Interview: Chris Crawford

The following interview took place through email from the dates of July 18-20, 2019. The original emails have been formatted to be presented as one conversation for ease of readability. The conversation centered around Crawford's time at the video game company Atari in the early eighties with specific insight into the work culture of that company and his work independently after Atari making Balance of Power.

NF: "As the foundation of my piece I wanted to understand the conditions of working at Atari. Though I have read countless interviews from alumni of Atari at the time, about what it was like to work there as game designers, I wanted to get a better understanding of the day to day responsibilities and expectations.

What were the hours like at Atari, did these ever change or were they strictly set? Did you find these hours to ever become too much? If overtime occurred, were you compensated for your time and was their an expectation to work late?"

CC: There were no hours. We came and went as we liked. Most of us maintained fairly standard hours, but some of the technical people would come in as late as 11:00 and sometimes they were there until midnight. There was no expectation whatsoever as to when you should show up, except that you were expected to be at meetings. There was no expectation that anybody work longer than 40 hours.

NF: What was the work environment like, the layout of your work space, and was there comradery [sic] between co-workers? From a post titled, Once Upon Atari, you described the rose colored glasses some former employees had created in regards to the work tension between the Marketing and Engineering Departments, could you describe in more detail that relationship?

CC: The work environment was very nice. Most of us shared an office with another person, but we spent so much time in the lab that we usually were alone. Everybody had an office with a desk and chair. The VCS programmers had little more; they did their work in the labs. The HCS programmers had their own Atari 800s with disk drives on their desks.

Nobody at Atari knew what they were doing; we were all just making things up as we went, because this was all revolutionary stuff. The programmers had a somewhat better idea of what to do, and usually just did what they thought best. The marketing people were supposed to figure out how to sell the stuff the engineers made, and they had their own ideas, most of which were bad. Therein lay the tension between marketing and engineering. The engineers just wanted to make fun toys, and the marketing people wanted things that they could sell.

NF: Do you feel as though you were given creative freedom for your work? What was the process of making a game start to finish, the timeline on the average project, how much input was given from above?

CC: We had lots of creative freedom, but we did have to convince our supervisors that we were working on something worthwhile. The supervisors gave us a lot of leeway and ran interference for us with the higher-ups. Everybody had their own procedure for building a game; there was no standard procedure. You just worked on your idea until you had it working. The typical project took six months to a year. The only input from above came towards the end, and wasn’t much of a problem.

NF: Was the pay sufficient for the work you were doing? What was the process for ascertaining a higher wage amount? With examples like Tod Fyre's move to get ten cents on every Pac-Man Cartridge, were moves like this a usual among the Engineering department?

CC: The pay was fine, but with each passing year, the video game biz boomed, and more and more money was getting thrown around. Some programmers were being enticed away from Atari with promises of doubled salaries plus royalties. I had a hard time hiring people on the pay scale. Atari adjusted the pay scales upwards, but it was always a bit behind the times—things were moving really fast!

Tod Frye’s actions were regarded with some disdain by some of the engineers at Atari. It seemed entirely too money-grubbing. Some of the programmers, though, were glad that he had broken down an unfair barrier.

NF: From what I've read from other sources during the early eighties when you worked for Atari, the company had left some of its hippie culture from the decade before and established itself as a more corporate work space, was this the case?

CC: Atari had to grow up too quickly. When I arrived in September 1979, it was still an engineer’s company: the focus was on building great products and there was lots of creative freedom. But as more and more money poured in, Atari hired more and more people and things got crazy. We NEEDED more rules and regulations just to keep from trampling each other. I was one of the worst rule-breakers, but all my rule-breaking was justified by my results. We NEEDED managers who could handle larger groups of people. However, Ray Kassar made a huge blunder in hiring a bunch of “60-bitters” from CDC who handled software projects like they were government operations: lots of meetings, mountains of documentation, no creative freedom. All the good people hated it; many left.

NF: This section of questions has to do with your experiences developing for the Atari Program Exchange with games like Eastern Front:

CC: The Atari Program Exchange was created and built by Dale Yocum. He deserves all the credit.

NF: What were the hours like that you logged at home while working on Eastern Front and other Atari Program Exchange Games? Would you say there was a "crunch" culture among your co-workers designing for the program exchange as well as at Atari?

CC: No, there was absolutely nothing like a crunch culture. Some of the guys would work extra-long hours sometimes, but that was not expected, and I discouraged it among my employees. I told them that you make more mistakes when you work too long. You need rest, good meals, a shower, and plenty of sleep to be at the top of your game. I was a hard worker and put in perhaps 60-70 hours a week, but that was only because I wanted to; I could have put in only 40 hours a week and nobody would have complained. But by working so hard, I became something of a star.

NF: Was the design process different when designing games at home as opposed to the workplace at Atari?

CC: There were fewer distractions and interruptions at home. While I was still programming games, my supervisor allowed me to work Tuesdays and Thursdays at home. I always got more done on those days than I did on MWF.

NF: This section of questions has to do with the closure of Atari and overall climate of the successive layoffs, following the 1983 crash:

How would you describe the process by which these business woes were articulated to staff in the Engineering department following Christmas 1983? Being among one of the last employees of Atari how were those last few months before your termination in March 1984? How was that process of being terminated, was it a surprise? Did you have time to say gather your personal belongings or did you have another type of experience the day you were terminated?

CC: We were all pretty clear about what was happening. We saw thousands being laid off. We saw the layoffs creeping closer and closer to us. Few of us were surprised. I myself was a bit surprised that I was laid off, because I had been such a star at the company, but by the time they laid me off, they were wiping out entire departments. Once I realized that EVERYBODY I knew was being laid off, I wasn’t surprised. Still, I sent a memo to the CEO consisting of a big manila envelope containing a magazine with me on the cover, onto which was taped the question, “Are you sure you want to lay off this guy?”

They were very gracious about the layoffs and we all got extremely generous severance packages. I got something like ten months’ worth of salary. The layoffs were so screwball that they overlooked a small group in New York City and laid off the only people who knew of its existence, so the computer kept spitting out paychecks every month to these folks and they kept working, just not calling Sunnyvale. The accountants eventually found them and then they were laid off.

NF: When you began designing Balance of Power after leaving Atari, was there other simulation-type games that you strove to emulate when designing the complex socio-political structure of Balance of Power? CC: No, there was nothing at all like Balance of Power. Nothing on geopolitical interactions.

NF: Completely detached from the corporate structure of Atari, what did an average work day on Balance of Power look like? Did you keep up with any Engineers/Designers from Atari during this time period? If so was this a thriving community of creators or had the 1983 crash taken its toll among individual creators?

CC: I was working about 70 hours per week. I worked at home; I got up in the morning, ate breakfast, and went to work on my computer. My wife left for her job. I would work all day, taking a few breaks outside to clear my mind. When my wife got home, we’d eat dinner together, perhaps watch a TV show, then I went back to work until about 10:00 PM. The Atari community disbanded quickly. People found new jobs all over the country. There were no jobs for game designers, so most Atari people went to other fields.

NF: When you wrapped up production of Balance of Power, what was your process of selling this game to a publisher? Was there immediate interest from the publisher Mindscape, that you would end up distributing the game with? What was the process for you to sell Balance of Power when you were in front of a publisher?  I had an agent who set up a deal with Random House, but that didn’t work out. They assigned an editor to work with me. The editor had no experience with software, didn’t play games, and knew nothing about geopolitics. We fought over the design. Eventually they backed out. That turned out to be a blunder on their part. The big break came when Jim Warren made a few phone calls and told a major computer newsmagazine [sic] about me. They sent out a reporter, who did a story on me, which somebody at Mindscape saw, and Mindscape decided to publish the game.

NF: Were you aware of any other avenues to sell Balance of Power at the time? As an example around this period Sierra Online under Roberta Williams had begun distributing floppy disks in varying packaging styles directly to local computer stores.  First, the games industry was hurting badly, and people weren’t interested in expanding into new areas. Balance of Power was a most unconventional game; none of the traditional publishers would touch it.