Nolan Bushnell on augmented reality and how self-driving cars will kill the Teamsters

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SAUSALITO, Calif — Industry legend Nolan Bushnell took to the GamesBeat Summit stage yesterday to discuss a multitude of diverting directions the games industry seems to be taking. Among them, Bushnell offered his thoughts on augmented reality, the mobile space, and a missed investment opportunity in the world’s most profitable company.

The fireside chat began with a brief overview of the “moderate success” of Brain Rush, his most recent company, in educational games, before going into the industry’s future. Bushnell noted that learning and games are “linked in very interesting ways,” citing how he watched his kids absorb information better with interactive tools when growing up as the inspiration to pursue edutainment.

But the subject ended with a warning: “Selling to government institutions: one should never do it.”

Most of Bushnell’s conversation with GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi dealt with the direction of the industry’s future. Two topics emerged as most relevant to the next 25 years in gaming, according to Bushnell: unemployment caused by technology, and augmented reality.

The golden Apple

Bushnell then discussed in earnest a point in time when he could have become a one-third stakeholder in a little company by the name of Apple. Not long after Bushnell’s exit from game-maker Atari, he had an opportunity to put $50,000 into the then-burgeoning consumer electronics company. The decision to not invest was one that Bushnell regretted. His characterization of the then-21-year-old Steve Jobs would understandably not inspire a lot of confidence, however.

“At 21, Jobs was a very unfinished product,” said Bushnell. “He didn’t smell well. He didn’t have proper manners. [He] didn’t fit my litmus test of what a CEO is.”

From here, most of Bushnell’s conversation with GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi dealt with the industry’s future, and two topics emerged as most relevant to the next 25 years in gaming: unemployment caused by technology, and augmented reality.

The unemployment myth

“Think of what the self-driving car is going to do to the Teamsters,” Bushnell said, citing an example of how advances in technologies of convenience will reduce the existing workforce. The Atari founder estimated that technology will be the cause of 50 million lost jobs over the course of the next two decades. In fact, according to Bushnell, the next major political battle of the next quarter-century will be the attempts to combat these losses.

Augmented reality holds a much cheerier future in Bushnell’s mind. Describing “the half-life of a really good game” as being half a year (with exceptions made for massively mulitiplayer online works like World of Warcraft), the Brain Rush CEO suggested that AR products — not mobile games — would be the industry’s next big “reset” toward constructive innovation.

“I’m always looking for the next reset, and AR/VR feels like the next reset,” said Bushnell. “My gut tells me AR is going to take over the game world of the living room.”

Speaking to Bushnell later in the day, he distinguished between augmented and virtual reality, suggesting the former had greater capabilities thanks to its more immediate blending of the real and unreal. If virtual reality could provide as detailed and holistic an in-game world as we would have in augmented reality (at least providing fully realized avatars for players), it could stand a greater chance of being part of his described “next reset.”

Hiring for the creative mind

The summit discussion concluded with Bushnell describing in detail his preferred hiring process for creative people, a subject he spoke in depth on in his 2013 book Finding the Next Steve Jobs. Earlier in the chat, Bushnell explained that the modern education system has left roughly half the population “dead from the neck up.”

“You want to surround yourself with enthusiasm and passion and creativity,” Bushnell said. “How many 45 minute lectures can you sit through before having that creative spark snuffed out? I find that hiring for passion and enthusiasm almost always trumps formal education. Today, you can find the best talent at game meetups, [who are working on passion projects] while they flip burgers.”