Patricia Goodson Interview

Patricia Goodson created original music as well as recreations of coin op contemporaries for video games in the early eighties. She was one of the few to specifically hold a position like hers, let alone the only women with this role in the industry at the time.

She joined a team of engineers at the General Computer Company where she worked on games such as Desert Falcon, Pac-Man Junior, and numerous other cartridge based games for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Atari 7800. She joined the company at around the age of 26 and would stay with the company until GCC closed its gaming division following the video game crash of 1983. For a greater overview of Patricia's time with GCC, Atari Women has done a fantastic spotlight on that period in her professional career.

This interview took place over Zoom on December 11, 2020 and was transcribed and edited for ease of readability. The interview focused specifically on her personal experiences working at GCC with an eye to the working conditions there and what role gender played in the games industry.

NF: How had your experiences at General Computer Company differ from working on the Atari 2600-5200 cartridges? Did you work specifically with other Atari staff or only General Computer Staff

Oh well this got that's why we got into cartridges, we weren’t doing the cartridges before that. We were just doing the coin operated games. I don't think it took very long, we got the contract pretty quickly from from my so the company you know how the company started or with the kids from MIT, the suitemates, and then they created missile command and all that kind of thing. When I got there, I was the eighth employee or something like that or under ten. And it was really just a small crew that was trying to figure out what to do. They had a bunch of money and success and momentum you know, so they were kind of trying to figure out where to go next and they got the Atari contract. I suppose it did change, but it wasn’t that long without the contract is the short answer.

NF: Did you work specifically with other Atari staff or only General Computer Staff

PG: We were sort of rank and file, we didn't see them very much, they would occasionally come and visit, but that was more like--I guess the owners interfaced with Atari, there were three guys that were in charge and they did all this stuff and when they came back and [they’d say] “let’s do this.”

Other than that, they did sometimes come visit us [referring to Atari higher ups], but it was kind of vanity like they were fooling around, the guy who owned Atari, whoever he was, powerful man, who owned warner music or warner--I remember one time, he brought Quincy Jones there.

NF: That must have been quite the surprise?

I know! It was like look at this cool thing we’re doing, they were going somewhere else [after] and for some reason they stopped by us and there was Quincy Jones. We had a firepole connecting the two floors of the building, [which] Quincy Jones went down, that was cool. I got to shake his hand *she laughs*

But, you know, that wasn’t serious--I mean, probably a couple other times (referring to Atari executives and staff) mostly the Atari people, our counterparts were not happy they we were there, you know, because to them that undercut them, put pressure on them, took away some of their status. Sometimes I think we showed them up, because we could do it faster or maybe they just told us that. But, there was a little bit of time where game designers had a kind of rockstar status and there were some guys out at Atari particularly at a company called Activision that was very successful. Everyone knew their names, these game designers, and so there was a lot of ego stuff involved.

NF: What was the process of making a game’s music?

PG: Well mostly what I did, mostly, was copy [the music from coin op games], we would get a contract to do say Joust or some game like that--so my job would be to figure out how to do it on the cartridge. So I would listen to it and figure out a way to sort of make it work, because the cartridge as you probably know didn’t have a music chip, we didn’t even have a byte of memory, it was weird *She Laughs* We were thinking in terms of bits.

I would be programming in bits-- well I wasn’t personally programming, but I would fool with them, you know I worked on that level. So, yeah I was definitely trying to make it better, or to at least make it sound in tune because the nature of how the sound was created pretty much mitigated what we perceived as in tune. So I took that as a big challenge to make them as close to the original.

NF: Did your work as a game composer impact your later musical career?

PG: Oh, gee I don’t know-- most of my career has been as a concert pianist, which you’re not making up stuff, playing Beethoven and all that, so I, I have a keyboard right here if you can see it *points camera down to keyboard*--It certainly got me into an aspect of electronic music I would never have been exposed to otherwise.

NF: Was there a "crunch" culture with your work composing for these games?

No, No, I guess you’re calling it crunch culture, It was a very macho thing, “I worked 70 hours last week, you know they pulled an all nighter, they would do that all the time, especially when a game was due, they were nuts, and of course it was never very productive. They also had in the office or the space, dozens and dozens of video games, and people were playing them all the time, and that was never frowned upon.

But I remember, you were supposed to do your own hours, but there was definitely one owner that would get mad at me for coming in at 10 o'clock. Which I thought was a good time to start, *she laughs* because I would leave at 8 o'clock, and he would leave at 5. He was much more set like that, I understand his--well no not really, because they told us to set our own hours, so you set your own hours, you know.

So, a lot of people--everyone was in their twenties except for one or two people, and very few of us were married, so we tended to spend all of our time, and on the weekends we would have parties and we kept seeing the same people, my friend and I started dressing up in weird costumes, god knows what, flappers, not dinosaurs, recognizably human. Just to have something to talk about. We saw each other all the time, I lived in a house, with five others, only one other person worked there, but we were just all talking about it.

NF: Did you have a social circle outside of GCC? And how did working at GCC effect your social life in general?

PG: I probably didn't know any other people, no let's see--I did, I had musician friends I’d play music with, I don’t know that was just how it was. I’m not sure how much I questioned it. I was kind of a fish out of water there, but I enjoyed it. I liked the people a lot and the work such as it was. Because my part was pretty easy, but I couldn’t let them know that so much. Because they [the higher ups] don’t understand, if you need to write a song, a tune, you can basically do it like that, you don’t need to code, solve these intricate problems, you just like--“I need to think of a rag time, oh ok got it, lets go.” It's not a big deal.

I ended up doing a lot of other stuff for them, I did a weekly newsletter, where everyone talked about their projects, I thought it was pretty important to the company, it was internal communication and it was my idea, and later it was marketing stuff, oh and I did some visual artwork for the first several months, and then I hired a team of artists, so we had these four visual artists.

--Some added detail from when asked if she still had copies of these newsletters--

They [the staff] eagerly awaited it, and I would post it on the wall, and they stood there and read it, and they all got their own individual copies, but you know that felt like I had contributed to the company life and the morale. And I liked that.

NF: Was that normal for employees to take over different roles like that? And was working in the visual side of games something you were comfortable doing?

PG: Basically all hands on deck, you know, I wasn’t trained in it, I spent the last twenty years doing visual art in addition to music--at that time I felt like an imposter, I did good stuff, but I just didn’t know how to use particular materials [which] was the hard part. I think somewhere out there’s a picture of Betty Ryan playing Quantum and the sign was [created] by me, I just figured it out.

I’m leaving something out, I was terrified that they would fire me all the time, I was just so different, they were really smart engineers, they went to MIT and I went to Duke, perfectly ok [university], but at the time it wasn’t such a big deal.

It's just how they [higher ups] thought, an engineer made so much money here and here (referring to the career landscape), but they didn’t know what to do with me. They got me there, I had been a little misled by mistake, and my own naivety, I thought they would pay me what the engineers were making. They paid what they paid the receptionists, which was barely enough to live on, partly it was because I was a woman, they would not have paid a man so little for anything and partly they didn’t know what to do. And so when I hired those artists I told them all, look you have to ask for--I forget what the exact amount was, 20,000, 30,000, whatever it was, you must ask for that or they will not take you seriously, so they all got it.

To their credit after the first year my salary had doubled so it was closer to the engineers, so they did right that wrong.

NF: What was the process for ascertaining a higher wage amount?

PG: I asked for it, on a Friday afternoon, like five o’clock on a Friday, phoned one of the owners, who was the young man, who was younger than me at the time, he was very traditional and thought women should be in the home, and he just said no. I can’t remember what I did, but I certainly asked again and got it. And then I got two raises within that first year. So at some point I asked, and then I don’t think I would have asked two times in a year, so they had probably just given it to me. And plus I got royalties I got from the music, they called it profit sharing.

NF: How were royalties decided, did you have a say in that process?

PG: With the royalties, I had no input on that, they came up with some formula, and because I had done so many games at that time, fifteen or twenty, and I got percentages of all that, I got way more than other people did, and that didn’t sit well. So they rescaled it so my royalties were less, about half, but it probably seemed more equitable to everyone else because they would work on one game for a year or half a year, so maybe two games in a year. But that was wonderful, it was just unbelievable, and for me it was a lot of money at the time. It was just like wow.

NF: What were the hours like at GCC, 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 there an expectation to work late?

PG: Whatever, I would certainly probably juggled, but again, it didn’t take that much time. I mean what happened--ok if I was copying something it would take some time, because I would have to listen to it and I had a tape recorder, the old fashioned reel to reel, and I would just slow it so far down or even do it with my hands [referring to her manually moving the reels] to hear the different pitches. Because noises, you know the white noises. *imitates the noises of the white noise* even the explosions are all pitches, they are all notes, ya know they just go super fast, so I would slow it so far down to hear all those pitches. So, I would find those and speed them up or find a white noise generator or whatever it took. So it took a little bit more time. But I was never crunching or staying up all night for that kind of thing.

One of the programmers, cause I can’t program it's just hopeless, created a driver for me, so I could input hexadecimal numbers, pitches, and go back and forth and do it till I got it. And I’d run by the engineers and they’d say we don’t have room for that, and sometimes they would say “oh this sequence of numbers, I’m using a very similar sequence for a visual for this character to run across the screen, can I use that instead.” And I’d say sure cause we had so little memory, or they did to work with.

NF: What was the work environment like, the layout of your work space, and was there comradery between co-workers?

PG: There was a large open area filled with tables, we all had our offices, but most people didn’t use them except to read the papers. Some people like Lucy Gilbert was also in her office doing stuff by herself. But all of it was out in the open, and mine, I did my [work on a] chip emulator called a Genrad was out in the open. But if I listened to music, I’d do that in my office, ya know, no biggie. But it was very open, we had lunch together, we had a cafeteria. But before we had a cafeteria, we would order just a huge amount of sandwiches and have them delivered. Yeah it was fun.

NF: Was your gender a factor in your treatment at GCC? Were there any specific situations where your gender affected your experience or of other female co-workers in that workplace? Did that treatment change over your time?

PG: Well it certainly didn’t, I mean the times were very different then, really different, thankfully it's hard to imagine now, it was partially my southern religious background. I was never expected to work, it was bad for a woman to work, sinful. I didn’t know any women who worked in our social environment at all, I mean certainly I knew there were teachers, nurses, secretaries, but those were my career options despite being at the top of my class going to Duke.

I was supposed to drop all of that, I could be a teacher, secretary, social worker, nurse, I don’t know what else there is, that was about it, all fine professions, but four professions? So, I was not happy with that. That was normal. By the time of college, we were all liberated and all that, but that didn’t really penetrate to the ones who had power. I mean I freaked out on when this younger man, who was my boss, was one of the owners.

He asked if I would answer the phones. “No, I will not answer the phones!” We were sitting in his office and the phone rings and looks at it--I mean it's not going to be for me, it's going to be for you [referring to her boss]. And he just picks up the phone and just slams it down, and does it two or three times, every time he would look me *she mimics the angered face he had* It's like “dude I’m not answering the phone,” I’m not sure why I wasn’t fired. Though in retrospect he was my brother's friend, that's how I got the job.

Frankly the guys [referring to her co-workers] and mostly they were guys, they were thrilled to have us there, they were only too happy to have a female engineer, we all got on really well I would say. There were some problems with another female coworker, and the guys didn’t go to bat for her when some incidents happened. It was kind of mixed, they liked us, and wanted us to do well, but we were still girls.

NF: How many women worked in your office?

PG: Oh golly, I’d have to count, and this is over a two and a half year period, besides secretaries which there were maybe four and a human resources woman eventually. There was Betty, Lucy, other women, I guess there were six of us in the so called professional track, they weren’t support staff, that's what I should say. But as I said they would have been thrilled to have more.

NF: Was there any conflict between the receptionists and the so-called professional track?

PG: Oh, that would have been a personal thing, I didn’t feel it. There was one woman, who was very eager to not be a support staff and I think she moved into marketing. And no one got in her way, she took classes and she learned. I don’t know how long she stayed there. But no I didn’t find any, you’d have to ask them, they wouldn’t let us know that. They probably were trained as secretaries cause you could go to school for that.

NF: What kind of personality traits were valued in your department? Were any of these traits seen as gendered?

PG: *Patricia laughs* I don’t know, they would come up with all of this garbage, I call it BS, they would read some articles, the thing was to have a business plan, we have a bias towards action, "what does that mean?” A bias towards action. So we were supposed to have a bias towards action.

Well I remember about the hiring process, there was a whole lot of pull up ladder after you’ve gotten in, because the guys would make the requirements for getting in *motioning upwards implying the raising of the requirements* I mean you could have got into the Manhattan project, or something. It seriously made it very hard, they weren’t doing anything, but programming video games or designing chips, because we had a hardware side and a software side.

We were always interviewing people, hiring all of the time, whether we needed people or not, they made me hire people, and I don’t need to hire anybody, I’m already making up work to pretend I’m doing enough work in the first place. It was true.

Personality traits, you had to be fun, we all kinds of people, we had introverts, extroverts. We had a guy from Cambodia who was doing all the tech work, like building stuff, he kept to himself, god knows what he was going through to get out of Cambodia, which was awful at the time, he was welding and soldering.

NF: How did GCC handle the layoffs during the industry crash? Did they give warning that this was coming?

PG: No, I don’t think so. It was absolutely out of the blue, we knew things were shaky and volatile, we didn’t have all this constant news we have now, but we knew Atari was in trouble. I went to New York that weekend and came back Monday morning and it looked like a bomb had gone off. What has happened? And they just laid us off, and I would say we were the ones that didn’t quite fit in or rubbed them the wrong way. Getting rid of people they didn’t really like, generally.

NF: Did they compensate you for your departure?

PG: Oh, yes it was very generous. I had enough for five months, or maybe it was four, all I know is that at that point I had enough money for five months, maybe they gave me three or four. But I had no problem with that and it was painful for them, they did not want to do it, and the weird thing was my brother was working there too and even was on the committee and he had to help decide to fire me, and he was the one who told me.

They had to decided to do printers, and they didn’t need a musician *she says this in a questioning way* But they did keep two of the four artists, I’m not sure what for. But doesn’t matter and then they had another round of layoffs. I remember going to a reunion and I was like who were all of these people? They came to work there after, so it was kind of strange, cause I felt as one of the earliest employees, I had felt proprietary about it, like who are these guys?

NF: Do you still keep up with any of your former co-workers?

PG: Oh yeah, in fact a bunch of us zoomed, I became very close to one of those secretaries and she's my friend till today. And because of that Atari women thing, I reconnected with Betty Ryan, and I keep in touch with five or six of the engineers, the guys.

NF: Do you have any stories you’d like to share from your experiences working there?

PG: Well you might know that, they took us to Disneyworld each year, and in fact that's what got me to go there [to work]. They had asked to work there, and I said no. Then they called me on this freezing cold, February day. Bleak day. “Hey we are going to Disney World, do you wanna go?” “Like yes, and you'll pay for everything?! Yes!” In the world of music it's all nickel and diming, and it was just awful, so this was just astounding, so I went and signed up.

I can tell you a funny story with Atari. So, I don’t think there was anyone else doing what I was doing. Except at Atari which had a sound person, so there were two of us in the world, and I worked in four different game formats, you know the 400, 800, 2600, blah, blah, blah. When they laid us off, I was like what am I gonna do? Cause I didn’t think I had any particular qualifications for getting a job anywhere, like a [real] job.

And I had not known what to do anyway, I was a pianist, and it’s not like there’s a job for a pianist, you make your own career. So that's why I didn’t sign up in the first place, and then I finally did. After I was laid off, maybe I can work for Atari or one of these other [game companies].

I had met the guy, Dave or something, and I called him up, thinking to myself, “am I gonna move to California?” Well why not, ya know? And on his answering machine, he had my little tune from Desert Falcon, and I was like well that's a good sign. But the answer was “oh we are only hiring people with PHDs from Stanford. “What?” Well you’re still only working with 8 bits, you didn’t have a sound chip, it still hadn’t been created. So it was the same kind of crap, so I didn’t do that.

I didn’t want to go to California, but I was like hey dude that's my song on your thing, that's not from some Stanford composer, which I believe makes no sense, because composers from those days would have been writing the most esoteric hideous unlistenable music.

But I enjoyed working there, even though I was always very stressed because I never felt like I belonged, but that was my own issue, they never put that on me. They were such bright people, and you know, and they were all so happy they weren’t working on inertial guidance systems for weapons. That was the thing at MIT, you gotta work at Laclede or Raytheon, and you’re responsible for murdering people. So, they were thrilled to be working on games, By in large a very nice group of people.