Who was the worst CEO in Atari's history?

[JPF997]

When Atari  was founded in 1972 it had everything a company could  ever need to rise to the top of  the gaming world, the most talented engineer's and developers of the era , marketing geniuses, great artists and a phenomenal leader (Nolan Bushnell). It seemed like Atari was destined to rule the gaming industry, that is until the gaming crash of 1983 happened and it's position as the top dog  in the industry was taken by Nintendo.  After that Atari (and all following incarnations of the company, namely Atari Corporation and Atari SA ) has never been able to regain it's previous position as the top dog in the industry, no matter how many great games and great piece's of hardware they released the gaming public at large ignored they're products, causing them to fail and go bankrupt multiple times over the years and having to restart the company all over again from scratch  (thankfully it's in good hands now) while former rivals  continued growing more and more successful as the years went on  (namely Nintendo and Sony) . So who would you consider to be the most culpable individual in Atari's loss of dominance in the industry, I personally think these four CEOs   in particular share  most of the blame for this and they are :

 

-Ray Kassar

- Jack Tramiel

- Bruno Bonnell

-Fred Chesnais

 

Which of these "wonderfull" CEOs do you consider to have been the primary culprit in Atari's loss of relevance and status in the industry (  if you think it's not one of these four then tell me who you think is ), feel free to share your thoughts below, first time starting a new topic/discussion here at Atari age , have a feeling this is gonna be a good one.

[Ricardo Cividanes da Silva]

I would say it was two:
  - Ray Kassar, who thought he could live on Atari 2600 forever and, with his arrogance, pushed great talents from the company.
  - Sam Tramiel, who was responsible for burn a fortune in the Atari Panther (who never saw the light of day) and the Atari Jaguar, who was a monumental fiasc and ended the company's finances.
Very arrogance and little vision of the future.

[+Stephen]

1 minute ago, Ricardo Cividanes da Silva said:

I would say it was two:
  - Ray Kassar, who thought he could live on Atari 2600 forever and, with his arrogance, pushed great talents from the company.
  - Sam Tramiel, who was responsible for burn a fortune in the Atari Panther (who never saw the light of day) and the Atari Jaguar, who was a monumental fiasc and ended the company's finances.
Very arrogance and little vision of the future.

Pretty much end of argument right there.

[famicommander]

Who was in charge when they first partnered with AtGames?

It doesn't get any lower than putting your brand on an AtGames product. They could sell boxes with springloaded boxing gloves that just punch you in the face when they open and that would be better than an AtGames product.

[JPF997]

After listening to the "They create world's" podcast on Spotify, specifically they're episode's on  the rise and fall of Infogrames ( modern Atari SA ) my answer is Bruno Bonnell, the man had everything in his hands and still somehow managed to burn the company to the ground, once the largest gaming publisher in Europe ( yes even larger than Ubisoft ) and third largest in the world just behind Squaresoft and EA, Atari SA arguably reached levels of success no version of the company had seen since 1982, but Bruno being Bruno  he fucked it all up, from the late 90s up to 2007 (when  he was forced to leave the company ) he somehow made the company lose like two billion euros, no wonder the shareholder's kicked him out eventually.

[JPF997]

7 minutes ago, famicommander said:

Who was in charge when they first partnered with AtGames?

It doesn't get any lower than putting your brand on an AtGames product. They could sell boxes with springloaded boxing gloves that just punch you in the face when they open and that would be better than an AtGames product.

Mr. Bruno Bonnell is the answer to that question, I've already explained why I award him the title of worst Atari CEO, the man nearly  killed one of the gaming companies I have the most nostalgia for (Atari SA) from my childhood.

[zzip]

I criticize the Tramiels a lot, but at least they knew what they wanted to do, and had some success.   They just did a lot of it half-assed and burned bridges

 

Ray Kassar though..   I thought people were too hard on him until I watched him interviewed in a documentary..   He really didn't understand the business or knew what he was doing.   The company still had its best years in spite of him, but burned through cash at an unsustainable rate,  creating the fire sale conditions that allowed the Tramiels to come in.

[JPF997]

7 minutes ago, zzip said:

 

 

Ray Kassar though..   I thought people were too hard on him until I watched him interviewed in a documentary..   He really didn't understand the business or knew what he was doing.   The company still had its best years in spite of him, but burned through cash at an unsustainable rate,  creating the fire sale conditions that allowed the Tramiels to come in.

So basically he was the original Bruno Bonnell 😂

[MateusSolo]

Chesnais. One could find positive reviews to bad Atari games on stores like the Google Play Store back when he was the "CEO"... All written by the man himself. It was ridiculous, I wish I had taken screenshots.

[leech]

18 minutes ago, zzip said:

I criticize the Tramiels a lot, but at least they knew what they wanted to do, and had some success.   They just did a lot of it half-assed and burned bridges

 

Ray Kassar though..   I thought people were too hard on him until I watched him interviewed in a documentary..   He really didn't understand the business or knew what he was doing.   The company still had its best years in spite of him, but burned through cash at an unsustainable rate,  creating the fire sale conditions that allowed the Tramiels to come in.

I kind of blame Nolan Bushnell.  If they hadn't decided to sell to Warner Communications; which then put Ray in charge, no?  (well at least after Nolan Bushnell stepped aside).  If I recall correctly it was that sale that switched up a lot of how the programmers were credited / paid for games that led things like the creation of Activision, and Jay Miner to leave to design the Amiga.

[JPF997]

6 minutes ago, leech said:

I kind of blame Nolan Bushnell.  If they hadn't decided to sell to Warner Communications; which then put Ray in charge, no?  (well at least after Nolan Bushnell stepped aside).  If I recall correctly it was that sale that switched up a lot of how the programmers were credited / paid for games that led things like the creation of Activision, and Jay Miner to leave to design the Amiga.

I mean with the power of hindsight we can say that selling Atari to Warner was a bad idea but how could Nolan possibly  have known that back in 1976, I think it's a bit unfair to put the blame on him given that the failure's of his sucessors we're completely out of his control.

[zzip]

22 minutes ago, leech said:

I kind of blame Nolan Bushnell.  If they hadn't decided to sell to Warner Communications; which then put Ray in charge, no?  (well at least after Nolan Bushnell stepped aside).  If I recall correctly it was that sale that switched up a lot of how the programmers were credited / paid for games that led things like the creation of Activision, and Jay Miner to leave to design the Amiga.

Well Warner could have hired anybody too, they didn't have to put Ray in charge.    I forget which documentary I watched, but they interviewed both Ray and Ray's former boss at Warner. (forgot his name)    It was clear from the interviews that Ray's boss understood the game business (Warner is an entertainment company after all), but it was obvious Ray did not.  He came from the textile industry.   He thought he could run Atari like a textile company.   He couldn't conceive why game programmers wanted credit, they didn't do that in textiles!

 

 

[leech]

30 minutes ago, JPF997 said:

I mean with the power of hindsight we can say that selling Atari to Warner was a bad idea but how could Nolan possibly  have known that back in 1976, I think it's a bit unfair to put the blame on him given that the failure's of his sucessors we're completely out of his control.

Didn't help that they completely screwed him over after he stepped away.  If I recall they made him sign a 7 year non-compete?

[leech]

10 minutes ago, zzip said:

Well Warner could have hired anybody too, they didn't have to put Ray in charge.    I forget which documentary I watched, but they interviewed both Ray and Ray's former boss at Warner. (forgot his name)    It was clear from the interviews that Ray's boss understood the game business (Warner is an entertainment company after all), but it was obvious Ray did not.  He came from the textile industry.   He thought he could run Atari like a textile company.   He couldn't conceive why game programmers wanted credit, they didn't do that in textiles!

 

 

"What did you do, Ray?"

[Nall3k]

1 hour ago, MateusSolo said:

Chesnais. One could find positive reviews to bad Atari games on stores like the Google Play Store back when he was the "CEO"... All written by the man himself. It was ridiculous, I wish I had taken screenshots.

I too would vote for Fred. He sold off game assets like Test Drive and AitD, diluted the company with gambling and crypto. It was just a scattershot of ideas with no meaningful direction in my opinion.

[PlutoniumPasta]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

I criticize the Tramiels a lot, but at least they knew what they wanted to do, and had some success.   They just did a lot of it half-assed and burned bridges

 

Ray Kassar though..   I thought people were too hard on him until I watched him interviewed in a documentary..   He really didn't understand the business or knew what he was doing.   The company still had its best years in spite of him, but burned through cash at an unsustainable rate,  creating the fire sale conditions that allowed the Tramiels to come in.

Yes, Ray didn't really know how the video game industry worked. He usually had his sights on making money more than growing Atari and ended up not focusing enough on Atari's weak points. He truly had a quantity over quality type attitude with the company. Ray was a business man, not a gamer. Or at least that's the way I veiw him.

[+frankodragon]

Kassar:  When you have four guys in programming you've told they're no more important as those assembling cartridges, then you're going to get some backlash.  

[stirrell]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

I forget which documentary I watched, but they interviewed both Ray and Ray's former boss at Warner. (forgot his name)

My guess would be: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6585674/. I enjoyed it. I also gained a new respect for the Tramiels by watching:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5706894/

It humanized them quite a bit. Leonard comes off as a pretty relatable guy in interviews.

[Flojomojo]

This is a very negative topic. Each of these men faced different challenges at different points in the history of the old company. 
 

Ray Kassar probably lost the most money for the company, so wouldn’t he be objectively, quantitatively worst?

 

Fred Chesnais brought the bones of Infogrames Atari back into profitability, but he was prone to desperate, stupid gimmicks while the company failed to do anything interesting with games or the legacy. 
 

But I think the premise of this topic is shortsighted, mean, and stupid. 

[+x=usr(1536)]

Kermit.  After he took his fall down he stairs, things changed.  Some say that was the beginning of the end for the company.

14 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

But I think the premise of this topic is shortsighted, mean, and stupid. 

Agreed.  Criticism is one thing, but this thread comes across as an invitation to shit on someone just because it can be done.

[Jess Ragan]

Wade Rosen!

(looks behind him, notices Wade Rosen tapping a baseball bat in his palm)

Uh oh.

[+jgkspsx]

3 hours ago, stirrell said:

Leonard comes off as a pretty relatable guy in interviews.

He does in contemporary Jaguar memos as well.

[+jeremiahjt]

I will go with Wade Rosen. I mean how are you going to buy a forum and not even come by and say hello. Wait a minute... Atari just bought AtariAge and @JPF997 is a brand new member... JPF997 is Wade Rosen!

[+x=usr(1536)]

23 minutes ago, jeremiahjt said:

I will go with Wade Rosen. I mean how are you going to buy a forum and not even come by and say hello. Wait a minute... Atari just bought AtariAge and @JPF997 is a brand new member... JPF997 is Wade Rosen!

He's also Soylent Green!

[JPF997]

2 hours ago, jeremiahjt said:

I will go with Wade Rosen. I mean how are you going to buy a forum and not even come by and say hello. Wait a minute... Atari just bought AtariAge and @JPF997 is a brand new member... JPF997 is Wade Rosen!

Ha ha very funny, I can tell you right now if I was Wade I would be spending more of my leasure time at the golf club then wasting it responding to your sarcastic drivel.