The legendary Atari game designer speaks about everything from E.T. to therapy in this monster of an interview.
Earlier this year, we reached out to legendary games designer Howard Scott Warshaw and asked if he’d be interested in doing an interview with us. He said that he’d love to, but that he would prefer if we did it via video call. Things proved a bit difficult to set up on our end, but luckily we remembered our friends and partners in the podcast Spæll. So we contacted them about it, and they were more than happy to take over.
Here is a transcript of the interview. Note that, as you can see, it’s a bit long. So it has been somewhat edited down. Most notably, a lot of the comments and small talk between questions has been removed, which is why this text version might not feel like a natural conversation. There has also been a lot of cleaning up of the answer, in order to improve readability.
You can scroll down to the bottom of the article to find a link to the audio version.
This interview conducted by Adrian Haugen and Håkon Puntervold. It was transcribed and edited by Joachim Froholt.
Adrian: Can you first tell us a little bit about yourself?
Howard: My name is Howard Scott Warshaw. I was a game designer and programmer at Atari back in the day. I’m responsible for some of Atari’s most famous and most infamous titles. I did Yars’ Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saboteur, and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. I’ve also become a writer and author, and am currently a psychotherapist. One thing I’ve written about is the Atari experience. I once wrote a book called Once upon Atari: How I Made History by Killing an Industry. It’s the story of what actually went on at Atari behind the scenes, the shenanigans we pulled, the complete story behind each of my games’ development and my life’s journey from before and leading up to Atari and all the way through.
I’ve had five or six different careers. I like to do different things, so in addition to being a video game designer and programmer, I’ve also worked in industrial robotics, networking, compilers, video production, I’ve made an award-winning documentary film, and this is my fourth book. Now that I went into psychotherapy, I’ve been a licensed psychotherapist, in fact I’m the Silicon Valley therapist. I specialize in working with high tech leaders and the people trying to love them.
Adrian: How did your journey begin?
Howard: Well, I was born when I was very young, that’s how it all started. [laughs] But then we’re going to fast forward a little bit. Interestingly, my journey is one of winding up in places despite myself as opposed to because of myself. For instance, my whole journey with computers came late. I initially avoided computers like the plague. When I first went to college I was an economics major with a mathematics minor, and I was going to go on and study economics and business and things like that, and at one point a teacher said «well, you’ve got to learn about computers if you’re going to go anywhere in economics.» And I said «okay,» so I begrudgingly went and took a computer course.
That was a revelation to me. I thought «oh my God, this is wonderful! I’ve finally found a field of study where I don’t have to read long, meandering books and write long, boring papers, I can just solve puzzles and be creative, and this is something I’m going to get grades for and eventually be paid for.» I thought this was fabulous.
So I finished off economics and maths, and then I went to grad school and computer engineering. I was doing real-time control programs – this was in the mid to late seventies when nobody was doing that, when microprocessors were just beginning to show up. So my background was very unusual.
And then I went and got a job at Hewlett-Packard, working on mainframes and big things, and all the joy and passion I’d found in computing was lost. I was despondent, and thought «what am I going to do now?» I thought this was going to be great, and that I’d finally found my passion – something I’d been seeking my whole life and never found up to that point – and now it was lost. This was a really tough time for me.
I was very bored at Hewlett-Packard, and when I’m bored I tend to really act out. So I was making a mess and creating problems here and there , and one day one of my cube-mates comes up to me and says «You know, I was telling my wife a ‘Howard story’ the other day, and she says that’s how things are every day where she works.» And I said «oh, where’s that?» and he says «Atari.»
This was the first time I ever heard of Atari as a place to work. I knew they made games, and I thought games were okay – in fact, I thought video games were going to be very big – but I never saw myself as being involved. But when I heard that it was a wild place to work, I thought that sounded interesting. So I reached out to them, and talked my way into getting some interviews. I went through a whole series of interviews that I thought went really well and that it was all set, and then I got a call from the hiring manager who said «you know what? We’re not going to give you a job.»
They rejected me. And I said «what? I don’t think so!» I rejected their rejection! I then started negotiating with them, and said «well, what do you need, what’s the problem?» In the final analysis it turns out that they thought I was too straight and conservative to work at Atari – which became a tremendous joke because I was one of the wildest people at Atari.
But the thing I didn’t understand – and this was a great life lesson for me – is that when I went to interview at Atari, I went in with a masters degree in computer engineering, coming from Hewlett-Packard, and I had a very formal idea of… well, when you go and interview, you need to be professional. You show up on time, you dress well, and that’s what I did. But in effect, I was misrepresenting myself. Because I wasn’t the wild and crazy guy that I am, I was my conservative «I don’t want to scare anybody» interview person. And in misrepresenting myself, I encouraged them to misread me.
So they knew that technically, I had all the qualifications and was up to doing the job they needed, but they thought I was too conservative for them. So when I found that out, I said «look, you’re really missing a good job match here,» and I talked my way into a 20% cut in pay, and probation. And on that basis, they agreed to give me a chance. And that’s how I got to Atari, and the beginning of the story.
Although, the first week at Atari – there’s an interesting little twist to it. I got there, they gave me a manual. I read it, and I pretty much understood it. I mean, I was by no means an expert, but I got the idea. And on day three, they gave me my first assignment, which was to convert the coin-op game Star Castle to the 2600.
And I looked at that, and I thought … look … when I was interviewing there, when I saw what was going on inside, I knew in my heart that this was the place I had to be. Atari was a place that was made for me, and I was made for Atari. There was no question. That’s why I pushed back so hard on them when they rejected me. I was not going to stand for it, and I begged them to give me any chance. And here I am, on probation, «here’s your first assignment,» and the first thing I did was to go back to them and say «I’m not going to do that game.» [laughs]
But I didn’t just say «no, I won’t do it.» I said, «this game is going to suck if I do it on the 2600, and I can’t afford to have my first game suck. I need my first game to be great.» And then I explained to them why I thought the game was going to suck on this machine.
I’d been there like five days at this point. After getting the assignment on day three, I had looked at it for a couple of days, and then came to them with graph paper, pictures drawn and everything, showing why I didn’t think it’d work. But then I said «here’s another kind of game, and I think this game would work really well on this system. And honestly, I think it’s a better game. How about I do this instead?» And I was very fortunate that the guy who hired me said «okay, go ahead.» And that game went on to become Yars’ Revenge.
Håkon: Yeah, and that’s one of the best games for the Atari 2600, ranked in the top three on every list I’ve seen…
Howard: Absolutely. I think it’s the best-selling original game that Atari put out, and yeah, it’s frequently ranked as one of the best games of all time, and this is a point that I think we’ll come back to later because I think it’s important in light of some of my other games. [laughs]
Håkon: In the documentary, you tell some crazy stories about your first days at Atari. Could you tell us how it was to work there, compared with today’s video game industry?
Howard: [laughs] I have worked in the video game industry on and off over decades, and it was very different. There will never be another place like Atari. Because Atari was so imbalanced, and a place like that simply cannot stand. It’s going to topple at some point. But while it’s wiggling around, it’s amazing.
Atari was the most unbelievable place to work, with the most incredible cast of characters I think I’ve ever worked with in my entire life. I’ve worked in some very sophisticated and accomplished environments with some amazing and talented people. But I have never been with a crew that as a group was as interesting, as engaging and creative as the group at Atari.
Everyone were extremely accomplished, technically. Because you had to be very technically astute to be able to work on the 2600, period. I mean, you had to be accurate to the microsecond and you were actually updating graphics as the electron beam was scanning across the screen in real-time.
So you really had to be on top of the technology. But that wasn’t enough, because just because you can program something doesn’t mean you can make a good game. Most programming endeavours – some are tougher than others – but most of them aren’t that difficult to do. Because when you have a computer spec that says «when you flip this switch I want this light to go on,» it’s a very straightforward process usually. And you can tell for sure that it works because if you flip the switch and «ah!» the light goes on – then it works, it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with the program.
But there’s one element in the specifications for all video games that does not appear anywhere else in technology. And that is that in addition to having to work, and be exacting, have no bugs and be right on for functionality, it also has to be fun. And the thing is, for nerds and techs and people who are just geeked out and trying to be detail-oriented, the concept of fun is elusive. It can be very difficult. I’m not saying nerds and geeks don’t have fun. They have lots of fun. But it’s not the kind the fun that’s universal and major market fun, right? [laughs]
And I geek out with the best of them for sure, and I understand that. But the thing is, you also have to have that «fun gear», and a lot of engineers don’t have that «fun gear».
The thing about Atari that made it so interesting was that to be a good game programmer at Atari, you had to be a full on nerd geek, right, but you also had to be goofy and weird enough to have that sense of fun. So it’s a very right brain/left brain merge. Most people reside in one side or the other. And everybody at Atari had to be not just balanced, but sort of over-done in both sides. So what you find is that most people at Atari were really strong programmers, but they also did something else. There were no «just programmers» at Atari. They were a programmer and a musician, a programmer and an artist, a programmer and a craftsman, a programmer and a writer, right? They had some other profoundly creative aspect that they were just as committed to in their life, as they was to the tech.
And when you get a group of people like that, it’s extraordinary. Because they’re unusual people, they’re all eccentric. We were all insane, I mean … and we were given free reign to run around and bounce off each other. Because the job description of an Atari engineer was like this: You get up whenever you want to. You come into work, and you work as long as you’re going to work that day. But at the end of the day, when you go home, something should exist that didn’t exist in the morning. Something that’s cool.
That’s the job description. That’s a very unusual job description, and it took a cast of very unusual people to fill it. But they were fun people. It wasn’t a sensible environment. It was a completely crazy, nonsensical environment, because Atari wasn’t about making sense. Atari was about making fun. And doing new things. We were not just trying to create some fun stuff, we were actually launching a new medium. We were the pioneers of interactive entertainment. So we were defining new horizons in addition to goofing around and having a good time, and really driving ourselves into the ground trying to create something beyond the capacity of this machine that would really be eye-popping and compelling to people. And create entertainment in technology. That was a very exciting place to be.
Adrian: I think that would make a very good TV-show…
Howard: [laughs] It would be fabulous. And in fact, I can’t tell you specifics, but my book, Once Upon Atari, there’s been several people who have approached me, and there are several things in the works. Towards either a TV-series or a movie based on my book and what life at Atari was like. So I put enough story and background into the book really illustrating how wild it was, and what was going on in that environment, that there are Hollywood producers who are interested in bringing this to the screen and sharing it. So you’re right on!
Adrian: Okay! So then I have another question – what actor do you want to play as yourself?
Howard: That’s always a tough question! My feeling is that as long as it gets produced, I’m okay with anyone playing me. But if we’re really going to talk about who’s going to play me, sometimes I think Scarlett Johansson would be excellent. [laughs]
You know, I have no idea who’s going to play me. There are people who might look more like me, or act more like me, but all I know is that I personally want to be an easter egg in that movie. I want to have some sort of secret appearance at some point in the movie.
Håkon: This is a good segway, because there are two movie-based titles that you’ve worked on. Raiders of the Lost Ark and the infamous E.T. Raiders – how did you get that project? Because it’s a huge IP…
Howard: There’s the story of my first day at Atari, which was an extraordinary first day at any job. There were a number of amazing days that I had at Atari, and what you’re talking about now is one of the other amazing days that I had there, so I’ll tell you the story.
So I had finished Yars’ Revenge, and it was starting to be known that we would be looked at for doing the Raiders of the Lost Ark title. But the word was that Steven Spielberg had to approve the programmer who was going to do Raiders. I was available, and the first one to go interview with him. So they set up the interview.
Now, I’m in San Jose, which is in northern California. And as you’re probably aware, California is a very long state – not unlike Norway, which is a very long country! And I’m in the north, and Steven Spielberg is in the south, in Los Angeles. This is on a regular work day, but I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning, go to the airport to catch an early flight, because I have to be at his office at 9:30 in the morning. And the traffic in Los Angeles in the morning rush hour is horrific. And, you know, airplanes are airplanes, and they take the time they do. [laughs]
So I actually get up early, run to the airport, catch the first flight out, and go through all the traffic in Los Angeles. I get there and finally there I am, at 9:25. With just five minutes to spare, but I’m on time. Whew! Thank goodness! So I walk in and there’s the receptionist, and the first thing they say to me is «oh hello Mr. Warshaw, your interview has been moved to 3:30 this afternoon.» And I’m like «what!? I killed myself to get here and now it’s like six hours…»
But you know, I’m a «make lemonades» kind of guy. So first I asked them if they could change my flight back home, and they took care of that for me. And this is Warner Brothers studios, and I’m a huge film and TV buff and growing up – you know, a lot of people today, when they grow up they want to be a video game maker, but that didn’t exist when I was growing up. So when I was growing up, I wanted to be a movie director. And here I am on the Warner Brothers lot, and I said «well, is it okay if I just sort of run around until it’s time for the interview?» And they said «absolutely, go ahead!»
So I got to spend six hours running around without any escort, just free rein over the entire Warner Brother studio lot. I ate at The Commisary with all these people in costumes, all the actors and actresses. I went on sets where they weren’t shooting. I stole things from their sets, you know, took souvernirs. It was an amazing day for me to have! And then by 3:30 I show up at the office, and here’s Steven Spielberg. Now I get to meet one of my idols, which ordinarily is a weird enough experience. But now I’m not just meeting my idol because I want to be a film director and here’s the greatest film director of the day … I’m being interviewed by him, to do a work that’s a derivative of his work. And that was just a weird situation! But I’m a weird guy!
So we went and started talking, and we played Yars’ Revenge which I had brought with me. And he liked that. And we talked and chatted, and seemed to really connect really well.
And at one point I said to him «You know, Steven. I have this theory that you are actually an alien yourself. Would you like to hear it?» And he goes «sure!». And I just basically laid out this whole … because at this time, in the eighties, it felt like we were getting really close to meeting the extraterrestrials. This was before the E.T. movie came out, by the way, I didn’t even know about that.
But I said «you know, if the aliens are going to come here, I don’t think they’re just going to show up in a spaceship. I think what they would do is that they’d send an advance team to culturalize the planet, and to prepare us to meet them happily. And you’re making these movies that are showing aliens in a friendly, positive way. And they’re seen everywhere. So what I figure is going on is that you have this marketing team that’s putting the movies all over. And you’re the production arm that make the movies. And I just want to say ‘good job! You guys are doing a heck of a job!’»
He liked that, I think. Then we talked some more, and I went back to San Jose. And the next day we got the call that said that Spielberg had chosen me. I think it was calling him an alien that got me the job.
Adrian: Sounds like he liked that you just talked to him as if he was just a regular guy…
Howard: I was surprisingly not intimidated by him. I think if I just met him on the street or something, it would have been different. But I really showed up to it like I went on an interview – although instead of like when I went to the Atari interview where I put on this professional demeanor, with him I was really just like «okay, well this is a big thing. I wouldn’t mind doing this game, and have a big vision for it.» And we did kind of relate creatively. It was a really awesome experience.
Håkon: Then we get to E.T. Usually games at this time took over six months to create. How much time did you use on E.T.?
Howard: Well, it’s not how much time I used, it’s how much time I was given. And I was only given five weeks and a half day. Which was crazy. It was insane at the time. And in point of fact, I got a call from Ray Kassar, the CEO of Atari. This is my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss. Called me directly. And that never happens in a corporation. It never happens. So I got a call from him and he said to me «Howard, we need E.T. for the first of September.» And this was on the 27. July. So it’s five weeks. And he says: «Can you do it?» And in a moment, I said «absolutely, I can that – provided we reach the right agreement.»
This was a Tuesday afternoon. And he said «Okay. Thursday morning, there will be a Learjet waiting for you at San Jose airport. Be on it. And this will take you down to Burbank in Los Angeles, where you’re going to present the game design to Steven Spielberg.»
I had seen Steven a few times during Raiders of the Lost Ark, but now I get to go and present the design for E.T. So I’m given 36 hours to come up with the whole design for E.T., and then get on a plane and present it. And that wasn’t a whole lot of time to design a game, but if you have to do a game in five weeks you don’t want to spend more time on design. You have to get working, right?
So that was how I found out that I was going to do E.T. I was just finishing Raiders when I got this call. And Raiders was ten months of work. And it’s true, I was two for two in million sellers with Yars’ and Raiders, but I still felt I had something to prove. And I thought this challenge of doing a game in five weeks was irresistible.
What I didn’t know was that before Ray had called me, he had called my boss’ boss, who was the head of development for the 2600. And my boss’ boss had just said «no, we can’t do it. We can’t do a game in five weeks, period.» But even after he told the CEO that, the CEO still called me directly. And I told him we could do it. I didn’t realize I was contradicting my boss’ boss at the time, which was also a little funky. But I believed I could do it. And I believed I could do it for a very specific reason.
It’s true that most games at that point took at least six months to make. And if you’re going to take a six month effort and try to do it in five weeks, that’s a fail. That’s not going to happen. So the answer is not to do a six months game in five weeks. The answer is to design a game you can do in five weeks and do that. So it’s not really a programming problem, it’s a design problem. And I realized that right off the bat, so that helped me a lot.
Adrian: That tells me you’re a very confident person. That’s impressive.
Howard: Well, thank you. I’m not sure what I was full of, but I was overflowing with it, whatever it was. [laughs]
Adrian: But you needed to have that in order to do the task. And that you immediately switched mindset, that’s impressive. Shows you are a fast thinker as well.
Howard: Thank you. I think I am kind of a fast thinker – some times it serves me and some times it doesn’t. [laughs] But I do tend to think about things differently. When people say «is the glass half-full or is it half-empty,» I say «well, the glass is too big.» For some reason, I always look at different ways of seeing things. That’s what’s interesting to me. I don’t look at what we see, but what we’re missing. What are we not seeing? That’s how I approach it, so I tend to do things in different ways.
Throughout all my schooling and stuff, I would usually approach problems in different ways than they reccommended, but I would get good results. So people would say «well, you’re doing it wrong, but your your answer is right.» And I would say «well, what’s the goal, do you want me to do it your way or get good results?» And the computer industry is great, because the computer industry is much more about the results you get than how you do it. That works very well for me.
But another word for confidence is ego, at times. It’s a neccessary but not sufficient condition for achieving big things. I think that the people who achieve big things, a lot of the time they come from a place of substantial ego. But there’s also a lot of people who have a substantial ego that don’t accomplish big things, they just have the ego. [laughs] So that’s why I say it’s a neccessary but not sufficient condition.
And you know, there are people who have a lot of talent but don’t sometime have the confidence or the initiative to really pursue something huge. So you have to have that confidence and some ego, but you can’t be carried away. You can’t be insane, right. But at the same time you have to be talented enough and have the drive to push through, to really make these things happen.
The great thing about working on the 2600 was that we were already past what I would call the machine horizon. The designers of the 2600, if you talk to them, they’ll tell you that they figured there were maybe nine or ten different games that you could do on the 2600. And people have done over 1500 games on that machine. So we had already done the basic games you could do for it, and it was our job to take what was already dated hardware – because coin-op games had already far surpassed the 2600 hardware by the time that I’m making these games – and find new ways to abuse the hardware, and to tweak and tease new things out of it that people hadn’t expected.
Because if you keep copying the coin-op games, it’s going to get worse and worse and worse. So what you need are things that are unique to the 2600, and it was my speciality to come up with things you could do that were visually compelling and gameplay that was different and off-beat. To try and do something new. I wanted every one of my games to be ground breaking in some way.
Yars’ Revenge established a lot of standards in the industry, in fact it was the first game with a backstory. I wrote that because I thought it would be a fun thing to do, but that became an industry standard. It was the first game with a full screen explosion on the Atari 2600, the first game with a pause mode. It was the first game that got the programmer’s credit in an Atari product. That had never happened before.
Raiders of the Lost Ark had a different controller scheme. Nobody ever thought of using two controllers in different ways. And there were techniques and stuff that I had mastered and shared with my colleagues. So I wanted E.T. to be groundbreaking too. It wasn’t enough just to do a game in five weeks, I still wanted to do something extraordinary with it! It’s the first game that has a three dimensional playspace, it takes place on a cube and that world is true – as you navigate the cube, it works. It was the first game, I believe, with location dependent power-ups. So what you do when E.T. activates a power changes depending on where you are in the game.
And then, in Alamagordo, at that dig in 2014, my E.T. game broke ground in a new way that I had never anticipated – but it was ground breaking, so what can I say? [laughs]
Håkon: Well, I have to say to all of those who refer to it as the worst game ever and such, that’s bullshit. I honestly love E.T. You have to try to understand the game. Activate mode three and try playing it in that mode, and you see all those new and unique things that it did. It’s a very advanced game.
Howard: Thank you! Some people have said that it was kind of ahead of its time, and that was one of the problems it had. But I have to both agree and disagree with you. I totally agree with you that I don’t think E.T. was actually the worst game that was done. There’s a lot of people who enjoyed it. A lot of people come up to me and say «hah, E.T. was a horrible game, it was the worst game ever,» and I never argue with the player about their opinion, because I think opinions are accurate. But I do ask people «well, have you ever played it?» And it is amazing how many people will tell me that it’s a horrible game despite having never played it. So I agree with you there.
But where I disagree with you is that I do actually think it’s important that it is designated the worst game of all time. And the reason for that is that Yars’ Revenge is often cited as one of the best games of all time. So as long as E.T. is the worst, I have the greatest range of any game designer in history! And I’m very proud of that! [laughs]
Adrian: Speaking of E.T. Did you get to see the movie beforehand?
Howard: Oh yes. I mean, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark before I did that game, and Raiders was the perfect movie to do a game for. It’s an action adventure that has a through-line of action and things progress from one step to the other. And that was excellent. Doing a game for Raiders – I got it, no problem. I’m glad I didn’t have to do that in five weeks, because that was straightforward.
I saw the movie E.T. before I knew I was going to be doing a game for it, and I thought it was an amazing and beautiful movie, but it’s not an action adventure. It’s an emotional tone movie, and I thought to myself «God help anyone who has to do a game for this movie.» That was my thought when I walked out of the theater after seeing it, and then I ended up being the guy who had to do it!
Adrian: These days games are made by teams of over 100 people sometimes, but you did these games all on your own. Can you tell us a little bit about the process of making a game back then?
Howard: It was wonderful! Awesome! Because you had complete control of the game. You know, there’s the work of an auteur, and there’s collaborative efforts. And nowadays, doing a game is a collaborative effort. There’s nothing wrong with either an auteur or a collaborative effort. They’re both valid paths, but they’re very different experiences. I’ve worked in both, and as I’ve done the collaborative efforts that’s, for me, not as compelling because the amount of buy-in, the amount of responsibility and the amount of control I have over the process is much smaller. But one person could never make a game like Spider-Man for the PS5, right. I mean, that’s an awesome game. But you have to have a huge team to do it.
On the 2600 it was one person and one game. And then it got to be one person and one graphics person, and they would have a sound helper, but that was pretty much it. But in terms of the game’s design, implementation and programming, it was one person. And that was awesome.
A good comparison: Think of a speed boat versus a huge cruise liner. A huge cruise liner is an amazing thing, it can host thousands of people, it has all kinds of entertainment, amazing food and all these supplies. You can have everything you need, it’s like a travelling city. You can have a great time and do all sorts of things on it. But the one thing you can’t do on a cruise liner is make a sharp turn. You can’t do that. On a speed boat, you can’t carry that much stuff. You have so much fuel, you have so few supplies. You can’t go out and have a long, huge adventure. But if you see something over there and want to check it out, you can just hit the wheel and go there. You can zig and zag and move freely, you don’t have to have your whole course planned out for miles before you start.
And that flexibility and excitement, it’s the difference between what I call an excursion and a journey of discovery. Games now are an excursion. You create a design and you pick a known point, and you get this whole crew together and work towards that place. And it shifts a little here and there, but it’s not going to change amazingly during that whole trip. So that’s okay, but it’s not exciting to me.
An Atari 2600 game was truly a journey of discovery. You start with a concept, and you do that. And then you say, «well, how is this? What works, what doesn’t, what do I want to do? Oh wait, I’ve got this other idea, can I throw this in at this late date?» So imagine that you’ve got a 200 person team, all of them working towards the same design, and someone goes «wait, we want to radically change the design.» It’s not going to happen, you’re too invested at that point. On the 2600, you could totally rework your game at any point in time. And that was okay, as long as it got better. So it’s more exciting, but it’s also less secure. Because at least on the big projects, you know where you’re going. You know what that destination looks like, and you can always say «are we there yet, or not.» So you have security but less excitement.
The 2600 was just the opposite. You had excitement, because who knows what’s going to happen next because if I find something cool I can put it in and run in that direction. But you don’t know if you’re going to come up with something cool. And if you don’t, the whole idea is a dud and you can’t revitalize it… So there’s less security but more excitement.
You know, as a therapist, I deal with this with people all the time. There’s a thing I call minimizers and maximizers. Everybody is either a minimizer or a maximizer. The way I put it is that maximizers create insurance companies and minimizers buy policies.
People either maximize potential or they minimize risk. Or they maximize pleasure, or they minimize pain. And we all do both. We do one or the other at various times. But generally, most people either fall on the side of a maximizer or on the side of a minimizer. Some people are more risk averse, some people are more excitement prone. And I think I’ve always been someone who’s looking for more juice. So I’m more of a maximizer type. There’s no better or worse here, right? Maximizers have pluses and minuses, and minimizers have pluses and minuses, but they’re different approaches.
The thing is that Atari and the 2600 in early development, that was a place for maximizers. And now I think big, major console development is more of a place for minimizers in some way. And I don’t mean to minimize their value, talent or effort, because there’s plenty of all of that there.
But nowadays you have a choice. You didn’t use to have a choice with console development in the early days, everyone had to be a maximizer. You had to be there and take the risk and bear the responsibility. And then as consoles got bigger and bigger and bigger, it got to be big collaborative teams and it was all about minimizers and less excitement and more security, because there was more money invested and investors wanted to have the security of a return on their investment. And without the money for salaries, it’s hard to get people to volunteer to give their life up to do these kind of things.
It’s a natural evolution for any industry. But nowadays with the advent of handheld apps, it’s gone full circle. You have huge consoles which require huge teams and all that, but now you also have the possibility of one person or a very small team creating an app that also can play. Those apps do have the maximizer potential. They’re the ones that can travel around and change their concept and go in another direction.
So the industry started small like that, grew humongous and now it’s looped back to having the opportunity to be small and exciting and venture out again. And I think that’s exciting. In a similar way, I’ve come full circle too, in a sense. Originally, I was about entertaining people by the millions by putting games out to make them happy. I used to entertain nerds, and now as a therapist, I actually make their lives better – but one at a time. So it all comes full circle.
Adrian: How do you think the gaming industry will look like in the future?
Howard: Absolutely. The future of gaming is, I think, about more integration with life. For a while we were looking at virtual reality. Fake worlds and stuff like that. And those more immersive experiences are going to be there, for sure. But what I really think is that the real future of gaming, where real entertainment lies, is going to be integrating game like approaches to actual life activities and real stuff.
So people talk about virtual reality, but I think augmented reality is really where the action is. And if you think about it, the gaming industry has generated technologies that have spread everywhere. You know, environmental simulation, mechanical simulation, a lot of CAD systems. A lot of these things came from video game modeling, video game animation, the need to create and simulate. Video games were the place where a lot of that was born. And it spread out to teaching, to industry, to education, to facilitating workforces. It’s everywhere. And so gaming started off as it’s own thing, and then it penetrated the world. And the technology of gaming went everywhere.
And there’s always going to be just playing games that we play in virtual environments that have nothing to do with reality, where we enjoy ourselves and do whatever we want to do. But coming full circle again, what you’re going to see is more real life stuff coming back to gaming. And your gaming experience is going to incorporate more real life activity in a way. That’s what augmented reality lets you do. It lets you engage whatever’s actually going on in your life with more information or different goals or different ways of looking at it. And I think that’s the future of gaming. That life is going to come back to gaming instead of gaming taking you out into life.
Adrian: What is your view on gaming, as a therapist? Is it good for mental health?
Howard: Long story short, I think gaming is very good for health. There are people who say games create bad influences or distractions. I do think it’s true that games supply one possibility for addiction. But the truth is that any human behavior can be the basis of an addiction. Those kind of addictions aren’t about the substance, they’re about the individual. I mean, heroin and narcotics, those are things people get physically addicted to. And any human being who uses those enough will get addicted. However, there are things like eating, gambling, sex and so on, that all humans pretty much engage in at one point or another, but very few actually get addicted to.
In those cases, the addiction is not in the substance. The addiction is in the person. That’s what I call a behavioral addiction as opposed to a physiological addiction. Gaming is just one other thing people can use to become addicted to, just like any other behavior. So I don’t really buy the argument that video games create addictions in everyone who plays.
And I can give you all the research about violence in video games. That’s a whole other discussion, but I can document the fact that it is not true that video games cause violent behavior. They discounted a lot of the studies that have been done before because they were biased. And the truth is, if you look at the accurate data, you will see that there’s almost no difference, but people who play violent video games are actually slightly less likely to commit violent acts in real life than people who never play violent games. So there’s something to be said for the idea that there’s the cathartic experience, that people relieve violent impulses by playing these games. Now they don’t need to do them in real life.
I think video games are a net positive, not only for people’s individual experience, but that society as a whole benefited tremendously from technologies that were spawned from the video game industry. But I would be happy to join you again and go into some of these topics if that’s something you’d like.
Håkon: Let’s do that!
Adrian: I think it’s sad that gaming still has this status as a childish hobby, compared to watching movies, reading books et.c. What do you think?
There’s a whole story in my book about the idea that even at Atari back then, so many people believed that gaming was this trivial little thing for kids only. When you’re an adult, you shouldn’t be wasting your time with them. But adults need entertainment even more than kids, because they have greater anxieties to deal with. And if you can get a break from that, I think that’s very important.
You know, there’s a Bible quote or something that says «when I was a child, I thought as a child, and I did childish things. But then when I became an adult, I put away those childish things.» And I think that’s horrible. I think that’s exactly the wrong way to look at life. I believe that adulthood is not the negation of childhood. Adulthood should be the integration of childhood into a responsible, fully functioning person. But I think bringing that child with you is very important to maintaining your mental health. Because people who can’t access the fun and joy and freedom of childhood are going to have a very tough time dealing with the very real stresses of adult life in this world today. So I think integrating your childhood – video gaming, fantasy movies, playing board games, card games, all of these things – is healthy.
Video games … for some reason, everybody says, oh, that’s for kids. But they don’t complain about movies or TV shows that are just as absurd as video game scenarios. People make these arbitrary designations, put up walls and draw lines at places that aren’t necessary. That’s a thing that humans do that creates more problems than it solves, in my opinion. And I spend my professional life helping people undo that.
Håkon: Things seem to change a bit now, with games being turned into movies and so on…
Howard: I mean, what I would say is, is having a good time a childish idea? Is having fun and enjoying yourself a childish idea? Or is that a human idea?
Adrian: We’d love to talk more with you about these topics another time. But now, from a serious topic to a fun one: Can you tell us a little bit about easter eggs on the Atari 2600 – what kind of easter eggs have you done?
Howard: I’ve done all kinds of Easter eggs. In fact, another thing I achieved with Yars’ Revenge was that it was the first marketing approved easter egg that was actually included in the product concept.
I did not do the first easter egg. The first easter egg was created by Warren Robinett in Adventure, where you can find a screen that says «Created by Warren Robinett.»
These days, easter eggs are fun additions. They’re just like what we call meta gaming – there’s something you can do in the game or look for or to find that isn’t really about the gameplay, it’s just an extra thing to find or do, like a cheat code or something.
But you were just talking about fun topics and serious topics, and easter eggs are very much a fun topic kind of a thing now. But they came from a very low place, because the original easter eggs were not for entertainment value for players. The original easter eggs came about because of distrust and credit allocation.
Atari never wanted to give programmers credit, and that could be a problem. I mean, inherently, there’s nothing problematic about the idea of Atari wanting to put out a product and not say who made it – you know, they just want it to be an Atari product. So that’s fine. The problem is, let’s say I go to interview at another company, and they say, «well, what have you done?» And I say, «well, I did this game, Adventure.» And they go, «bullshit. We don’t think you did it. We think you’re lying.» So I insist I really did it, but they go, «prove it!» Well, how do you prove that?
Now what Warren Robinett did was putting something in that no one else in the world would have put in a game. He put in «Created by Warren Robinett.» The idea was you put an Easter egg in that would identify you. So there’s a lot of games out there that have the initials of the programmer in it in one form or another. And the reason was not to make entertainment initially, it was to prove authorship because Atari would deny that.
Atari got really upset when they first found out what Warren had done, and they said we couldn’t do this. That we should stop doing it. Of course, there was nobody in management or marketing who could look at code and figure out what was going on, so they really couldn’t stop it. But it really bugged them.
Now, with Yars’ it got to be a bigger thing, and I was instrumental in that. Because I was an economics major before I went into computers, I had a better vocabulary and a little more understanding of the mindsets of people in management and marketing than many of the engineers had. So I could engage with them and talk with them more, and instead of having these battles with them, sometimes I would try to sell them on a concept.
I had put an easter egg in Yars’, but it wasn’t created in a way anyone would find it. And then I went and talked to them and said, «hey, you know, this easter egg thing… We’re missing an opportunity here because, you know, fans look for them. It’s exciting. They write about it in the fan magazines. This is a plus, a hook for us. It isn’t a problem. We should be encouraging this, not discouraging it.»
I then showed them a way to work the easter egg into the storyline of the game. And since I had invented the backstory of the game, I had some credibility there. So because of that, easter eggs got to be a more accepted practice. And then I just went nuts with them. With Yars’, I had the «HSWWSH», which is notorious.
But that was a key, to tell you to reverse the spelling, because that goes on to how I ended up naming the game Yars’ Revenge, which is a whole other story that’s covered in the book.
In each of my successive games, there was an «HSW» with a number you could find. In Raiders, you can find an «HSW 2», because it’s my second game. In ET, you can find an «HSW 3» because that’s my third game. And, also, you can find the characters from all of my previous games. There’s a place in Raiders of the Lost Ark where you can make a Yar fly through the screen. And in E.T., you can make a Yar fly out of the pit. You can find Indiana Jones, or you can heal the flower.
And, also, in E.T., carefully at each of the there’s three phone pieces, one of them is a messed up H, one is a messed up S, and one is a messed up W.
Håkon: Wow! Yeah, I found the Yar easter egg in E.T. It’s interesting that you did this so early.
Howard: It came from a dark place originally. But it’s the phoenix that rose from the ashes. Because from the horrible manure of distrust rose this idea of easter eggs and treasure hunts and things you can find in games, that I think was a great contribution to video gaming.
Adrian: And on that high note, I think we’re nearing the end of the interview. But we have a couple of questions from our listeners if that’s okay?
Howard: Sure, I’m running out of time, but I can take a few more.
Adrian: Great! The first is from Henning Ludvigsen, a game developer [Roguecraft]. He asks if you noticed a shift in the way E.T. was perceived after AVGN: The Movie and Atari: Game Over?
I noticed a shift in my own perception of the game after the film, that’s for sure! For me, it made a huge difference emotionally, because while I’ve used a lot of humor over the years, at times it was difficult to carry this moniker of having destroyed the industry. Which isn’t true, but it’s still the reputation I got.
The way I say it, the crash of the video game industry in the early eighties was a tragedy. And every tragedy needs a face, right? Because whenever they tell a story in media, you always want some specific face to represent the story. And I think E.T. became the face of the story of the crash, and I became the butt behind that face.
So it was tough to some degree. But when I watched that movie, I felt exonerated in a lot of ways. And a lot of things that I had carried kind of came out, I actually became tearful at the premiere when I finally watched that movie.
And when they introduced me at the end of the movie, there was a standing ovation for me. That was an amazingly emotional moment, and it was a very healing moment for me. So I can say that I’m sure it changed the point of view of a lot of other people. But I think the biggest impact it had was for me, in terms of healing some of the pain that I may have felt for being accused of doing a horrible thing to video gaming, which is something that’s near and dear to my heart and an industry that I love.
Håkon: Yeah, when you find an E.T. cartridge and have to take a moment for yourself, in the movie, that’s an incredibly touching moment.
Howard: Oh, thank you. I still get emotional when I see that.
Adrian: Henning also wonders if you have any tips for modern game developers about handling the stress that comes with the job these days?
Howard: That’s a whole other question, that maybe we could save for a later interview. But I will say one thing about it, because I think it’s a reasonable question. And that is that there are two components to stress that I think are important. One is that there’s no such thing as a stressful object or a stressful action. Stress is something we put on something. It’s not inherent to anything.
Now there are things that almost everybody interprets as stressful, but it’s still us reacting to them with stress. Stress is a reaction that we have. It’s not inherent to an activity or a thing. So we manufacture our own stress. And that’s an important thing to understand, I think.
The other thing is stress is rough, but you can be distracted from it. If you really sit in your stress, that’s tough. But what’s your level of commitment to what you’re doing? Because if you really believe in what you’re doing and are super committed to what you’re doing, the stress becomes this thing that’s just sort of hanging around, but it’s not that important. What’s important is moving forward with your task. And the less you’re committed to your task, the more the stress is going to intrude upon you because you’re not distracted from it.
If I keep myself busy in one part of my attention, I have less attention left over for something else that might be bothering me. That’s just the beginning of an answer, but I hope that’s helpful in terms of acknowledging it.
So for video games, which is an extremely stressful place to work, you need to love games. You need to really, really want to make a game – having your name on a game that goes out to the public that potentially millions of people are going to enjoy, that’s like a drug. That’s a wonderful thing to pursue and to be able to achieve.
But if it’s not that important to you, if that’s not something that is super meaningful to you, you’re going to be more vulnerable to stress. So you need to really love working in video games because working in video games is hard. It is very hard, and you need to be fully committed.
Håkon: Thanks! We have another question, from someone called Boisemannen. Other than the adaptations you have made, which film would you like to have made into an Atari game?
Howard: That’s a great question! No one has ever asked me that question before. I love that! Uh… I have to say… well, I’m going to be a little perverse in this regard, because my taste in movies is rather eclectic.
Some of the movies I’d like to do a game for, people have already done that. I mean, The Matrix is a great example of a movie that needs a game, but that’s been done.
I’d love to do the video game for Doctor Strangelove, which is one of my all time favourite movies. It’s a movie about World War III brinksmanship and crazy people doing weird things. There’s a lot of different angles you could take with it.
I don’t know how many people are still familiar with that movie, but it was made in the sixties. It’s one of Stanley Kubrick’s first movies, and it’s an awesome, awesome black comedy. A dark comedy that’s just one of the all time greatest films, and would make an all time great game.
Adrian: We like to end our interviews by asking our guests if they have anything they want to plug. So is there anything you’d like to mention, like your book?
Howard: Yeah, I would like to discuss my book. Once Upon Atari, How I Made History by Killing an Industry.
It’s an a paperback, obviously. It’s also an ebook and an audiobook, and I read the audiobook. So you will actually hear me telling you the stories directly if you get that. It’s available on Amazon and Audible. It’s also available in Spanish. So please check out the book. People have really been enjoying it, and if you enjoyed this interview, I promise you will love this book.
Come to onceuponatari.com to see what I’m doing and what’s going on. And if you’re in Califonia and need therapy, come to hwarshaw.com.
Adrian & Håkon: Thank you so much, it’s been an honour and a real privilege to be able to interview you.
Howard: Thank you both, really. I really enjoyed being here.
You can listen to an audio version of the interview here:
For more episodes of Spæll, visit them at Podbean. More english language articles from Spillhistorie.no, including plenty of interviews, can be found here.