The man who made 'the worst video game in history' • Hacker News Board

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#161

Post by hartpuff » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

moonshinefe wrote: post #81

hartpuff wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level. In the same era, early 80s, kids across the UK were single-handedly writing games packed into 1-16k, some of which (Manic Miner being a prime example) sold in their hundreds of thousands in the UK market alone. There was some pretty amazing programming skill going on back then.

That sounds pretty interesting. Do you know if anyone has written on that history yet? It sounds like it'd make a great article in one of the tech magazines.

Sorry I thought I had replied to this. I'm not aware of any article or book going through the history of that era, unfortunately, but I wasn't aware of Bedrooms to Billions, so there could well be. It's just kind of 'known' that it happened, I think.

IIRC when the Raspberry Pi was first announced, it was suggested it might inspire kids to program in the same way that computers did in the 80s, since teaching at UK schools apparently centres around how to use Microsoft applications.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#162

Post by nickpsecurity » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #112

nickpsecurity wrote: post #64

No, the man who made the worst video game in history was Hideo Kojima with Metal Gear Solid 2. Hardcore fans of prior game(s) felt a combination of let down, shock, and anger at the details. Imagine my surprise when I find out it very well could've been an ingenius plot to screw with the players. As others noted, the games overall plot against the protagonist was what he was doing to the players. Start here on a nice…

Ironically, after the revamp (pun...?) they gave him in MGS4, Raiden turned out to be a hit and they went on to make MGRising. There were fans who were sad you couldn't play as Raiden in MGS4 - talk about ultimate troll: replace a main character with someone who went on to be universally hated. Bash that character in the next game (MGS3) then make him awesome but unplayable in MGS4. (though they later introduced him…

Tie that into the above theory you get: destroy players perceived identity (Snake); connect player to nerd character that plays VR games (Raiden); let him win in a lame way furthering identification with him; bash him in next game; make player's new identity unplayable in MGS4. Yeah, the guy's an epic troll.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#163

Post by krapp » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

SeanDav wrote: post #133

Nutmog wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, what else could they have done, given the time constraints? They even hired support staff to make sure he got fed! They surely didn't have source control or other systems to make it safe/easy for multiple programmers to work on it together. I imagine the code is some monolithic thing full of complicated Atari hacks that's best managed by being all together in one person'd mind. Perhaps they could have ma…

It does not make any kind of business sense to spend that much money and rely on 1 programmer and such a short project time. What happened if the programmer fell down some stairs or got hit by a bus? Normal project time for a game was 6 to 8 months, they gave this guy 5 weeks and no team. Obviously the programmer should never have agreed to the time frame, but he was 24 and at that age nothing seems impossible. This…

Atari's contempt and disregard for its programmers at the time has become pretty legendary. Ray Kassar[0] (president and CEO) famously rebuked a group of programmers complaining about work conditions as being no more important than the assembly line workers who put the cartridges together - which then led to the formation of Activision. Atari also refused to credit programmers for their work (leading to the first easter egg in Adventure[1].)

Given that atmosphere, Atari would have probably just given the job to someone else (on the same deadline, of course.)

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kassar

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_%281979_video_game%2...

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#164

Post by krapp » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

maaku wrote: post #95

krapp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...or that his biggest failure still sold over a million copies.

We can all aspire to fail that badly!

I certainly do.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#165

Post by brandonmenc » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

drfuchs wrote: post #52

brandonmenc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why did Pennsylvania residents have to call a different number? I remember seeing this sort of thing a lot back then. Probably a sales tax thing - maybe the fulfillment center was in PA.

Back in the day, AT&T had technological issues that meant that there were separate "in-state" and "out-of-state" 800 numbers, so every national advertisement always mentioned a main 800 number, plus a different one for the one particular state where they actually had their call center. Single-state institutions sometimes only had in-state 800 numbers, so, for instance, you literally couldn't call California's Franchi…

My mom worked at GTE and when I went to college in 1997 she got us a WATS line so I could dial 1-800 to call home.

One of her jobs in the early 80s was to calculate the bills for WATS lines. There was a room full of mechanical counters, like odometers, that would increment while people were talking on their line. Every day she'd write down the new counts, subtract the previous day's counts, and they'd bill the difference.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#166

Post by Sharlin » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

nielsencfm123 wrote: post #101

So Atari spent $21,000,000 to buy the rights and $5,000,000 on marketing but having more than 1 developer on the project was too much...

To be fair, I don't think multi-programmer gamedev teams really existed back then. You can't divide work very meaningfully when your whole application consists of eight kilobytes of assembly with zero room for abstraction or good coding practices.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#167

Post by Sharlin » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #129

Nutmog wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, what else could they have done, given the time constraints? They even hired support staff to make sure he got fed! They surely didn't have source control or other systems to make it safe/easy for multiple programmers to work on it together. I imagine the code is some monolithic thing full of complicated Atari hacks that's best managed by being all together in one person'd mind. Perhaps they could have ma…

Instead of force feeding the genius, how about giving him a competent team of 10 average programmers, and 15 testers / players ? This way, the genius if free to imagine great games, not fiddle with screenbuffer bits and lose all contact with reality.

I don't think there even existed a concept of a multi-programmer gamedev team back then. When your whole application must fit into eight kilobytes of assembly with zero room for separation of concerns, it's very much a Mythical Man-Month situation. Like Brooks noted, nine women can't make a baby in one month.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#168

Post by cozuya » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #6

I still don't get why this game is so maligned. It was one of my favorite 2600 games! The only game I liked better was pitfall.

Since E.T. fell in pits over and over this comment makes a lot of sense..

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#169

Post by eropple » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

tadfisher wrote: post #65

nickpsecurity wrote: post #64

No, the man who made the worst video game in history was Hideo Kojima with Metal Gear Solid 2. Hardcore fans of prior game(s) felt a combination of let down, shock, and anger at the details. Imagine my surprise when I find out it very well could've been an ingenius plot to screw with the players. As others noted, the games overall plot against the protagonist was what he was doing to the players. Start here on a nice…

MGS2 is quite possibly the best example of a postmodern video game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw

I had a feeling that link would be George Weidman before I clicked on it. Was not disappointed. =) Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of the more amazing things I've ever played, and George's video about MGS2 is awesome, if a little bit overwrought. I was a big fan of Metal Gear (I'd emulated an MSX to play the originals), loved MGS, and liked MGS2 when it came out, but that might have been because it was more Metal Gear Solid. Despite being a "hardcore fan", as the OP would put it, I never felt disappointed or betrayed by MGS2. And, in retrospect, I've learned to like it more by what it tried to do. Ambitious games deserve respect for their ambition insofar as attempts to push outward and expand gaming as an art form, and MGS2 pulls off its goals better than it probably should have.

Today, I find it's one of the better popular-gaming litmus tests for whether or not somebody treats games as experiences to which critical analysis can be applied. (One doesn't have to like the game, there are lots of reasons not to even if I happen to, but does one get the thrust of it?)

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#170

Post by krapp » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

asgfoi wrote: post #122

hartpuff wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level. In the same era, early 80s, kids across the UK were single-handedly writing games packed into 1-16k, some of which (Manic Miner being a prime example) sold in their hundreds of thousands in the UK market alone. There was some pretty amazing programming skill going on back then.

You seem to be unaware of Ludum dare and similar challenges where (literally) thousands of games are created over the weekend that could easily compete with games made in the 80's. Skill is still here, it is just muted by the modern media. Back then a any game release was huge news, today such games are made all the time every day and don't even get noticed.

First, most hackathon games are terrible. They don't even rise to the level of coherence of those former games, because they're mostly thrown together into the first vaguely "game-like" thing that compiles, with half the gameplay in orders of magnitude more space.

Second, those games are only possible due to the existence of frameworks, high-level languages and the proliferation of programming knowledge over the internet. Almost no one doing a weekend hackathon is cranking out a playable game in raw assembly.

Now to be fair, most games in the 80s were terrible as well - that's part of what led to the crash, and it's just Sturgeon's Law in effect. But what's being praised here isn't really design skill so much as a level of programming skill which simply isn't strictly necessary in the modern day to create a game.