Ted Dabney game. As "Pong" became successful, Dabney felt overshadowed by both Bushnell and Alcorn. He learned that Bushnell had patented his video circuit idea without including Dabney on the patent. Bushnell also had assigned Dabney a lower-level position in Atari and did not include him in high-level meetings. Around March 1973, Dabney left the company over this falling out, selling his portion of the company's ownership for . Dabney did continue to help Bushnell with starting his Pizza Time Theater (the predecessor of Chuck E. Cheese's) and Catalyst Technologies as an employee, being wary of Bushnell's previous treatment of him. Alongside
Ted Dabney these, he worked for several companies, including Raytheon and Fujitsu, and at other times working on his own projects for his own video game company Syzygy Game Company, where he made games that Bushnell used for his Pizza Time Theaters, including an arcade quiz game based on science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Dabney also helped with the automated ticket number system used by the restaurants. When Pizza Time Theater went under, and Bushnell could not pay Dabney what he owed him, Dabney opted to close down Syzygy, and ended his friendship with Bushnell. Dabney went to work at Teledyne for