"Video games today are a race to the bottom."

I think what some people fail to realize is that most new industries go through this kind of start-stop-restart phase. Initially, you have a lot of interest and success in a new market. Then, everyone wants in on the action and causes a saturation effect. The industry needs to go through a "correction" period of bankruptcies, consolidations and reinventing. Eventually, the industry restarts, albeit at a slower pace usually, and begins to become solidified. It is simply naive to say that there was any one factor or individual responsible for "the crash".

 

Wait, what? last time I checked the "suits" were in command of the industry, and it wasnt yesterday no sir, since nintendo started making money with the Nes they hired lawyers and execs to write a whole series of legal contracts that would give them the same power over their domain that the film and music industries had over theirs.

Today theres almost as many suits as developers, and if outsourcing becomes sucessful you're going to see only suits in the game industry, at least this side of the world...

Saying bushnell was THE reason why we have a game industry is an exageration. He and Atari were the catalyst, but it was bound to happen, just like the home computer wasnt thanks to Apple, since that was already on the go since the Altair, and even before MITS the concept of a personal computer was already there.

The arcade was the natural evolution of the mechanical games that were there before electronic ones: from pinballs to shooting galleries, the need for new technolgy was there. The first VG was Spacewar, made by MIT for the PDP-1, and lets be honest, it was a matter of time for someone to look at it and realise the potential VGs had. Atari did, but that doesnt means nobody was going to see it...

 

The first true arcade game was made in 1947 as any video game historian will tell you.

 

This debate will just go on in circles so I am just going to stop (why i have not replyed for a while). I am just going to note one thing you said tho.

My comment said that it's not all suits. If you worked in a dev studio you would know the suits are just investers, CEO, finance & marketing. Everybody down are not suits. This is a far cry from working in many other industrys where there are strict dress codes. Bushnell had atari working on a very fun and open eviroment. That has carried over still today.

There are quite a few nice videos on the history of the VG industry that covered this.

Atari had a lot of laywers in the early days as well (there was a battle between atari & activision in the early years).

 

So you mean the working enviroment? well no doubt about that...

But I doubt working in the industry today is as fun (and by fun I mean crazy) like in the atari days.

 

It all depends on the studio you work for.

The first studio I worked for was very fun and the 30 some odd employies considered everybody family. Hell in the early days the first friday of every month the studio would all go out and eat lunch together (work of course picks up the tab) but sadly that stopped when we started having more then 20 employies (made it too difficult to go out. Later it switched to pizza once a month).

While I've heard it's compeditive, EA Montreal is quite nice to work for. They have a game room with a massive HD screen as well as a few arcades. I have a few friends who work there.

Ubi montreal is not half bad (where i'm at now). It's more team oriented then whole studio oriented. So if you get on a good team with a awsome producer, it can be quite fun (so far my producer has been really cool). Actualy my leads are awsome since they know what they're doing and are void of an ego. So they're willing to go the extra mile to help you learn or understand something.

 

Any openings? :lol:

 

Dude unless you're working on this bigass corporation (anything from GE to GM or IBM) this kind of enviroment is pretty common.

Not that working at starbucks is like that (we all know it isnt) but pretty much any startup out there works like that, mostly becos they cant afford to keep a dominating working enviroment when they dont have the kind of big corporation to back it up.

But if rumors about atari at the time are true, your working place sounds like square-land in comparison. Apparently they had hot tubs in the facilities, and some would even smoke pot during work hours.

Again, is a rumor (and it was during the 70s) but thats pretty edgy compared to the working conditions of the average white collar worker at the time.

 

Oh, not all corporations are totally evil, when you get down to the department level. It's at the top where the truly evil decisions are made (polluting, lay offs, moving high paying jobs to India so you can pay them seven bucks a week, destroying democracy so the fat cats can steal all the taxpayer's money, etc.)

During my short stint at THQ, they seemed to enjoy doing random acts of kindness for us. On Valentine's day they got an In-&-Out burger truck for the entire company, they even let people bring thier kids. One time they randomly gave all us lowly testers ice cream, for no reason. Another time they were clearing inventory and we all got free games (they were the crappy leftover games, but what the hey.)

Of course the hours were long and inhuman, the place stank of B.O. and cheetoes, there were like four women who worked for the whole company who were constantly miffed at the 400 overweight smelly computer nerds constantly hitting on them, the parking lot was too small and if you didn't show up an hour early you had to park on a hill a mile away (not making this up,) a monkey could do the job and the pay reflected that, and you could always show up one day and find your job was gone, but that was the trade off.

At my current company I'm pretty much allowed to come and go as I please. No one looks over my shoulder or "bosses" me around, even the boss. Occassionally my department will go for drinks, lunch, or even dinner (depending if there's a special occasion, holidays for instance) and the company pays for it. My boss is so cool he even takes us (the department) to the movies sometimes. Granted, the work I do is a lot less stressful than gamedevelopment (and a lot more boring) but there are deadlines we have to meet, requirements that need to be kept.

Just trying to show that you don't have to treat your people like cattle to get results out of them.

 

It's nothing like working at starbucks. It's hard to explain with out going on for a few hours of text. For a dev studio, it's not common you can walk into the CEO office and shoot the breeze for an hour or he come around people's desk to chit chat with everybody. I pretty much experienced some of the best parts of that company and the worse at the end (never trust a CFO who hires on his son as head of accounting with out prior work experience other then a college degree, its asking for trouble). I stayed for 4 years and only finaly left since I wanted to move on to PSP stuff (I hated the DS, It's no GBA).

As for pot, hehe actualy we had an artist who worked better when stoned so there was quite a few times when he went out to quickly hit a joint before returning and nobody had an issue with it.

 

I was saying any startup out there works like you say, and only low-end jobs (starbucks) or ones in big corporations are a pain in the ass...

I'm talking about smoking pot right in the middle of everything, like, everyone was doing it.

 

Well in that case yes because most often small start up dev studios are people from the industry and not just a bunch of bankers who decide to start up a studio. No different for the studio I worked at since the CEO use to write games back durring the C64.

Thats hard to do in this day in age due to smoking laws. You can't smoke inside the building. :S I could say more about the subject but it's probably best not to.

 

The level of idiocy and complete lack of knowledge in videogame history expressed by some of our members in this thread is appalling.

I cannot bring myself to comment to heavily on what has been said, but perhaps a few of you ought to trust those who have in fact lived through and even worked in the industry during said events. The internet is great but not all of your historical fact finding can be gotten to accurately from wikipedia and back issues of EGM.

You may say that 99% of the 2600 library is shit and that is that, but I must say that you did not grow up with those games and you obviously cannot appreciate their affect on some of our childhoods. Stop bashing what you have absloutely no apparent ability to comprehend.


-ServiceGames-

 

No doubt about that, the same happens in any area of the I.T. industry when people with almost no knowledge at all is in charge of a company.

In that case nobody would be able to criticize anything.

As a matter of fact, we couldnt even criticize new games today becos we dont see Halo3 the same way that 12 yr old down the street does...

 

My friend, There is a great difference in a critical opinion and stating your opinions as pure fact. You are coming across as if you have done a conclusive study and published your findings in a widely read book or something. They're your opinions and that's great, yet you argue with those of us that differ with you as if we are morons simply because we do not see your point of view.

Your opinions are just that, yours. Just remember that what you think now had absolutely no affect on the market back in the early eighties.

 

Dude, seriously, when did I called you a moron?

99% isnt that far off the truth since that small number of great 2600 games is completely dwarfed by the share number of crappy games.

 

If you cannot even understand the implications in your own posts then I suggest that you reread things a few more times before you post them. Oh and for that matter please reread my post as I never said you called anyone a moron at all..

By your reasoning every major videogame console that ever had a mainstream market share has had 99% crap produced for it..
Only the likes of Virtual boy and things like the Playdia had a large percentage of quality titles due only to their small libraries...

Regardless of arguable quality issues people purchased these games until the great video game depression. I don't recall ever hearing of an Atari run incentive plan that allowed people to purchase shitty games in order to receive fabulous prizes. People bought these games because for a time it was what the industry had to offer and it was what the market would bare. You may find them to all be crap. Hell we could all think they are trash, but that does little to change the undeniable fact that these games sold to the general public and it took years for people to finally grow sick of them.

 

You're definitely missing the point. The current argument isn't about what we consider poor games of yesterday and today, but about your original comment. You can't say 99% of a console's games were crap, for generation you didn't even fucking grow up in.

ServiceGames' post should've ended that argument (and pretty much this thread) seeing as we will all keep going around in circles.

 

I'll end this debate right here. :0

Intellivision pwned the 2600.

First Person RPG? Intellivision.
Voice in game? Intellivision.
First 16-bit console? Intellivision.

Real gamers played Intellivision.

-hl718

 

Hehe. I did not notice/realize Shadowlayer is younger then me by a few years (im 1983).

God I sometimes wish I grew up in the atari era insted of being born at the end of it. Oh well thank god for older siblings, I end up playing through their massive collection of 2600 titles (I even have a few 2600 games still shrink rapped). This is probably why I apreciate 2600 so much (I played them back when I played nes).

-- edit --

Ooo, I just realised Adventure is atari owned. It better be one of the 50 titles in the recent PSP atari evolved collection (stupid f-king coders locked ALL the 2600 titles till you win all 44 awards and some are damn near imposible).