Atari is a company that has had a bit of a bumpy ride over the last few decades, thanks to a slew of questionable investments in areas like blockchain, wearable tech, and gambling. This has led to an at times prickly relationship with its core community — many of whom came to view the company as a shadow of its former self.
Over the past few years, however, ever since Wade Rosen took over as CEO of the company in 2021, it has made some encouraging steps in the right direction to win back player's trust, refocusing its energy on retro gaming with a bunch of exciting investments and well-received projects like Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, the Atari 2600+, and Atari 400Mini.
Last week, Time Extension had the opportunity to sit down with Rosen on a video call for roughly an hour to discuss a variety of Atari-related topics. We used the opportunity to learn more about the company's strategy moving forward, and the thought process behind some of its recent acquisitions in the video game space. You can read a transcript of that conversation below (with some minor edits made for both length and clarity).
Time Extension: To begin we'd love to know. What is your gaming background? How did you first discover Atari?
Rosen: I was more of a Nintendo kid growing up just given my generation and age. But there was still a lot of Atari’s around. So I did play a lot of Atari as a kid. My personal experience with it kind of got started when I got a PC, because, for whatever reason, the PC we got came built-in with all of these classic Atari games.
I had played Asteroids in the arcades and encountered it in a few places, but that’s where I got to play Centipede, Missile Command, Tempest, Breakout — and I loved it. I played those games for hours and I just really became enamoured with those titles and how timeless they were. They were very simple and you could pick them up and play. I also thought Tempest was gorgeous. It was only years later I realized it was probably well over a decade old by the time that I played it. I couldn’t believe it. I think just vector graphics in general have a very timeless look to them. So that was my personal experience with Atari.
As far as games themselves, I think some of my earliest core formative memories were seeing, playing, and witnessing video games. I think it’s one of those things where it kind of got written on my soul a little bit early. And so, video games have just been a constant in my life. They’re something that I’m really passionate about and I had the opportunity to step into video games later in my career than most people do. But I decided that I wanted to be focused on something that I care deeply about and that’s what brought me to it.
Time Extension: It would be interesting to hear how you became Atari CEO. What led you to that role?
Rosen: What led me to it was - first off - a fascination with retro gaming. I think the term "retro gaming" is not a great term to begin with. Because most people I know (including myself) — who play retro games — we also play a lot of contemporary and modern games. People who usually like retro gaming oftentimes like Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3, so there’s a crossover. So I’ve started calling it "classic gaming" a little bit more. But, anyway, I was fascinated with it and specifically, I started to ask myself, ‘What happened to all of these games I loved as a kid?’
And I started to research them and look into them. And that was coincidentally when I first discovered Nightdive. This is a long time ago — long before we acquired them. I was like, ‘What happened to System Shock? Oh. What happened to Wizardry 8? Oh. I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream? Wait, Nightdive [rereleased all these]?’ So, that’s how I discovered Nightdive. But I also found that there were a lot of other titles that I loved that nothing seemed to be happening with.
So I started a game company focused on working with retro IP called Ziggurat Interactive and through that process I eventually met the (then) CEO of Atari and had the opportunity to acquire most of his stake in the company and step in as CEO myself.
So that was sort of the pathway to becoming CEO of Atari and that happened over a year or so. Ziggurat is still operating. I’m no longer actively managing it or running it. In fact, they just released a cool new game this week called Slave Zero X.