Join IxDA Seattle for Movie Club, where we watch and discuss a design related movie or documentary. This month, we'll be watching Atari: Game Over, directed by Zak Penn.
Atari rose to prominence in the ’70s, first with Pong, the most primitive possible game that nonetheless became hugely popular, followed by a variety of coin-operated hits. Atari was bought by Warner Communications in the late ’70s, and soon launched the home console that would become popular beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, the 2600. Introduced with nine cartridges in 1977, the 2600 and its games propelled Atari to $375 million in profits by 1981, making it the fastest-growing company in American history. Its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, populated by eccentric, hard-working, and hard-partying programmers, pioneered the Silicon Valley aesthetic, and it’s no exaggeration to say that Atari paved the way for the home-computing revolution.
The story of Atari, and specifically of E.T.’s designer and programmer Howard Warshaw, is a fascinating one that you don’t need an existing interest in video game history to appreciate. The documentary focuses on efforts to dig up what were believed to be millions of copies of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, a 1982 video game that fell far short of the beloved movie on which it was based. The game was widely panned as the worst of all time. But was it, really? That’s one of the questions the documentary tries to answer.
We will start our online watch party at 5:30 pm, followed by a discussion session with our panelists at 6:35 pm.
💎 You can watch the film for free and at your own convenience prior to the event, or you can bring your popcorn and watch it with us.
Panel discussion
Moderated by Sayena Majlesein (Sr. product designer at Microsoft) with guests:
Nick McVey
Senior designer at Xbox. He is an Experience Designer with a passion for product and interaction design. LinkedIn
Jade Murphy
Designer at Xbox Design System with a background in visual/UX design, and web development. LinkedIn
Harri Lin
UX Designer at Epic Games with a background in HCI and math. LinkedIn
Hyun (Harry) Barng
User experience designer working on Crucible by Amazon Game Studios (Relentless Studios) in Seattle, Washington. LinkedIn
Jake McVey
Lead Interaction designer for a small tech incubation team at Alexa. His team is building the next generation of family games and entertainment. LinkedIn
Please take a moment to read through IxDA's Code of Conduct (https://ixda.org/code-of-conduct/) before registering.