a nice place where kids could go to play games. But the Wurlitzer organs were expensive and hard to find and I felt that what you really liked about that was the fact that there was a lot of visual happening… So we designed it.
Nolan Bushnell
We bought a costume from a trade show and gave it to one of our engineers and said ‘Make him talk’. That’s really how Chuck E Cheese’s was formed.
Nolan Bushnell
[About him always being a fan of Walt Disney] No doubt about it… I put my [job] application into the [Walt] Disney studios and they didn’t want me.
Nolan Bushnell
[In 2007] I also did Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time theatres a few years ago and now I’ve got a new project called UWink.
Nolan Bushnell
I constantly trying to figure out the answers to life’s persistent questions.
Nolan Bushnell
I think that the use of video games in education is something that I like to do a lot of thinking about.
Nolan Bushnell
I play the oriental game of GO online…
Nolan Bushnell
Their survival is going to be based on innovation…
Nolan Bushnell
[In 2007] I think the coin-operated game market has gotten itself into not a good place, and I hate to see it go away but the innovation has gone away.
Nolan Bushnell
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