GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi and Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari.
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The DeanBeat: With Bushnell award, history became herstory

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

The video game industry sought to celebrate one of its founders, Nolan Bushnell, with an award as a pioneer this week. But prominent gaming women, including congressional candidate Brianna Wu, objected because they felt it was inappropriate and tone-deaf to give such a man an award in a year with so many #MeToo and Time’s Up incidents coming to the fore in so many industries.

Using the hashtag #NotNolan, they pointed out his sexist behavior from the 1970s while running Atari. A day later, the award committee for the Game Developers Conference rescinded the award. It was gaming’s moment to deal with the sins of the past, and it has become another reason to have some important conversations about the future of gaming.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.