I was taught in one of my art classes the phrase “Form is liberating.” It’s an artistic proverb. I didn't really understand it, 'cause how could having - how - how could be - being told that you can’t do things help you? How could having to put the rhymes in specific places in a sonnet make it easier for you? That didn't make any sense to me. Who needs a bunch of rules, okay? Why can’t I just wing it, all right? But, after I had worked on the Atari 2600, I realized that it was a perfect example of form is liberating, and I’ll tell you how and why. It’s because it was so hard to do a game on that system. It was so hard to do anything. To - to even make something that looked a little - that was interactive and had some shapes moving around was pretty hard. It only had 2k or 4k of memory, and you had to make a complete video game out of that and had a lot of other limitations, too. And so, it was so hard to - to do - to get anything at all to work that you had very few choices. You were hemmed in and from so many directions that when you finally found something that you could wedge into there that came sort of close to what you’re tryin’ to do, you just had to accept that and move on. You didn't have time - if you didn't have all those limitations, you could’ve agonized in - indefinitely over, uh, all the choices you had. But, there’s no point in agonizing. It was so hard to get that one thing to work that you just moved on to the next thing.
