Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. I want
Speaker 1: to end the program on a pretty cool note. I've
Speaker 1: gotten my hand right now. It's it's a graphic I
Speaker 1: don't want to call it a graphic novel. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a book. It's not a novella. It's it's hard
Speaker 1: to describe, but it's like a really thick comic book.
Speaker 1: It's written by David Kushner. He's a journalist and author.
Speaker 1: It's called Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master, Palm Atari
Speaker 1: and The Dawn of the Video Game. He joined us
Speaker 1: right now on the phone from New York. Check about
Speaker 1: on Twitter at David Kushner. David, I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: out the right way to describe this because, you know,
Speaker 1: initially I would say graphic novel, but it's a true story,
Speaker 1: so it's not a novel. How do you describe it
Speaker 1: that's true? You know, it's uh, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of long form journalism in the form of graphic novels.
Speaker 1: And you are hitting on something that actually sort of
Speaker 1: compelled me to do this, and this is the one
Speaker 1: that I've done with an illustrator name corn shot Me
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, it's been. It's actually been kind of
Speaker 1: fun and an interesting challenge to try to do that. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you can call it nonfiction graphic novel
Speaker 1: something like that. Well, David, I like it because it's
Speaker 1: about Pong, Atari and the dawn of the video game.
Speaker 1: I gotta say those are the last video games I
Speaker 1: was any good at Pong and Atari day Little Dig
Speaker 1: Dug Defender. So walk us through the story there, what
Speaker 1: you know, what's what's the the sort of origin story
Speaker 1: of Pong and Atari? Yeah, well it was really and
Speaker 1: the story is is kind of about a rivalry between
Speaker 1: these two guys. And on one side you have no
Speaker 1: Ling Bush Now, who was the creator of a Tori
Speaker 1: and also created Pong, went on to later create Chuck
Speaker 1: E Cheese, so very enormously influential. You know, American tonologists
Speaker 1: entrepreneur still around. Um. Ralph Bear is not as well known.
Speaker 1: And Ralph Bare was an engineer. He fled Nazi Germany
Speaker 1: um when he was a kid um during the war
Speaker 1: and ended up basically coming to the US working military
Speaker 1: intelligence and as working for a defense contractor. As an engineer.
Speaker 1: He got this idea to use what was new at
Speaker 1: the time, television sets to actually play games, and no
Speaker 1: one had thought about that, no one had done it,
Speaker 1: and um, he created a table tennis game for television,
Speaker 1: which Nolan Bushnell ended up seeing at a convention, and
Speaker 1: then he ended up creating Pong and kind of starting
Speaker 1: this bit of a lifelong rivalry between these two guys.
Speaker 1: There's a real element of nostalgia here, Like you said, Mike,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking about the nineteen eighties and and really
Speaker 1: what was happening at the time at the same time,
Speaker 1: if we fast forward to where we are today, we
Speaker 1: look across the landscape of the video game industry, it
Speaker 1: is just massive. It is huge. David draw the line
Speaker 1: from Pong Atari and the dawn of the video game
Speaker 1: to what we see today. M hmm, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's what I you know, I love origin stories. I've
Speaker 1: written other books about the game industry, a lot of
Speaker 1: articles about it. This is sort of the big origin story,
Speaker 1: and and it's important for a few reasons, and it
Speaker 1: connects it today for a few reasons. And first would
Speaker 1: be I think the title, you know, the book, which
Speaker 1: comes from Nolan Bushnell. It's this idea of design easy
Speaker 1: to learn, difficult to master. You know. That's the essence
Speaker 1: of any of any great video game, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about Pong or Grand Theft Auto, or you know Flappy
Speaker 1: Bird or you know Dig Doug, you name it. Um
Speaker 1: and it's a kind of a design approach which really um,
Speaker 1: I think was epitomized in these early games. So um
Speaker 1: you know, and and and and still you're seeing the
Speaker 1: influence of ATRII, particularly on on the whole generation who
Speaker 1: grew up with that and kind of had those you know,
Speaker 1: design ideals branded into their in their minds, you know, Davia,
Speaker 1: if I if I remember my history of about all
Speaker 1: this yet, forgive me. I haven't had a chance to
Speaker 1: read the book yet. I'm definitely gonna dig into this tonight.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't an easy sell, right was it? Either?
Speaker 1: I think it was Pong. They originally took two was
Speaker 1: it Sears or something like that, and and had trouble
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, well, Pong um actually very early on,
Speaker 1: and it was It's a story that is in the book,
Speaker 1: which is about Nolan Bushnell when he first was creating Pong.
Speaker 1: You know, the his idea was that this is this
Speaker 1: just needs to be a gain that you can put
Speaker 1: into a bog. You need to have a drunk guy
Speaker 1: be able to stumble over and and get it. And
Speaker 1: he really meant that. I mean it needed to be
Speaker 1: and that kind of a lot of that design aesthetic
Speaker 1: that I talked about started with that it had to
Speaker 1: be something you just get right into. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean people didn't know what it was at first. Sears
Speaker 1: actually did UM end up, you know, distributing UM some
Speaker 1: of the games early on. That was super important. But
Speaker 1: you know, at the time it was really in an
Speaker 1: ethemo no. But the idea that you would use a
Speaker 1: television for anything but watching shows just didn't make sense
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, and you know, Ralph bare
Speaker 1: kind of kept bumping up against that. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's the kind of the saga of innovation
Speaker 1: that people are still faced with today when you know
Speaker 1: they're trying something new. Why are we not talking about
Speaker 1: Atari in the context of a current GameMaker, a current
Speaker 1: platform major, and instead we're talking about Sony and Xbox.
Speaker 1: Well that's a great question because it's um. You know
Speaker 1: that one of the most recognizable brands ever gaming and
Speaker 1: after Nolan Bushnell Um ended up selling the company in
Speaker 1: the mid seventies to to Warner, it never really regained
Speaker 1: that footing. Um, and it's uh yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: kind of left the wayside. But the game's um, you
Speaker 1: know that it's are made. And I think that just
Speaker 1: the culture that had fostered, you know, I mean myself
Speaker 1: among the players. You know that that was our that
Speaker 1: was everything you come home player. So um, yeah, they
Speaker 1: didn't really bring the brand into the modern day as
Speaker 1: much as they would like to, but you know, the
Speaker 1: influences super strong. I love that motivation aimed at trunk guys.
Speaker 1: Certainly a lot of a lot of good business innovation.
Speaker 1: But what's the deal these two guys, now, David, are
Speaker 1: they still alive or how are they doing? No? Well,
Speaker 1: Ralph bare passed away and Ralph Bair you know, um,
Speaker 1: he a story, like I said, is a story of
Speaker 1: a rivalry. He ends up later on creating Simon, which
Speaker 1: you may remember, Simon is actually still out there. Um
Speaker 1: you know where you have to sort of memorize sequence
Speaker 1: of um of colors on this handheld device and sounds
Speaker 1: and hit the buttons. So Ralph had a great kind
Speaker 1: of second act, and um, he he passed away a
Speaker 1: few years back, and no one is still around, you know.
Speaker 1: Like I said, he went on to create Chuck E Cheese,
Speaker 1: which is obviously ubiquitous. And Nolan is very much of
Speaker 1: a kind of a forward thinker with regarded technology and
Speaker 1: education and education and aging. You know, our games to
Speaker 1: keep kind of the brain active and things like that.
Speaker 1: So he's still around. David Kushner, he's a journalist and author.
Speaker 1: He is the author of Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master,
Speaker 1: Pong Atari, Any Dawn of the video Game. It's a
Speaker 1: nonfiction and graphic novel. Really cool stuff. Thanks for joining us, David,