Here's an exclusive sneak look at tonight's episode of ABC Family's The Middleman. To bring everyone up to speed: The scene features the show's heroine Wendy Watson and her new boyfriend Tyler, who's completely in the dark about her job fighting aliens and bad dudes. But! They're both totally into zombie films and video games. Oh, and Nolan Bushnell gets name dropped. Tipper Gore, too. And the Dalai Lama.

While not running uWink restaurants or heading up an in-game ad firm, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell (pictured) likes to talk up the state of the game industry. Bushnell's been around, so his insights are often insightful! In an interview with game site Gamasutra, Bushnell talks about how the hardware wars are "probably over", saying that "it's ridiculous to talk about how my photorealism is better than your photorealism". He also offers on the modern incarnation of Atari:

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Nolan Bushnell (pictured) is a casual guy. As the Atari founder likes to point out, his games were easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master. And the controls for something like, I dunno, Pong? SIMPLE. Says Bushnell:

I think the Wii by Nintendo is getting games that once again are fun for people who don't want to make a career out of figuring out how to run a 47-button controller... I think that the business right now should be much, much bigger than it is. If it were evenly spread over all demographics and age groups, it'd be huge. But it's not. It's basically an 18 to 28 year-old male dominated business of about 15 million. That's where most of the traffic is. Casual games on the net add to that, but they're all network-based.

Wait, wait, wait. Back up, Bushnell! A 47-button controller? Oh man, would we love to see that! (Playing it, well, that's another matter.)

Bushnell Interview [Next-Gen]

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell recently talked to GameDaily about his uWink business, a growing chain of restaurants that feature touch terminals on every table - not only do they let users order their food that way, but they can also play games together.

And Bushnell estimated the number of games he'd be able to serve through uWink at 600 trillion games across 100,000 restaurants Ambitious - but hey, it's Nolan Bushnell, right?

When we covered Bushnell's recent talk at Wedbush Morgan's annual management access conference, we heard him say that he misses the idea of gaming as a social activity, since the decline of arcades, and that part of what he hopes to do with uWink is to revive that group spirit and keep multiplayer that's actually in-person alive.

In the GameDaily interview, he cited an example - Pong used to be a hot tool for chicks to pick up guys at bars?

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Nolan Bushnell is "thrilled and honoured" that Leonardo DiCaprio may be the actor that represents him in the upcoming movie based on his life and the birth of Atari.

In an interview with Multiplayer, Bushnell said that the writers Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman really seemed to get what Atari stood for and that despite the numerous pitches for similar stories, this was the first he's backed.

"There's been a lot of books [about Atari]," he said. "Some correct, some incorrect. I've kind of gotten used to being portrayed by others. I kind of thought that this [a movie] might happen. I kind of thought that it wouldn't happen until maybe after I was in the ground for a little while. [laughs]"

Hit up Multiplayer for the full interview with Bushnell and his thoughts on previous brushes with Hollywood fame.

Atari Founder 'Thrilled' To Be Played By Leonardo DiCaprio, Talks 'Atari' Movie [Multiplayer]

OK, OK, kinda misleading headline -- his production company is producing "Atari" a biopic about Nolan Bushnell, Pong's developer and Atari's founder. Paramount bought the rights yesterday. Indications are that he will star, but not knowing the story yet, I don't know if that means he would play Bushnell or, perhaps, another character through whom the story of Bushnell and Atari is presented.

The Hollywood Reporter describes "Atari" as drawing on themes of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." I was hoping it'd be a movie adaptation of "Space War" -- just two ships drifting to the centre of the screen, shooting each other. Maybe a love interest. Somewhere. Maybe not.

Wherever the story ends up, it sounds like it's getting very serious treatment, and the outlook sounds favourable for a well made biography. Plus I love period pieces, even if I've lived in the period described.

Leonardo Di Caprio to Star in 'Atari' [The Hollywood Reporter, via ComingSoon.net, thanks reader D Elfman]

Game piracy is a big deal. Protection mechanisms have improved over the years, but the industry still suffers significant losses because of it. According to a 2005 report by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia, piracy costs local developers around $100 million per year. A scary number when you consider the industry only generated $136.9 million in income in 2007.

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell reckons Trusted Computing (TC) is the answer. A few days ago at a Wedbush Morgan security conference, Bushnell explained that Trusted Protection Module, or TPM, chips are currently being built into motherboards, and could be used to slow down, and even stop, piracy.

"What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world - which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords - which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem," he went on to say.

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Atari founder and industry forbear Nolan Bushnell discussed his "five-year ADD" during Wedbush Morgan's 6th annual management access conference, where he described his latest passions and shared thoughts on the industry's future. "Every five years, I've got to do something a little different," he said.

In addition to founding Atari, Bushnell also founded Chuck-e-Cheese's, and now he's into social gaming. His current project is UWink, a social gaming-focused restaurant chain with touch screen consoles at every table where users can not only order food and drink, but also play games together. UWink is set to open its second restaurant in Hollywood soon.

"Social games aren't sitting in boxer shorts in your basement," Bushnell said. "It's being out, having fun, being able to hi-five people around the table, and it's a bridge between traditional board games, which are highly social experiences in the home, and a video game. The idea is to create games in which the conversations among the people are as important as the gameplay itself."

One more thing on Bushnell's list of current projects? "Think of the holodeck come true," he said:

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Atari founder and old dude Nolan Bushnell doesn't like in-game advertising. He doesn't believe those kinds of ads are very effective. Says Bushnell:

I don't believe those kinds of ads are very effective.

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Nolan Bushnell created Pong. He founded Atari. And Chuck E Cheese. So, yes, he is a great man. He's also a man who fancies he knows where there's money to be made when it comes to videogames, which is why he let slip during an interview at GDC that he's working on an MMO. No further info than that, sorry, but he does say that "as compelling as World of Warcraft is, it too shall find that there are other ways to play a game". So long as it involves rolling a character that can pull off smoking a pipe in a hot tub, I'm in.
Nolan Bushnell gets massive [Gamespot]

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