Let’s get the perfunctory out of the way first:
Once Upon Atari : How I Made History By Killing An Industry by Howard Scott Warshaw is the best memoir ever written by an Atari Home Division programmer who knows first-hand what it was like to work at Atari making games in the era of Ray Kassar
It deserves 5-stars on that fact alone.
It also happens to be one of the ONLY memoir “written by an Atari Home Division programmer who knows first-hand what it was like to work at Atari making games in the era of Ray Kassar”, which, to me, is pretty shocking.
Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari has written a Business book named “Finding The Next Steve Jobs” which is a memoir of sorts, but not really the all-out Atari retrospective I am looking for. Hopefully he has one in the works.
Ron Wayne, and early Atari employee has published a book named “Adventures Of An Apple Founder” that contains a little bit about working for Atari, but mostly focuses on his role starting Apple (and getting out far too soon)
Joe Decuir, hardware engineer for the Atari 2600 and Atari 400/800 (he was also a game programmer) has been working on a memoir for several years too, but as of a few weeks ago he is “10,000 words in” but nowhere near finished.
Chris Crawford has written several books like “The Art Of Computer Game Design” and “On Game Design”, and while they are great books, and cover some of his work at Atari, they could not be mistaken for memoir.
The closest I’m aware of, is Warren Robinett, the programmer of Atari 2600 Adventure, who has teased a book about that very same game for almost a decade now, but so far, it has not surfaced (you can see the tantalizing table of contents here though: Book: The Annotated Adventure (Table of Contents). (warrenrobinett.com))
There have been many books written ABOUT Atari, but very few written by the people who were there. Where are the books by people like David Crane, Al Alcorn, Rob Fulop, Carla Mininski etc?
I’m still waiting for all of these.
But we do have Howard’s book, and well, it’s quite something to behold. The book trades chapters and sections between six major storie threads (and maybe more):
- The 2014 Alamogordo Dig for the Xbox Movie “Atari Game Over” of which Howard was invited to participate in.
- Howard’s personal, educational and game design history leading up to making the E.T. game.
- The actual programming of the E.T. game itself (in very gory detail I might add), and the aftermath
- An examination of the actual reasons for the North American Video Game Crash (hint it was not entirely E.T. or Howard’s fault)
- An examination of game developers themselves, what makes them tick, how they work, etc. and how they relate to other business functions (i.e. marketing)
- All the drug use at Atari.
It’s an engaging way to tell the story, especially if you are interested in the inner workings of Atari in the early 1980’s. The focus of the book is, of course, the E.T. video game for the Atari 2600. E.T. has been called “the worst game ever made” and “the cause of the great video game crash”. It was one of the most expensive properties Atari Inc. ever licensed for game, but was allotted only a 5-week development schedule so it could be produced for Christmas 1982.
With most games at the time taking 6-9 months to complete, 5-weeks was, honestly, insane. Ray Kassar, who led Atari at the time, was told over and over by the technical staff that the schedule would not work, but he kept making phone calls until he found the one guy crazy enough to do it: Howard Scott Warshaw. The game was released at just about the same time Warner Communications (Atari’s parent company) announced guidance for 4th quarter loss in December 1982 blamed on slow Atari sales.
The rest, well, is a history this book covers in gory gory detail.
Howard’s style, which especially comes through in the audio-book version, is that of an insightfully goofy storyteller who loves puns and making up his own acronyms and coined phrases. In some places it gets a little-bit too chatty, but recovers just as quickly. It’s no wonder that he always wanted to be filmmaker, as both his education (multiple degrees) and Atari resume (Yar’s Revenge, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, E.T.) paint the picture of the type of one-man-show, auteur, renaissance-man required to make great art out of limited resources.
The book is not overly technical, and in fact, takes great pains to NOT be technical as to appeal to a wide audience. Howard makes multiple attempts to explain ”programmers to non-programmers“, and while I think he is mostly correct, as a programmer myself, I have no idea if the explanation works or not. (but I hope it does).
There is a lot going on in this sprawling and detailed text that hits far beyond the mere story of the E.T. video game. Howard explains, for instance, his ideas on how to “manage a creative environment” and “how to understand why game programmers thrive in chaos”. He writes both from experience, and many years of insightful hindsight. What emerges from the text are several books all wrapped in the guise of the story of the E.T. game. We get a solid memoir of working at Atari in the golden age, a PHD thesis-level examination of the 1983 video game crash, and a management handbook on how to work with creative and technical people.
Howard Scott Warshaw, MA, ME, LMFT bills himself as the “Silicon Valley Therapist” as this has been in the profession for many years now. This is not a flippant detail, but actually very important for the book. Howard is not just telling the story of himself, he is telling the story of an entire industry, and an entire group of people, many of which have become his clients. When Howard talks about for instance, “where engineers and marketers clash” one gets the feeling that he has heard both sides of this story, many multiple times.
It’s perfect for people like myself; ones who are huge game Atari fans, interested in the business side of video games, while being technical-creatives in the entertainment industry. I, personally. have worked on many games and toys for very well known brands, some of which have been blamed for societal issues that go far beyond the actual impact of the products. Howard knows how it feels for millions of people to enjoy something you’ve made, but at the same time the sickening feeling that all your work has been construed into something that it is not. In that, I don’t just feel validated by his story, I feel as if I’m in a brotherhood with him.
So yeah, I like this book.
I like it a lot.
I’ve actually now bought it twice.
Once in book form 2 years ago, and just a week ago, in Audio-book format so I could listen to it in my car and hear what I missed the first time in Howard’s own voice (highly recommended)
While the book is not perfect, that imperfection is part of the whole package. Imagine Howard Scott Warshaw, a guy who had an amazing chance to work at an amazing place early in his career, was very successful at that job, but then was told for the next 30 years that HE ALONE was the cause of that very same industry to crash and burn in North America in 1983. And even though 1000s of people were there with him, witnessing all the wall street, management, business, marketing, and manufacturing shenanigans that contributed to the crash, almost all of those people kept quiet and just let E.T. and Howard Scott Warshaw take the blame. As you read the story, how it is constructed, and what Howard focuses upon, you realize a context that emerges from the text:
This book is not ABOUT Howard Scott Warshaw.
This book IS Howard Scott Warshaw.
Howard is a man who endured the pressure and power of an entire industry attempting to blame he and he alone for its own mistakes and foibles. But instead of being angry and bitter, he used his divergent mind to find another path and solution: he became a healer, using his vast experience to help others find their own way through tech industry insanity.
So maybe it’s no wonder Howard’s book is one of the first real memoirs about working for Atari in the golden age of video games. The weight of blame on him for decades, he finally gets redemption the best way an auteur, innovative engineer-cum-therapist can manage it:
By creating it himself.
5 stars.
High Recommended.
-Steve Fulton