Usually in interviews, it’s usually Average Joe interviewing a bigwig in the celebrity or gaming industry scene. However, for the following interview, it’s completely different, involving two important figures in the video game industy: Will Wright, creator of The Sims and Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck-E-Cheese.
Will takes a moment of his time to interview Nolan on his sucesses, failures, hobbies and more. Here’s a few questions, make sure you read the whole article at Develop!
WW: It’s weird, I’ve done so many interviews, but never had the chance to be the one asking the questions.
NB: Well, much in the way you’ve been asking me about my career – I’ve been a great fan of yours. I’ve been an aficionado of The Sims since… well, forever. I always rate you as one of the best game guys.
WW: Well, I don’t think any of us would have had a chance without your work.
NB: I think that we all, in working on the video game as an entity – all developers really enjoy the fact that they haven’t had to get a real job!
WW: Yes, that’s very true. I’ve only just recently convinced my mother that I’m doing something worthwhile. It took her a while to get it. It’s a generational thing. I guess you see that in your kids – because you and I grew up with these things as we were young adults, but you see kids grow up with these things, they have a resonance with games. But I work with these things every day, but don’t have the resonance that I see my daughter or young kids have with games.
NB: Yeah, and it turns out that that is one of the things I actually have a bit of a concern about. Video games in some ways are too powerful, they have too much resonance with kids. And it’s very easy to overdose on video games and to let the outside world go by. I am constantly trying to limit my kids’ video game play. Which kind of seems funny coming from me! [laughs]WW: Completely. You have two roles – one as a parent, and one in the games industry. And you see how captivating games are – you realise that we have discovered this circuit in their brain and we are kind of exploring and exploiting more and more effectively…
