In the early days of computing, you tried to create a graphic user interface for the Apple II?

My dad had introduced me and a business partner to some venture capitalists in New York. They were going to put up the money for us to go into this business. It was a good amount—$2 million.

But you didn’t end up taking it. Why not?

At the time, I had been invited to a cancer fundraiser in Texas. I met this guy at the party who was 40 years old, a real dynamic person. I ran into him the next day at the hotel, and he said, “Are you going back to Michigan?” And I said, “No, I’m actually going to New York. I’m working on this company.” He said he was going to New York, and would I want to go with him? I said sure. He had a DC-9, and I figured, it can’t be that unappealing. It was Steve Wynn. On the plane, he told me that when he was getting started, a mentor type had helped him out. So he wanted to do that for someone else.

This was the start of a significant relationship.

I ended up blowing the original deal I had and later flew down to Atlantic City to meet Steve. He said, “Okay, how much do you need for a prototype?” We said, “About $300,000.” He wrote out the check.

And he’s been part of your life ever since then?

Activision merged with Vivendi Games, maker of World of Warcraft and Crash Bandicoot, in 2007, at a price of $8.1 billion. The company, to be renamed Activision Blizzard, will become, at least temporarily, the biggest videogame maker in the world.

Of all the things that could have happened to me in my life, meeting the Wynns was probably about the most fortunate. Not just in the way you get a second set of parents—my parents were divorced, so the Wynns came with none of the guilt—but watching what he accomplished. It set the bar so high. That drove me to be even more successful.

What ended up happening with that software company?

I met with Steve Jobs and spent time with then-C.E.O. John Sculley and a lot of the marketing folks. Steve, even then, had very definitive ideas about the interface. There were conventions that we used differently than Apple did. Steve, being the dogmatic guy that he is, said that we had to change. He took the mouse we had made and threw it on the floor. He said, “This is garbage.” It was great advice—demoralizing, but great advice. The company was an abysmal failure.

Then what?

I tried to buy Commodore, the computer maker, with the idea of actually turning it into a videogame company. That didn’t work out either, but I learned a lot. After that came Activision.