From interviews with women employed at Atari: https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057 https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-

From interviews with women employed at Atari: https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057 https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-real... > Many interviewees said it was the best job they ever had, adding that news of Bushnell’s rescinded award struck them as shocking or unfair. > “It’s drive-by assassination,” said Loni Reeder, who worked at Atari for two years and, later, co-founded a company with Bushnell. “I think there’s an element of telephone being played. Every day was not a wet t-shirt contest.” Reeder added, “There’s a collective anger amongst us toward the individuals who made this a big deal.” > And 26 years after she first walked onto that Pong assembly line, Elaine Shirley took another job, one where her new boss often lost his temper and yelled. She tried to quit in her first meeting with him. “I told him, I came from a company where everyone was nice, not mean,” she said. About a quarter of the women I interviewed said that they can claim #MeToo, but that their time at Atari had nothing to do with it. > Mireille Chevalier said she happily attended Atari’s hot tub parties and went on dates with colleagues. “Nolan was never, ever bothering me,” she said. “If a woman wanted to go out with Nolan, it was their business. It was never pressure. I went out with one of the directors for 10 years.” “Where are you going to meet a man when you’re young?” Chevalier said. “We didn’t have the internet. We used to meet our boyfriends at work.” Those criticizing Atari and Bushnell do so from a position 40 years removed, and through the lens of secondhand accounts. The people who worked with him firsthand paint a very different picture.