The guy single-handily coded, in 5 weeks, a video game that sold 1.5 million copies! I'd like to be responsible for this kind of screw up any day :)
Granted that the sales were probably mostly due to intense marketing and ad campaign.
The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
171–180 of 213 posts
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#172Anyone who is in to Atari 2600 knows that ET is verrrrrry far from the worst game available on that system! And it's so sad making it a great game would have take so few tweaks! http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/
Everyone forgets about Pac-Man, that was another huge contributor to the crash. The 2600 couldn't handle 5 sprites, so they used one sprite for all the ghosts and showed one per frame. The flickering ghosts against the bright blue background was physically painful to watch.
They estimated 10 million consoles were actively being played, so they made 12 million copies. They sold 7 million, and that's before returns. 7 million people who would think twice before buying another Atari game.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how much they paid the 1 programmer for the 5 weeks of development time. I'm sure nowhere near the $5m they spent on advertising or $21m on game rights. Also, if they did indeed sell 1.5m copies at $40 per copy, that's $60m. Even allowing for large amounts of unsold stock that surely can't have been too far off covering costs, and can't have been the only reason for their subsequent $310m loss. EDIT: Fair po…
Wikipedia says the programmer was offered $200K + a Hawaiian vacation. It doesn't say what he actually negotiated or received.
Just for scale: $200k 1982-dollars is $491k in 2016-dollars.
So he was probably quite motivated to get it done.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm genuinely curious about this, since I wasn't around in those days. For a game being implemented (and probably having design changes on the fly as problems crop up since there was no time for a design phase) in assembly, with instruction- and register-level hacks to save the 128 bytes of memory, with no source control aside from sneaker net, how many developers can reasonably work on it at the same time? 1? 2? I m…
> with instruction- and register-level hacks to save the 128 bytes of memory, with no source control aside from sneaker net, how many developers can reasonably work on it at the same time? 1? 2? I don't know from first-hand experience, but my impression has always been that the main game loop would be virtually impossible to develop as a team effort. To give a bit of back story for those that are unaware, the 2600 di…
Suddenly "Fantastic Voyage" [0] makes more sense: when I was a kid I thought it would work better as a side-scroller rather than an "up-scroller", because there was wasted space on the sides, and you'd have more time to react / could see farther ahead.
It of course never occurred to me that by having so many scan lines being the same, they could save a lot of work.
[0] http://atariage.com/forums/uploads/monthly_03_2012/post-2618...
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#175Talk about screwed up priorities. Atari spent $21 million on ET video game rights, $5 million on an advertising campaign and gave 1 programmer, 5 weeks to deliver something that would justify that cost. No wonder they went bankrupt!
Overproduction was insane. I believe that they produced 5 million ET games. They thought it would sell more console units and at a sell rate of ET at 100%.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't know why you take what was an entirely positive comment, in praise of programming and programmers in the early 80s, and try to turn it into a negative, pointless, opinion-based pissing contest about which era was 'better'.
If the early 80's was good, then something else must be bad. Perhaps you meant it was good compared to what happened before, or compared to what it would have been if people didn't make games. But a reasonable guess is good compared to today, which is an implicitly negative comment about today's programmers. I think the reply was quite reasonable - it doesn't make sense to glorify the past when the present has massiv…
you have a zero-sum model of things that does not reflect reality well.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#177Talk about screwed up priorities. Atari spent $21 million on ET video game rights, $5 million on an advertising campaign and gave 1 programmer, 5 weeks to deliver something that would justify that cost. No wonder they went bankrupt!
1 programmer and 1 manager to see if he is being fed. Not even a tester? A billion dollar companies with zero quality control. No surprise the went bankrupt.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#178Anyone who is in to Atari 2600 knows that ET is verrrrrry far from the worst game available on that system! And it's so sad making it a great game would have take so few tweaks! http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/
Everyone forgets about Pac-Man, that was another huge contributor to the crash. The 2600 couldn't handle 5 sprites, so they used one sprite for all the ghosts and showed one per frame. The flickering ghosts against the bright blue background was physically painful to watch. They estimated 10 million consoles were actively being played, so they made 12 million copies. They sold 7 million, and that's before returns. 7…
Wasn't it the Atari version of Pac Man with "wafers"?
Nothing beats game programming in the 80s. IMO, the golden age of programming.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#179There is a very nice documentary if anyone wants to hear from the actual game developer - http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/
It's on Netflix as well.
Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia says the programmer was offered $200K + a Hawaiian vacation. It doesn't say what he actually negotiated or received.
Just for scale: $200k 1982-dollars is $491k in 2016-dollars. So he was probably quite motivated to get it done.
Someone could offer me $200k in today's dollars for a five week project and I would gladly take it.