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