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The Icarus effect here is both sad and eye-opening: After Atari crumbled, his outsized role in the video game crisis earned him a scarlet letter in the industr
by hliyan 7y ago
The Icarus effect here is both sad and eye-opening:
After Atari crumbled, his outsized role in the video game crisis earned him a scarlet letter in the industry. He found work as a real estate broker and spent nearly 2 decades soul searching before discovering his true passion: psychotherapy.
A man of that talent should never have had to work as a real estate broker. It's almost as if the business put him in a position he couldn't handle, and then shunned him when he couldn't handle it.
- LocalH 7y agoI love his outlook on the whole thing, though. Summed up at the end of the article: “Now, I kind of prefer it when people call E.T. the worst game ever,” he says. “Yars’ Revenge is considered one of the best games, so as long as E.T. is the worst, I have the greatest range of any designer in history.”
- epx 7y agoHow important is to learn to say “no”.
- deeblering4 7y agoNearly as important as saying “it”!
- philpem 7y ago"Okay, we'll get Billy the intern to code it. By the way, clean out your desk."
- raverbashing 7y agoI don't think the interns would be able to code an Atari game by themselves at the time Still, sometimes getting the pink slip is better than getting a black mark on your cv
- zaarn 7y agoBack then the video game companies didn't think developers were important. Hence games from this era didn't include them in the credits ("for what? should the blinds and the printer get credit too? FURNITURE!"). If he said no, he would have been given the slip without second thought.
- arkades 7y agoHe was paid >1M/yr(>2M in modern dollars); I doubt he ranked quite so low as people are saying. Interchangeable widgets don’t pull down that salary.
- LocalH 7y agoI think it was more that they were worried about headhunters poaching their programmers, or at least that was the excuse they’d give.
- jablan 7y agoSo? He would be remembered as the author of two huge hits, and would be able to immediately land another stellar gaming job.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoHe said Yes, because it was a challenge and he took it.
- seibelj 7y agoI know some extremely intelligent and hard working real estate brokers, and they earn salaries above the techies. Every industry has winners!
- danmaz74 7y agoThe point is that if you're good at something, you shouldn't be forced to do something else you're not as good at.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoI worked with him in computers after his time at Atari. I didn't see him as shunned or having career problems there. Hm.
- pmiller2 7y agoFrom Wikipedia: "Kassar reportedly offered Warshaw US$200,000 and an all-expenses-paid vacation to Hawaii in compensation." [0] . $200K in 1982 is equivalent to over $500K today. When you give a halfway intelligent and sensible 25 year old that kind of money, "have to" is probably not something that applies to working anywhere. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(vi...