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

The documentary tells the story of the Atari company. The firm was founded before Google, before Yahoo and even before Apple. It embodied the working culture that Silicon Valley later came to stand for. Informal dress, a loose atmosphere and wild creativity spread from there. Much of the story turns around its founder Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell founded the company and gave it its direction. Atari showed that technology could be attractive. It reached a wide audience before the personal computer revolution. What it had in hand while doing so was video games. The company grew fast and it collapsed fast. That boom and bust happened twenty years before anyone spoke of a new economy. People who worked at the company speak in the film. Engineers and executives of the period give their accounts. The story shows how the digital world entered mass awareness. Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn speak in the hundred and ten minute documentary. It is an American production Tomaso Walliser and Davide E. Agosta finished in 2017.