Easy to Learn, Hard to Master: The Fate of Atari

Long before the rise of tech giants like Google, Yahoo, and Apple, and before the casual dress codes and creative energy became synonymous with Silicon Valley, there was one company that epitomized the digital economy’s lifestyle and business ethos: Atari. Emerging from the Age of Aquarius, Atari’s narrative is largely the tale of its founder and visionary, Nolan Bushnell, and partly the story of the first and perhaps most significant boom and bust of the new economy, occurring two decades before the term even existed. Atari was a pioneer in making technology appealing, well ahead of the personal computer revolution, and captivated an expanding audience with something that remains popular today: video games. Atari effectively brought the digital world into the public’s awareness.