Was Atari an Evil Corporation?

[bergbros]

We all love the the games and the 2600, but was the company itself a white knight or a badly run company that squelched programmers and creativity? I read some excerpts from the History of Videogames, a truly amazing book, and there is a lot of skeletons in the closet. I know you guys have heard it before, but, what do you guys think of the company itself? This is the company that did not credit their programmers for a long time, was owned by many accounts one of the nastiest and cruel men of all time in JAck Tramiel, they basically mismanaged the release of the Lynx, a hand held that was ahead of its time, and they fired thousands of people when Tramiel took over and had so many departments that worked against each other that the company was run into the ground within ten years. Are you a fan of the systems but not the company? What is the legacy of this company? What lessons can be learned from its demise?

[1090]

He knows too much...

 

May I ask you for your address and social security number please?

[+Sauron]

Mismanagement does not make a company evil. For all of the bad stories about Atari, I can think of quite a few good ones. I remember reading about several times that disabled people were given brand new systems for free, complete with notes from Sam Tramiel. Plenty of other ones I've heard, too, including a few of my own.

 

I know a lot of people had issues with the way the company was run, but something about Atari's products always seemed to give me the impression that they were designed by people that actually CARED, if you know what I mean. I don't give my undying loyalty to just ANYBODY, ya know....

[moycon]

I have that book and read it from cover to cover...I never got the impression that Atari was in any way "evil" by reading it. There really wasn't a way to learn from experience on where to go with video games because it was a new frontier. Some bad choices were made, some assholes in high positions (It's like that in every big company beleive me) might have kept moral low, some strong competition towards the end... No I don't think Atari is evil.

[jahfish]

it's very simple ... atari was a company until it was bought by warner ....

 

since then, atari was a brand, but not a real company anymore ... a company like warner won't bother about authenticity or creativity, they ask themselves different questions: how much does it sell? can we sell lots more? can we produce it cheaply in asia? do weed need to pay these creative pot-smoking programmers that much? can we sell this product that costs us 7.50 for 75$?

 

that's why activision was such a success, focussing on the programmers ... i have a sales folder from activision (1983) where page after page they talk about the programmers and the team ... only the last double page is about the business team in the background ...

 

if you're interested in the inner politics of the "take-over" era, you should order Howard SW's Videos

[iguana]

Mismanaged yes, Evil no. If Atari came out after another programable console with a marketing stratagy than it would have died. Magnavox had one before but only sold it through there dealers and not widespread. In the Early years they had a good plan, but as time went on they had a vision but not a way to get there. they became very reactive in there realeases of the later console where the 2600 was proactive. They pretty much sat on thier hands and expected that the 2600 would rule forever. when it did not they failed. Say what you want about Microsoft, but they have learned from Atari. They own the entire market, but continue to come up with new advancements, spreading out the risk they take on any one.

[ATARIPITBULL]

I think that Atari was a head of the pack and could have stayed there if not for bad managment. I think the big crash of video games in the 80's did a lot to the company but I still feel they could have done much better than companys like Nintendo and still be alive today like they were then. When people thought of video games in the late 70's and early 80's they would think of Atari because they had the most to offer and it would still have been this way if they had just done a better job of staying a head of the rest.

[Joel D. Park]

What happened to Atari seems pretty typical when a small company begins to grow at a high rate. I could write a book on the "Growing Pains" of a company.

 

A few years back, I was fortunate enough to work for a company that had like 10 people when I started. As the company grew the development staff (Of which I was a memeber) grew very slowly the Sales staff and management grew quickly. It didn't work out well. The developers became "Managed" to death, and many started quitting. Everyone who helped start the company left, so no one knew what was going on. The company started jumping to big money and they left smaller clients in the cold..

 

Needless to say, I'm no longer working at the company now and I have like 150,000 pieces of Stock-Option toilet paper.

[Adrian M]

It's kind of amazing that given Nintendo's monopolistic practices in the 8-bit days, no one seems to remember this. They won't think twice about bashing MICROSOFT, though. How quickly we forget...

[Kenshi]

quote:

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Originally posted by Iguana:

Say what you want about Microsoft, but they have learned from Atari. They own the entire market, but continue to come up with new advancements, spreading out the risk they take on any one.

---

 

Advancements? Microsoft? If you call a prettier GUI and an extra application or two with each version to kill competition "advancements", then I guess so. The electronics industry is swift. Today's giants can be dead tomorrow. Microsoft is on the decline and, like Atari, will die off into the background. The only difference to me is that I miss Atari whereas I won't miss Microsoft (except maybe for Dos).

 

By the way, this is my first post. I want to say this site looks very nice and has really helped me reminisce of my days as a kid playing 2600. I found the site by looking for instructions for a certain rom while playing an emulator. (I still have my system but it's more convenient to play on the computer.) Good job.

[dwh]

If you believe Atari was 'evil', and Nintendo learned from all of Atari's mistakes they made during the 'crash',then what does that make Nintendo??