The Birth of the Industry
Possibly the first true computer game was made in 1958 by Willy Higginbotham. Tennis For Two, which was also known as Tennis Programming, was played by two people using hand controls. Higginbotham used an analogue Donner computer linked to an oscilloscope used as display at Brookhaven National Laboratories. The game was on display for two years before been dismantled to reuse the electronic parts.
In 1961 DEC shipped their
first computer, the PDP-1, to MIT. There, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and
Wayne Wiitanen decided to write some demoware for the machine that would use
the supplied vector monitor. The game 'Spacewar!' was completed in 1962. It
was later distributed by DEC with all PDP-1's and was installed at universities
around the world.
The first coin-operated video game was called Galaxy Game and was installed at the Tresidder Union at Stanford University in September, 1971 and was not removed until May 1979. The game was programmed by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck and was a version of 'Spacewar!'. Only one unit was ever built, and it used a $20,000 Digital PDP-11/20 to run the game! A game cost 10 cents or three games for 25 cents. In June 1972 the hardware was improved to allow the processor to power four to eight consoles. The game remained popular on campus, with wait times for players as much as one hour.
The first true commercial
computer game - Computer Space was made by Nolan Bushnell in November 1971
and was based upon 'Spacewar!'. Bushnell sold the game to Nutting Associates,
who produced 1,500 units but it failed to sell. Bushnell attributed the commercial
failure of the game to its complexity combined with the originality of the
concept on a public who had never seen a computer game before. Bushnell in
an interview later said, "To be successful, I had to come up with a game
people already knew how to play; something so simple that any drunk in any
bar could play." It also used raster graphics rather than the much better
vector graphics of the original mainframe game.
Ralph Baer had wanted to
make TV games since 1951 when at Loral he had been asked to make the best
TV in the world. In 1966, Baer now at Sanders Associates, designed a series
of seven prototypes that played several video games. The first playable video
game was a Chase Game: two squares chasing each other. The last prototype
built in 1968, which was known as 'Brown Box', played ball & paddle games
and even had a rifle for target shooting games. After several demonstrations
to a number of TV manufacturers, Magnavox signed an agreement in 1971 and
the first video game system was released in May 1972, it was named Odyssey.
Odyssey was analogue rather
than digital and used a type of removable circuit card that inserts into a
slot similar to a cartridge slot. These cards did not contain any components
but had a series of jumpers between the pins of the card connector. These
jumpers interconnected different analogue signal generators to produce the
screen output. The Odyssey was powered by batteries and lacked sound capability.
The system came pre-programmed with twelve games, which made use of translucent
plastic overlays that gamers could put on their TV screen to simulate colour
graphics, though only two TV sizes were supported. It was also sold with plastic
game tokens and score sheets to help keep score, much like traditional board
games.
Over 80,000 Odyssey and over 20,000 rifle packs sold in 1972. Magnox had a monopoly and believed it would have no competitors anytime soon, so it used the Odyssey to support the sales of its TVs. Some of Magnavox' marketing implied wrongly that the Odyssey system would only work with a Magnavox TV set. Another 250,000 Odyssey and 50,000 rifle packs were sold between 1973 and late 1975, bringing the total to 350,000 Odyssey and 80,000 rifle packs sold. The system was removed from the stores in late 1975 and replaced by a new, simpler model: the Odyssey 100. Ralph Baer went on to invent the classic electronic game Simon for Mattel in 1978.
Bushnell was recorded signing the visitors book on May 24, 1972 to a trade show in Burlingame, California at the Airport Marina, where he played an Odyssey unit hands-on, including its Table Tennis game. Not long after in June 1972, Bushnell quit his job and with two other former Ampex engineers started his company, called Atari after a term in the Japanese game "go". Al Alcorn was the engineer who constructed the first Ping-Pong arcade game. The game "Pong" was named after the desired sound that Bushnell wanted incorporated in the game. The game had a segmented paddle for vertical ball control in place of Odyssey's "English" control, and also had wall bounce and scoring. Alcorn used about 70 '7400 series TTL IC's integrated logic circuits, which would have been impossible in a cheap Home TV Game system.
The first Pong arcade machine
was placed in a local bar in Sunnyvale called Andy Capp's in November 1972.
The next day people were lined up outside the bar at 10 A.M. to play Pong
and. around ten o'clock that night, the game suddenly died, when the milk
carton coin container inside the machine was overflowing into the electronics.
After it was emptied, the game continued its usual operation. The game and
the concept was a big success and Atari made $3.2 million in earnings in 1972.
However, when Magnox heard about Pong they sued Atari for breaching its patent
paddle technology and were awarded a $700,000 settlement and Atari was ordered
to pay Magnavox royalties.
Atari wished to conqueror the home console market as well as the Arcades, and from its success in the arcades had built up sufficient funds to produce the necessary technology to invade the home video market. In 1974, Harold Lee, Alan Alcorn and Bob Brown designed Home Pong, a dedicated home console to play Pong. Atari designed a Pong chip using low cost LSI (Large Scale Integrated) circuits, which provided the game with digital on-screen scoring and attracti6ve sound. The fact that it could only play one popular game was not a major disadvantage because many consumers found that only one or two games on multiple play consoles were any good.
Atari's next major problem
was that they did not have a distribution system to sell the games system.
At a Toy Show in 1975, Nolan Busnell was approached by Tom Quinn, the sporting
goods buyer for Sears, who offered to buy every Home Pong game Atari could
produce. Bushnell was told to double production and Sears would arrange financing,
advertising and distribution of the units. In exchange, Sears wanted exclusive
rights to sell Home Pong through its 900 outlets. Sears sold the system under
their Tele-Games label for Christmas 1975, Home Pong sold 150,000 units, Atari's
sales in 1975 reached $40 million and made $3 million in profits. Atari sold
the system under its own label in 1976.
Once General Instruments released the first low-cost chip, which allowed the building of a complete Pong system with few external components, a whole industry grew up making Pong knock-offs all over the world. In Europe, video games appeared for the first time in 1974. In the US some sixty different systems appeared between 1975 and 1977. The main players were Atari, Sears, Coleco, and Magnavox, which had been acquired by Phillips in 1974. Others were new companies such as Executive Games started from a five-student MIT project and some like First Dimension did not survive long.
The Microprocessor
The first microchip
was created at Fairchild Camera and Instrument by Robert Noyce, allowed more
complicated Video consoles systems and home computing to be possible. The
Fairchild Channel F released in 1975, was the first system to use a microprocessor
rather than TTL switches. It was not a great commercial success but it was
programmable and accepted game cartridges and joysticks. The Channel F originally
sold for $170 with its game cartridges averaging around $20. Game cartridges
meant that a game player could purchase a library of videogames tailored to
his or her own interest and the manufacturer of the console could keep on
making sales.
RCA had rejected Ralph Baer's original system and finally realised how profitable the games console market, had put some thought into producing their own console. The RCA Studio II was styled much after the Pong units of the time, but had a cartridge port similar to the Fairchild Channel F. The Studio II had numeric keypads for controllers instead of paddles.
Nolan Bushnell, after realising the significant improvements over Pong made by Fairchild and RCA, pressed his engineers to create a new system. Atari responded by developing "Stella", a prototype console that accepted cartridges.
In 1976, Bushnell employed Steve Jobs to create Breakout, a Pong variant for the new console. Jobs joined with his friend Steve Wozniak and they programmed the game in just five days. Bushnell paid Jobs $5,000 but Jobs paid Wozniak a mere $350 and took sole credit. Despite this the two formed a partnership to make the Apple I home computer. The Apple I was made from Atari parts and was offered to Atari but it was refused. Paul Terrel, owner of the byte shop, produced an adaptor for the Apple I that allowed it to use a cassette tape recorder for storage. Terrel sold this for $75 together with a 3,000 characters Stars wars game written in basic. These events illustrate the importance of games in the development of the Personal Computer.
Atari needed to update its production facilities and despite its dramatic growth did not have the resources to achieve this. Warner Communications, was suffering from a drop in sales of music records and needed a new hot product and decided to buy Atari. Bushnell sold Atari in 1976 for $28 million, a company he had set up four years previously with just $250.
Warner Communications invested
$100 million in Atari to develop Stella, and in 1977 the project was unveiled
as the ATARI 2600 Video Computer System (VCS), which had a suggested retail
price of $200 which gave them a small unit profit, but the cartridges were
being sold for $20-$40 yet only cost a fraction of that to make. Atari sold
some five billion dollars worth of Atari VCS/2600 systems and products in
five years. The console shipped with two joysticks, an RF TV adapter and the
Combat game cartridge. The console was simultaneously released were nine other
games, which were home versions of Atari's popular arcade titles. The distribution
deal between Atari and Sears, ended in 1979 when Sears introduced it own "Tele-Games"
line, which was heavily based on the Atari VCS/2600 architecture.
Magnavox responded to the changing market in 1978 with the Magnavox Odyssey², known in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, and had some sophisticated features. Odyssey² could play programmable ROM game cartridges and was the only console with a full alphanumeric membrane keyboard. Odyssey² also had an excellent speech synthesis unit. Odyssey² used a fusion of board and video games in its Master Strategy series. The Odyssey² got a reasonable market share in the US, selling over a million units by 1983. The lack of third-party support kept the number of new games very limited
Mattel's Intellivision was released in 1980. The Intellivision had better graphics than the Atari VCS/2600, but had a high retail price of $299 and the wide range of popular Atari games meant that it never sold as well. In 1980 Mattel Electronics sold 200,000 Intellivision units.
Coleco
Coleco, a company originally founded in 1932 as the Conneticut Leather Company,
entered the video game console business with the Telstar in 1975, like others
who followed the success of Atari's Pong Console, it was based on based on
General Instrument's "Pong-on-a-chip". There were severe shortages
of the chip and the dedicated game consoles did not have a very long market
lifespan. However, Coleco got its order in early, and as it result received
its order in full and made a profit. Coleco moved into handheld electronic
games, a market popularized by Mattel. Coleco produced two popular lines the
"head to head" series of two player sports games, and the mini-arcade
series of licensed video arcade titles.
Coleco
returned to the video game console market in 1982 with the launch of the ColecoVision,
a $175 dollar system with superior graphics and sound to both the Atari VCS
and the Intellivision. The system was released with the smash hit Donkey Kong.
The ColecoVision, sold one million systems in 1982 and by 1983 it was selling
better than both the VCS and Intellivision.
Coleco had hedged its bets by introducing a line of game cartridges for the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision. They also introduced the Coleco Gemini, a clone of the popular Atari 2600. Coleco's response to the video game crash of 1983 was to try and move into home computers that were replacing the primitive home video game systems. The Coleco Adam home computer was a failure, mainly because they were unreliable. By the end of 1984 Coleco would completely withdraw from electronics as they teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
Video Games Come of Age
In 1979 Taito's
Space Invaders arrived in America and was such a smash hit that video game
playing became a mainstream activity that was brought to the public attention
by mass media coverage. Atari in 1979 released Lunar Lander, which featured
vector graphics and the game Asteroids completed at the end of 1979 sold 70,000
units, eclipsing the success of Space Invaders at the arcades.
The big success of 1980 was Pac-Man by Nameco who released 300,000 arcade
units. The game was originally released in 1979 as Puk-Man in Japan, the name was
changed for American release to stop the P been changed into an F. Toru Iwatani
designed the game to be hybrid combination between pinball and a video game.
Pac-Man was highly original, as most arcade games in North America were primarily
space shooters such as Space Invaders and this non-violent maze-game appealed
to both girls and boys. The games success surpassed Space Invaders and influenced
manufacturers to look into different game designs and the element of humour
in the game was also imitated. Games influenced by Pac-Man in the 1980s include
Donkey Kong (1981), Frogger (1981), and Q*Bert (1982).
Although home gaming consoles had developed they had not kept pace with Arcade Game systems. By the early 1980s were use storage capacities ten to forty-five times larger than home systems and this greatly widened the gap between arcade game quality from home game quality.
The Great Video Game Crash of 1983
The development of the console industry like many other rapidly growing and developing industries has been marked by periods of boom and then bust. In 1982, Atari settled a court case with Activsion that opened the VCS to third-party development, this led to an increase in supply and cartridge prices became depressed.
In 1982, Atari released Pac-Man and ET for the VCS, which had been developed rapidly. ET's main selling feature was its link to the successful movie, whilst Pac-Man was much cruder than the arcade originals but were backed by a massive publicity campaign. Pac-Man had record-breaking sales of 7 million copies but Atari published 12 million cartridges, incorrectly anticipating that the game would spur VCS sales, which up to that point had been under 10 million. Unsold Atari inventory piled up and there is an urban legend that thousands of these cartridges were buried in a New Mexico landfill in the resulting 1983 Video Games Crash.
Atari had other problems at this time. The Atari 5200 game console based on the Atari 800 home computer could not use the 800 game cartridges and its sales never met Atari's expectations. A deal to produce the Nintendo SNES by Atari for the US market under licence also went sour. Atari fell into deep financial trouble and the vast majority of the development staff was laid off. Atari in 1982 made a net profit of $300 million, but in 1983 Atari made a net loss of $538.6 million. Warner sold the troubled division in 1984 to Jack Tramiel, who had just been ousted from Commodore International, with the name Atari Corp for $240 million. However, the new company would have success with the 16-bit Atari ST line that began in 1985.
The 1983 Great Video crash affected the whole industry and many companies went into a decline at this time. In 1982, sales of video game systems and cartridges in North America were $3.2 billion and this fell to $2 billion in 1983. Profits from arcade machines were also affected. In 1982 arcade video game revenues in North America were $7.3 billion but in 1983 were only $5 billion.
Taito Corporation
The Taito Trading Company, was
founded in 1953 by Russian Jew Michael Kogan and Taito is Chinese character
contraction of "Jew of far east". The company imported and distributed vending
machines. Later, they began leasing jukeboxes and they eventually started
to manufacture their own and pinball games during the 1960s.
Taito in 1973 changed its name to the "Taito Corporation" and produced its first video arcade games which were called Astro Race, Pro Hockey and Davis Cup. In 1978 Toshihiro Nishikado, a designer at Taito, created Space Invaders which became the company's most popular title ever. Space Invaders was inspired by an earlier 1972 electro-mechanical game by Taito called Space Monsters. Space Invaders was published in the US by Midway. Due to the huge success of Space Invaders, Taito in 1979 opened an American division called Taito America Corporation in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Taito America release games in US produced by the Japanese parent and also published games that they licensed from third-party companies. Taito Software Inc was established in North Vancouver, British Columbia in 1988. This group released Taito games for home computers and consoles.
In 1992, Taito announced a CD-ROM-based console system named WoWoW, that would have allowed people to play near-exact ports of Taito's arcades, as well as download games from a satellite transmission but the WoWoW was never released. In 1995 both Taito America and Taito Software were closed down.
In August 2005, Square Enix announced it would purchase 247,900 Taito shares worth US$409.10 million, to make Taito Corporation a subsidiary of Square Enix. Kyocera the previous majority stockholder accepted the bid.
Namco
Namco was founded in Tokyo in
1955, by Masaya Nakamura under the name Nakamura Manufacturing Ltd. The company
originally produced mechanical rocking-horses and children's rides. The company's
brand name was changed to Namco in 1971, and acquired the Japanese division
of Atari in 1974, thus bringing Namco into the coin-operated video game market.
In 1978, Namco released its first arcade video game Gee Bee which was designed by Toru Iwatani who also designed two sequels Bomb Bee (1979) and Cutie Q (1979). 1980 saw the introduction of one of the company's most famous coin-operated arcade games, Pac-Man, which became the company's mascot.
The company's other arcade games include Dig Dug (1982), Pole Position (1982), Xevious (1982) and Mappy (1983) and Bosconian (1987). When Nintendo began producing its Famicom/NES (1983) home console unit, Namco started the development of game titles for it, beginning with Galaxian (1984), which had been the first colour arcade game in 1979.
In the 1990s, Namco began directly selling coin-operated arcade games in the United States through subsidiary Namco America. Namco opened amusement arcades including Namco Wonder Eggs, Namco Wonder Park and Namco Wonder City in Japan. In 1993, Namco merged its US arcade operation, Namco Operations, Inc., with the newly acquired Aladdin's Castle, Inc. to form Namco Cybertainment, Incorporated (NCI). In subsequent years, NCI purchased several other arcade operators and now operates arcades under the names Time Out, CyberStation, Aladdin's Castle, Diamond Jim's, Space Port, and Pocket Change.
Namco continued to make arcade games becoming the market leader in fighting games in the 1990s, which were then ported to consoles. Ridge Racer (1993), was a driving simulation game, which featured 3D computer graphics and was later released for the Sony PlayStation (1995). Another of the company's most famous games, Tekken (1994), the first 3D fighting game to feature weapons was also ported to the PlayStation, spawned a series of games (1995). Soul Edge or Soul Blade in the PAL region (1995) another fighting game was ported to the Playstation in 1996.
On September 29, 2005, Namco was merged with Bandai to form Namco Bandai Holdings Inc, the 3rd largest video game entity in Japan. Bandai at this time was the third largest toy company in the world, comprising 53 subsidiaries in 18 countries.
Bandai in November 1985 launched its first console game, which was for the Nintendo NES called Kinnikuman-Muscle Tag Match, which sold over one million copies. Bandai released a series of handheld game consoles including the WonderSwan (1999), WonderSwan Color (2000), and Swan Crystal (2002). The systems were only released in Japan. In November 1996 Bandai launched the Tamagotchi, which was a handheld digital pet, and a series of these electronic games has continued up to theTamagotchi Connection Version 4, which is due to be released in 2007.
In January 2006, a Namco Bandai subsidiary was established in the U.S. to handle mobile games in North America, called Namco Networks America Inc. Namo Networks will part arcade favourites to cell phones.
Midway
Midway is the
oldest U.S video game company that is still in the industry. Midway was founded
in 1958 as an independent manufacturer of amusement equipment, such as puck
bowling and simulated western shoot-outs, and this industry was concentrated
on Chicago. Midway was purchased by Bally in 1969.
Midway became in 1973 an early US maker of arcade video games and in 1977 released the Bally Home Library Computer. This was the only home system to ever be developed by Midway and was not a great success. Throughout the 1970s, Midway had a distribution deal with Japanese video game developer Taito, with both companies regularly licensing their games to each other for distribution in their respective country's. This led to Midway licensing Space Invaders (1978) for distribution in America, which was followed by a series of lucrative titles including the hugely successful Pac-Man (1980) and Ms Pac-Man (1981).
In 1981, Bally merged its pinball division with Midway to form the Bally/Midway Manufacturing division. Three games released that year: Solar Fox, Lazarian and Satan's Hollow were the first to feature the Bally/Midway brand. From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, Midway was the leading producer of arcade video games in the US.
Williams Electronics Games, a maker of arcade and pinball games, through its holding company WMS Industries Inc in 1988 purchased the Bally/Midway division. The acquisition by WMS marked the end of the original Midway, though WMS retained the majority of Midway's R&D employees. Midway moved its headquarters from Franklin Park, Illinois to Williams's headquarters in Chicago. Under WMS ownership, Midway initially continued to produce arcade games under the Bally/Midway label while producing pinball tables under the "Bally" brand but in 1991, Midway absorbed Williams' video game division and started making arcade games using just Midway.
WMS Industries in 1994 acquired Tradewest, a Texas video game publisher, which had began trading in 1986, and this became Williams Entertainment, Inc. In 1996 the divisions name was changed to Midway Home Entertainment. For a number of years, Midway Home Entertainment operated in both Corsicana, which was Tradewest's original site, and San Diego until 2002 when the Corsicana location was shut down. The San Diego studio was located in the same building as the headquarters of Midway Home Entertainment and was the first Midway studio to develop video games for home consoles. The Midway Home Entertainment division is in charge of the relationship between Midway and the console manufacturers of its games, which include Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
In 1996, WMS purchased Time-Warner Interactive, which included Atari Games, part of the former giant Atari. The corporate name was also changed in 1996 from Midway Manufacturing Company to Midway Games Inc due to its entrance in the home console market. The original arcade division of the company became Midway Amusement Games and the newly created home division was known as Midway Home Entertainment.
In 1998, WMS sold Midway to its shareholders, making Midway an independent company. Midway kept Atari Games as a wholly owned subsidiary as part of this spin-off. Despite the split, Midway retained some of the WMS executive staff and used common facilities with WMS for a couple more years. Midway kept the right on to continue releasing pinball tables using the "Bally" name. However on October 25, 1999, WMS shut down all of its pinball operations and Midway left the pinball industry in order to concentrate itself on videogames.
In January 2000, Midway changed the name of its "Atari Games" subsidiary to Midway Games West in order to avoid confusion with the other Atari company owned by Hasbro Interactive. Midway went through hard times as the arcade games industry contracted. On June 2001, Midway shut down its arcade division due to financial losses. On February 2003, Midway closed its Midway Games West subsidiary, putting an end to what was left of the original Atari. In October 2003 Midway had revenues of about $100 million for the 2003 year, but also losses of $100 million. Midway's original studio in Chicago, which is housed in Midway's main Corporate offices had developed all of its arcade video games, now focuses solely on titles for home consoles.
In 2004, Midway to become more competitive, in the home computer market, started to purchase independent game development studios. Surreal Software of Seattle, Washington was acquired in April 2004 and is the only studio to keep its original name. Surreal Software has been credited for developing The Suffering: Ties That Bind (2005) for Xbox and PS2. Inevitable Entertainment of Austin, Texas, which became Midway Studios - Austin Inc was acquired in October 2004. Midway-Austin has developed the shooter Area 51 (2005). Paradox Development of Moorpark, California was acquired in December 2004 and became Midway Studios - Los Angeles Inc although it is located in Moorpark, California. The studio has developed Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (2005) for Xbox and PS2. On August 4, 2005 Midway acquired the privately owned Australian-based developer Ratbag. The Studio was renamed Midway Studios-Australia, but just four months later the studio was closed. Pitbull Syndicate was acquired by Midway in October 2005, it became Midway Studios - Newcastle, and is located in Newcastle, England. The studio has developed L.A. Rush (2005) for Xbox and PS2.
Midway's European branch called Midway Games Ltd is situated in London, England and has recently branched out into other European countries. Midway Germany GmbH was started in February 2005 and is based in Munich, Midway Germany GmbH publishes, distributes and sells all Midway video games in Germany. The creation of Midway Games SAS was announced in February 2006 and the French division is located in Paris.
Sumner Redstone, the head of Viacom/CBS Corporation, is a large investor in the company; he owned 88% of Midway at the end of 2005.
Midway's products includes games that were landmarks of their time, such as the arcade games Tron (1982), Spy Hunter (1983), Mortal Kombat (1992), and NBA Jam (1993).
Activision
Activision was the first
third-party game developer, and was formed on October 1, 1979. Former music
industry executive Jim Levy and former Atari programmers David Crane, Larry
Kaplan, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead founded the company. Before Activision
all console games were published exclusively by the makers of the systems
for which the games were designed. The programmers at Atari received no credit
in the games manuals or any financial rewards for games that did well and
some of their games were multi-million-dollar best sellers.
Activision's first four releases were cartridges for the Atari 2600 video console system and were Dragster (1980), Fishing Derby (1980), Checkers (1980) and Boxing (1980). The games were popular but for Atari the major embarrassment was that Activision was producing better games for the Atari 2600 than they were themselves. The departure of the four programmers, whose titles made up more than half of Atari's cartridge sales at the time, caused legal action between the two companies, which was not ultimately settled until 1982. Activision grossed $70 million in its first year.
Levy took the approach of crediting and promoting game creators along with the games themselves. This enabled Activision to attract experienced talent to the newly formed company. Crane, Kaplan, Levy, Miller, and Whitehead received the Game Developers Choice "First Penguin" award in 2003 in recognition of this step.
In 1982, Activision released Pitfall!, was first platform game. Pitfall! Was the best selling title on the 2600 and made Activision a huge success. Activision survived the crash of 1983 and branched out into producing game titles for home computers.
In 1985, Activision merged with struggling text adventure pioneer Infocom. Jim Levy was a big fan of Infocom's titles, however, about six months after the 'InfoWedding', Bruce Davis took over as CEO of Activision. Davis had been against the merger from the start, and made some poor management changes as to how Infocom titles were marketed which caused sales of the Infocom games to plummet. In 1989, after several years of losses, Activision closed down the Infocom studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts extending to only 11 of the 26 employees an offer to relocate to Activision's headquarters in Silicon Valley, only 5 took up the offer.
In 1988 Activision started to get involved in other types of software besides video games, such as business applications. Activision changed its corporate name to Mediagenic in order to have a name that would globally represent all its fields of activities. The decision of the company to get involved in various fields at the expense of video gaming proved to be disastrous and in 1992 Mediagenic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The failure of Mediagenic resulted in a reorganization and merger with The Disc Company with Mediagenic again being the acquirer. After emerging from bankruptcy, Mediagenic officially changed its entity name back to Activision in the state of Delaware on December 1992. Activision moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Southern California. Although Activision decided the way forward was to concentrate its business on video gaming, it bought Florida-based Expert Software, maker of Home Design 3D as well as other 'everyday' programs in April 1999.
Activision is now one of the largest third party video game publishers in the world, second only to Electronic Arts.
Home Computing
The first real home computer rather than a hobbyist kit such as the Altair was the Apple II released in 1977 and had a lifetime of a decade in various upgraded forms. Commodore also released the PET in 1977. In 1978, Atari released its 400 and 800 home computers and Intel launched its 8086 processor that would become the basis for the IBM PC. By 1980, the Atari VCS had become the most popular video gaming system in the US. Atari's gross income was $415 million with $77 million in profits in 1980. Atari formed one third of Warner Communication's total annual income and became the fastest growing company in America at this time. Arcade games had been an overnight success creating a rapidly growing computing leisure industry and paved the way for computer gaming in people's homes. By 1980, a fledgling home computer game market as well as video game market had been established in the US.
In the UK, a home grown personal computing industry began, when the British entrepreneur Clive Sinclair developed and sold a number of innovative calculators and home computers that started with his Mk14 in 1977 and culminated with the ZX Spectrum. The ZX Spectrum was sold between 1982 and 1988. The ZX Spectrum was first machine that many of the UK first games programmers would learn their skills on. The BBC Microcomputer made by Acorn was sold in 1981 as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project and brought a high quality and reasonably priced home computer to the UK. By the late 1980s, a fully developed home computer market would be established in the UK that was comprised of IBM-compatible PCs and the cheaper and more games-orientated Atari ST (1985) and the Commodore Amiga range of computers that began in 1985.
Early Game Developers
Up until around 1988, a single game programmer made the vast majority of games. He programmed, did the art and produced any sounds or music, and designed the game in his head as he programmed. The first people to call themselves games designers such as Chris Crawford did so out of inverted snobbery and were really the lead programmer. Eventually specialist graphic artists and musicians were added to form a small studio, which replaced the back bedroom sole developer. However, these artists and musicians were often expected to be programmers as well. Sophisticated game music was if it existed sold as a separate game add on, before it replaced the few sound effects and noises that were standard fare of the earliest games.
Chris Crawford was laid off after the Atari collapse, which resulted from the video game crash of 1983 and setup on his own at a time when a game could be produced for around $25,000. He produced games for the new personal computers such as the Apple. Balance of Power (1985) sold over 250,000 units, it was innovative and pointed the way for intelligent computer games aimed at an intelligent adult audience. Crawford followed up with a number of innovative games, which were not always Commercial successes. These included Patton Versus Rommel (1987), Trust & Betrayal; The Legacy of Siboot (1987), The Global Dilemma: Guns & Butter (1990), Balance of the Planet (1990) and Patton strikes Back (1991). Crawford has remained in the industry and has become an author of books explaining game design principles. Crawford began the Game Developers Conference in 1987, which started as a series of salons held in Crawford's living room with his game design friends and associates.
Cinematronics
Cinematronics Inc. was founded in 1975 by Jim Pierce, Dennis Parte and Gary Garrison in El Cajon, California, although early on in the company's history, Parte and Garrison sold their shares to Tom Stroud. Cinematronics released their first game, Flipperball, in 1976 but it was not very successful. Pong had no copyright protection, so many arcade game companies began by copying that game, right down 2to the circuit board. Unfortunately, these companies, like Cinematronics, had nowhere to go from there and had to look for other sources of product. Cinematronics did not make a splash in the games industry until it brought Larry Rosenthal on board in 1977.
Larry Rosenthal, a student
of MIT, had written his master's thesis on the mainframe computer game - 'Spacewar!'
(1962) and designed a processor board that was inexpensive to produce but
was powerful enough to run a vector graphics version of 'Spacewar!' on an
arcade machine. Rosenthal named his TTL - based board Vectorbeam. After building
a prototype, he showed the machine to various game companies, looking for
a distributor. Rosenthal demanded a 50/50 share of the profits, an unheard
of arrangement that caused nearly all companies to pass on the deal. However,
Cinematronics agreed, as it was running out of funds and was clearly going
to have no success on its current path. The deal was made and the game was
released as Space Wars (1978).
Space Wars was the first arcade game to utilize black & white vector graphics, which enabled it to display sharp, crisp images and were far more detailed than the raster displays of the time. Cinematronics shipped over 30,000 units and was the top selling game in 1978. Nutting's Computer Space (1971) and Atari's Orbit (1978) were based on the same concept, but these games were raster implementations instead of vector.
Pierce and Stroud were happy with the money that Space Wars made them but not with the 50% deal with Rosenthal, who also retained the application patents to his board, which he licensed to Cinematronics. Bill Cravens, who worked as head of sales at Cinematronics' persuaded Rosenthal that he was not getting his proper share of the profits should leave and form his own company and left with the Vectorbeam development system - a piece of plywood with the TTL board, some LEDs and buttons that allowed him to manually punch in Hex op-codes. Pierce and Stroud threatened to sue but an agreement was reached outside of court with Rosenthal agreeing to continue to licence the board to Cinematronics. A new development team was assembled including Tim Skelly, a programmer and Dennis Halverson who create a macro assembler that we ran on a DEC machine. A number of vector graphic arcade games followed starting with Starhawk (1977), Sundance (1979) Warrior (1979), the first one-on-one fighting game, and Speed Freak (1979).
In 1979, Cinematronics bought Vectorbeam, which was failing and it was rapidly closed down after production of Warrior and development of Tail Gunner (1979) were finished. Cinematronics was meant to pay Vectorbeam a license fee to Rosenthal for every game sold. Pierce and Stroud purchased the patents under their own names, not Cinematronics. Now every time a game shipped, Cinematronics had to pay them, personally, as did other companies that later licensed the technology.
Cinematronics experimented with colour overlays on some of their games. In Star Castle (1980), the overlay gave colour to several elements of the game with fixed positions. In Armor Attack (1980), the overlay was itself a part of the game: the overlay was a top-down view of a small set of city streets, and the player drove a jeep through the streets fighting tanks and helicopters. Rip-Off (1980) was the first two-player cooperative video game. Cosmic Chasm (1983) was a colour vector game based on the Motorola's 68000 chip. Other games were developed based on the same hardware system but were never released, including a 3D colour vector game.
The games industry nosed dived in the 1983 Video Games crash and Cinematronics filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Cinematronics partnered with Advanced Microcomputer Systems (later renamed RDI Video Systems), to finish Dragon's Lair (1983), one of the earliest laserdisc-based arcade games. While RDI's home console, the Halcyon, was a failure, the Dragon's Lair arcade was a huge success and was followed up with Space Ace (1984). In 1984, Cinematronics started releasing games, which used raster display, such as Express Delivery (1984) and other raster games based on a new hardware platform called the Cinemat System, which was designed to be reusable with replaceable software, control panels, and cabinet artwork.
In 1987, Cinematronics was acquired by the Leland Corporation and continued to make arcade and PC game software. Ultimately, they were sold to Maxis in 1997 to develop the unreleased Crucible (after developing Full Tilt! Pinball (1995)) and there last published project was Jack Nicklaus 4 for Accolade in 1997.
Infocom
Companies in this early period
were new, small and pioneering. One such company was Infocom, which was founded
on June 22, 1979 by MIT staff and students led by Dave Lebling, Marc Blank,
Al Vezza, and Joel Berez. Marc Blank and Dave Lebling were inspired by one
of the first computer games - Colossal Cave (1976), to create Zork in 1977
at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. The company was started to market
the game to the general public and Zork I was released originally for the
TRS-80 in 1980 and eventually sold more than a million copies across several
platforms. In its first few years of operation, text adventures proved to
be a huge revenue stream for the company and unlike the experience of most
other computer games of the era would achieve initial success and then suffer
a significant drop-off in sales, Infocom titles continued to sell for years
and years. Infocom titles featured strong storytelling and rich descriptions,
eschewing the day's primitive graphic capabilities and had problems that were
art of the storyline, they also used humour effectively. Infocom distributed
their games via bookstores as well as software retailers. The company hired
a few more game "implementers" and went on to create the rest of
the Zork series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984) with collaboration
from Douglas Adams, and A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985), and Leather Goddesses
of Phobos (1986).
It stated to all go wrong for Infocom in 1984 when they started to produce business products and their new database management system, Cornerstone, did not recover its development expenses. The game market itself was shifting into graphic games in the mid to late 1980s. Activison bought the company in 1986 and finally shutdown the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom Zork brand.
SSI
Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI)
was an early US computer developer of wargames and later Role-playing games
and would develop and publisher over 100 titles. Joel Billings, a wargame
enthusiast, founded SSI in 1979. He hired programmers John Lyon and Ed Williger.
Computer Bismarck (1980) was released for the Apple II and TRS-80 and was
written in BASIC. Chuck Kroegel, the co-author with David Landry of many of
the early SSI wargames, joined the company as an employee in 1983 and led
product development for over ten years.
SSI expanded into role-playing games in 1984 with titles such as Wizard's Crown, Questron and the Phantasie series. In 1987, SSI acquired the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) license from TSR and published 30 AD&D titles over the following years, starting with Pool of Radiance in 1988. SSI was acquired by Mindscape in 1994, another early developer of games that started in 1980 publishing on Heath/Zenith personal computers. The group was sold to Mattell in 1999 for around $3.6 billion, which greatly reduced Mattel's stockprice and resulted in the sacking of its CEO. Mindscape again became a separate company in 2002 following the purchase of the Learning Company from the Gore Technology Group and becomes Ubisoft.
The PC
In the meantime, the home computer industry had matured with the development of a standard Personal Computer. In 1981 IBM introduced its Personal Computer with an Intel 8088 microprocessor and an Operating System by Microsoft. A whole industry would evolve from this machine with cheap machines that were compatible with the original IBM machines with Intel processors and parts manufactured by a vast number of different companies and a uniform operating system provided by Microsoft. Software for every task imaginable would be programmed for these PCs.
The computer industry would go through dynamic and turbulent changes in the early 1990s, which saw a period of consolidation. Many of the early home computers and their manufactures such as Tandy/Radio Shack, Atari, and Commodore/Amiga disappeared from the scene. Games manufactures that favoured these formats would have a difficult time switching.
The PC and Macintosh would now fight it out for dominance. The Apple machines, although they had superior graphics and a graphical user interface, came at a higher price and these factors relegated them to specialist use mainly by graphic artists. The Apple machines largely lost their role as game machines for home computing.
Around 1995, the PC had become as equally important as consoles as a gaming platform. Datamonitor in 1996 found that PC games accounted for 33% of the European games market as against 37% for console games and 28% for Console hardware.
The Publishers
The original computers games were sold in zip lock bags at specialist trade fares and a few specialist shops. In the first period of the game industry the individual programmer could write 2-3 titles a year and make a comfortable living off of selling 1,000 copies of each through a few small and specialist software retailers and the hobbyist press in zip lock bags containing the games single floppy disk. As the game industry matured, developers need the support of a publisher would box the game and get it sold through chains of retailers who could reach a large audience.
As hardware became cheaper and more powerful the industry was transformed from a tiny elite group who were rich and new how to program their machines to just about every other kid having a powerful gaming entertainment system that plugged into the family TV. These factors changed the way games were sold and have had continuing implications for what games can be sold to this bigger and less specialist market. Large toy stores, high street music shops and specialist gaming stores all have large amounts of shelf space dedicated to selling the industry wares. By the year 2000 the top 8-10 retail chains, such as Circuit City, CompUSA and Toys R Us, controlled approximately 85% of all game sales in North America.
The first publishers saw a market opening to get games into the stores of the big retailers and manufactured the product by putting in on a floppy disk and into a box, printing the manual and mostly importantly marketed the game to the stores and game buying public. Some publishers also had a development department to polish up the code of the small developers with better artwork or adding game music.
Later publishers would fund a games development by giving a non-refundable advance on anticipated royalties, when the developer reaches certain stages of development, called milestones. Thus, once the game is released the developer receives no royalties until sales have exceeded the amount paid out in the advanced funding. The developers would get the gross wholesale price less cost of goods, returns provision - usually 10%-15%, and in some cases distribution costs. The royalty rate can vary from around 10% to as high as 40% but the industry average was around 15-25%. The publisher manages development risk through a staff of producers who monitor the progress of the developer, and their game and assist and suggest improvements to be made as necessary.
Electronic Arts
The US publisher and developer,
Electronic Arts was established in 1982 by Trip Hawkins on its fiscal year
March 31, 2005, EA had become the world's largest third-party publisher, with
a net revenue of $3.129 billion.
In 1982, Hawkins decided to leave Apple, where he was Director of Product Marketing, to establish his own company, Amazin' Software. The company was set up with $200,000 of Hawkins own capital and later that year he secured another $2 million from venture capitalists. Hawkins plan was to sell games directly to retailers, which no computer software companies were at that time doing. Retailers wanted to buy known brands from existing distribution partners. As no such brands existed Hawkins had to pioneer these new brands. Despite these problems, revenue was $5 million in the first year and $11 million the next. Larry Probst arrived as Vice President of Sales in late 1984 and helped the company reach revenue of $18 million in its third full year by creating the largest sales force of any American game publisher. This policy of dealing directly with retailers gave Hawkins the advantages of higher margins and better market awareness.
In October 1982, the Amazin' Software company name came under criticism and Hawkins declared that they would discuss it all night and come up with a better name. At 2:00 AM the name Electronic Arts was adopted partly because Hawkins had read a best-selling book about the film studio, United Artists, whose company he admired. The name, artists was changed to Art, as they were publishers not artists. Hawkins like the name Electronic, which he believed, summed up their industry.
According to the 1982 business plan, EA's original business goals were to grow to a billion dollar company in about 6 years. At the time, Electronic Arts was the 136th game publisher in the U.S., but the first to reach the billion-dollar goal, although it actually took 12 years. In 1990, EA went public at $ 8 per share but the stock's worth rose to $35 within a year.
EA was the first video game publisher to treat its lead developers like rock stars in an industry where developers are more prone to be treated like nameless factory workers. EA followed Activision lead and games developers were given credit on the box cover and this was taken a step further when EA used "album cover" style packaging in the late 1980s and 1990s as EA believed that the record album style would both save costs and convey an artistic feeling. EA routinely referred to their developers as 'artists' and gave them photo credits in their games and numerous full-page magazine advertisments. EA shared lavish profits with their developers. This star treatment of developers meant that EA could attract the very best developers.
Trip Hawkins left EA to found the now defunct 3DO company in 1991 and was replaced by Probst as CEO but remained Chairman of the Board. With Hawkins gone, EA began to expand by acquiring several smaller development studios primarily for their intellectual property assets, which were used to make relatively run-of-the-mill games on these franchises. EA began developing games in-house in the late 1980s and started supporting consoles in the early 1990s.
EA through its history has avoided controversial titles and its main success has been with sports games published under their EA Sports label. Probst considers himself a man of principle and has refused to have sex or gratuitous violence in EA titles. After the massive success of the M rated Grand Theft Auto (1998) series, Probst was heavily criticized by Wall Street analysts, who believe that his policy was keeping EA's share price lower than it should have been. In late March 2005, Electronic Arts issued its first ever mid-quarter profit warning blaming hardware shortages and lower than expected fourth quarter sales. Probst was forced to back down on this policy and EA now has several M rated, adult titles.
EA has also been quick to close studios when a title did not live up to expectations in a ruthless move not to be come stuck with failing genres. Although some developers see EA's pressure to get titles out on time, caused the games to fail because they were buggy unfinished titles. Many disgruntled ex-employees have left to form their own studios.
EA has also ruthlessly treated its employers demanding extraordinarily long working hours of up to 65 hours per week as a general rule and not just at the busy time leading up to the scheduled releases of products. EA settled a class action lawsuit brought by game artists to compensate for "unpaid overtime" and a $15.6 million payout was made. As a result, many of the lower-level artists are now working at an hourly rate.
In fiscal 2006, EA posted revenue of $2.95 billion (a fall from US$3.129 billion in 2005) and had 27 titles that sold more than one million copies. But on February 1, 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it would cut worldwide staff by 5 percent.
Origin Systems Inc
Origin Systems, Inc of Austin
Texas was the first external development studio to be acquired by EA in September
1992. Origin was founded in 1983 by brothers Robert and Richard ('Lord British')
Garriott their father Owen and Chuck 'Chuckles' Bueche after Richard had terminated
his contract with Sierra On-Line to publish the third part in Richard's Ultima
series, Exodus: Ultima III. Origin were early developers of the Role Playing
genre and are most famous for the Ultima and Wing Commander game series. Under
EA ownership, Origin produced Ultima VIII: Pagan and Ultima IX: Ascension
under EA's ownership, which are considered amongst the worst of the series,
and were aimed at lowest common denominator audience to maximise the sales
market. Even though the releases were on repetitive themes, quality development
work was done.
Origin in 1997, released one of the earliest and most successful graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: Ultima Online. After this title, Electronic Arts decided that Origin would become an online-only company after the completion of Ultima IX in 1999. However, only a year later, EA cancelled all of Origin's new development projects, including Ultima Online 2, Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online. EA Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, which had been established in 1996 as part of Origin, was closed in 2000. Origin remained only to support and expand Ultima Online and to develop further online games based on the Ultima franchise such as Ultima X: Odyssey, originally to be released in 2004 but was later cancelled. In February of 2004, the Origin studio was disbanded by Electronic Arts.
Richard Garriott, Robert Garriott and Starr Long left Origin and founded Destination Games in April 2000. Destination was founded in Austin, Texas to develop massively multiplayer online role-playing games and partnered with South Korean MMORPG giant Ncsoft in 2001. Destination has mainly focused on developing and supporting the North American version of NCsoft's Lineage games.
Bullfrog Productions
Bullfrog Productions in
Surrey, England was acquired in January 1995. Bullfrog was founded in 1987
by Peter Molyneux, and Les Edgar. The company became famous for their third
release, the innovative god game Populous released in 1989. These early original
games gave Peter Molyneux the reputation of being the British Sid Meir. Molyneux
became an Electronic Arts vice-president and consultant in 1994, after EA
purchased a significant share of Bullfrog. EA stopped using the Bullfrog logo
in 2001.
Molyneux left Bullfrog in August 1997 to establish Lionhead Studios. Lionhead set up a network of satellite studios, including Big Blue Box Studios (developers of Fable), Intrepid Games (developers of B.C. which was however suspended due to a massive development cost overrun) and Black & White Studios (who have taken responsibility for the continuation of the Black & White series). However, in mid 2004 Big Blue Box was integrated into the main company and Intrepid was disbanded. The company still maintains separate studios, but they are all now on one site in the Surrey Research Park. Lionhead in October 2004 (shortly before the suspension of BC) had consortium of investors, including Ingenious Ventures, IDG VE and technology firm Add Partners, made a significant investment into the developer. Although in late 2005, Lionhead released Black and White 2 and The Movies, and Fable: The Lost Chapters, which despite critical acclaim from the gaming press did not have significant sales. In April 2006, Lionhead Studios, was acquired by Microsoft. Lionhead will be the part of Microsoft Game Studios, which also includes the acquired studios of Rare Ltd and Bungie Studios.
Manley & Associates
The next EA acquisition was Manley & Associates in 1996. This developer had been making adventure and film tie in games such as the Home Alone (1991) series since 1982. The EA Seattle studio was closed in 2002.
Maxis Software
Maxis Software of Walnut Creek,
California was acquired in 1997 in a $125 million dollar stock transaction
and the studio was moved to Redwood City in 2004. Maxis made realtime socio-economic
strategy simulations such as SimCity and the Sims, which were markedly different
from other games of their time. Maxis was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and
Jeff Braun to publish SimCity on home computers. Wright was the programmer
and designer, his first game was the helicopter action game Raid on Bungeling
Bay (1984) for the Commodore 64. Jeff Braun was an investor interested in
entering the computer game industry and met Wright in 1986. Wright based the
structuralist dynamics of Sim City on the work of two architectural and urban
theorists, Christopher Alexander and Jay Forrester. Publishers were not interested
in Simcity as it had no traditional win or lose conditions and publishers
did not understand the game concept. The protype Simcity had therefore only
achieved limited availability on the Commodore 64. Simcity finally published
in 1989 went on to become one of the most popular and successful video games
of all time. The SimCity series includes SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000
(1999), SimCity 3000: Unlimited (2000), and most recently SimCity 4 (2003).
Maxis followed up Simcity with SimEarth (1990) and SimAnt (1991), SimLife (1992), SimFarm (1993) and SimTower (1994) but none of them achieve the same level of success. Maxis went public in 1995 with a revenue of $38 million but the following year was disastrous. Both SimCopter(1996) and The Crystal Skull (1996), were commercial failures. Maxis also acquired Cinematronics to create a game called Crucible, which was never released. The stock reached $50 a share but then dropped as Maxis posted a loss. These failures left Maxis with no option but to consider acquisition offers. EA acquired Maxis on July 28, 1997.
Wrights most successful game to date is The Sims (2000). It was released despite concern from Electronic Arts that it would be a commercial failure, but it eventually surpassed Myst as the best selling computer game to date. Wright had been thinking about making a virtual doll house ever since the early 1990s, similar to SimCity but focused on individual people. Originally conceived of as an architectural design game called Home Tactics, Wright's idea changed when someone suggested the player should be rated on the quality of life experience by the homeowners. EA had already laid off 40% of the employees at Maxis and the idea was highly original, which gave the producers at EA little to guide them on apart from the mixed record of Maxis. The massive success of the game allowed it to be followed up with seven expansion packs as well as an online version (The Sims Online). The Sims 2 (2004) was a sequel that featured a full 3D environment.
EA closed the traditional Maxis studio at Walnut Creek in February 2004, and the division was absorbed by EA's Redwood Shores headquarters. However, Wright is currently developing a new game Spore in Emeryville, California. Spore will simulate the complete history and future of life from a single-celled organism to an intelligent creature and then guides the creatures society to a spacefaring civilization. There are great expectations for the game as Wright's success with Simcity and The Sims has gained a reputation as one of the Worlds great game designers.
Other Acquisitions and Partnerships
In July 1998, EA acquired ABC Software to establish a direct sales organization in Switzerland and Austria. In August 1998, EA makes investments and entered into along term development agreement with software developer Kodiak Interactive, who will develop WWF wrestling titles for EA.
Westwood Studios
Westwood Studios in Las Vegas,
Nevada was acquired as part of Virgin Interactive in 1998. EA Pacific (known
for a time as Westwood Pacific) in Irvine, California was closed in 2003.
Westwood Studios was a computer and video game developer, founded in 1985
as Westwood Associates by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle and based in Las Vegas,
Nevada. The company's first projects consisted of contract work for companies
like Epyx and Strategic Simulations (SSI), porting 8-bit titles to 16-bit
systems like Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. This conversion work allowed the
company to expand into developing their own games. Their first original title
was Mars Saga (1998), which was developed for Electronic Arts. Westwood's
first major success was Eye of the Beholder (1990), a role-playing game based
on the Dungeons & Dragons license, developed for SSI. Other publishers
of early Westwood games included Infocom and Disney.
In 1992, the company was renamed Westwood Studios and sold to Virgin Interactive. Well-known Westwood titles from this period include strategy game, Dune II (1992), the adventure game, The Legend of Kyrandia (1992) and the role-playing game, Lands of Lore (1993). Westwood's greatest commercial success came in 1995, with the release of real-time strategy game Command & Conquer. It used the gameplay and interface ideas of Dune II, but added pre-rendered 3D graphics sprites and cut-scenes used video cinematics and it a techno soundtrack.
EA together with the Westwood Studios, acquired a development studio in Irvine, California. It was managed by Westwood and became known as Westwood Pacific (later EA Pacific). Westwood Pacific developed or co-developed games like the RPG Nox (2000) and the Command & Conquer sequel Red Alert 2 (2000).
One of the last games released by Westwood, Command & Conquer: Renegade (2002) a first-person shooter set in the world of Command & Conquer. However, it failed to meet consumer expectations and EA's commercial sales target. In March of 2003, Westwood Studios (along with EA Pacific), which employed around 100 staff was closed by EA and all willing staff were transferred to the EA Los Angeles studio. Their last games were the MMORPG Earth & Beyond which ran from 2002-2004 and the RTS Command & Conquer: Generals 2003).
A new game studio, Petroglyph, was formed consisting mainly of former Westwood employees in April 2003. They have developed the RTS game Star Wars: Empire at War (2006) from their employees experience making the Command &Conquer games.
Kesmai
EA in late 1999 setup up an Internet Business Division to develop content for AOL and Internet. As part of this business move EA in November, 1999 acquired Kesmai, the online game unit of NewsCorp. Kesmai, was founded in 1981 by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor, they had developed a game called Dungeons of Kesmai while in graduate school in 1980. Kesmai developed the first ASCII-based or Rogue (1980) like Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), called Islands of Kesmai (1985), which ran on CompuServe. The company was best known for running the combat flight sim Air Warrior (1987) online service on the Genie, which was the first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The company was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in 1994. The company continued to develop massively multiplayer games such as Air Warrior 2 (1997) and Legends of Kesmai (1996), distributing their games through AOL and eventually their own gaming service, GameStorm. Electronic Arts closed the Kesmai Studios in 2001.
Criterion Software
In July 2004, Criterion Software and Criterion Games were acquired by Electronic Arts from Canon Inc. for an undisclosed sum, that was rumoured to be around £40 million. Criterion Software Ltd was created in 1993 to commercialise 3D graphics rendering technology created by Canon's European Research Lab. The two co-founders were both previously employed by Canon.
Criterion Software specialises in the development of the RenderWare family of middleware technology, including graphics, AI, audio and physics components. Rendware has been used in over 500 games by such industry heavyweights as Activision, Atari, EA, Konami, Midway, Rockstar Games, Sammy Studios, SCEA, Sony Online, THQ, Ubisoft and VUG. The successful Burnout (2001) series, was developed in house using RenderWare by Criterion Games, a division of Criterion Software which is based in Guildford, England. Criterion Software employs around 230 people and has offices in Austin, Guildford, Vancouver, Derby, Paris and Tokyo.
After the purchase, both Criterion and EA declared that RenderWare would continue to be made available to third party customers.
Ubisoft
In December 2004, EA acquired 19.9% of Ubisoft through the Dutch media company Talpa Beheer BV. Ubisoft by 2004 had become the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the seventh largest in the US. Ubisoft considered it a hostile move.
Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment
In January 2005, EA acquired 19% Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE). On March 17, 2006 DICE issued a press release stating that the company will be merged with EA. As of 2004 the total value of the company was estimated at approximately $55 million.
DICE is a Swedish video game developer that was founded in 1988 and was started by members of the former demo group The Silents. The company's first office was a dormitory room at Växjö University. The company developed pinball games for the Amiga 500, such as Pinball Dreams (1992), Pinball Fantasies (1995) and Pinball Illusions (1995). In 1998 the company was registered on the Swedish stock exchange and experienced tremendous growth.
In 2000, Dice acquired Stockholm-based studio Refraction Games who had made Codename Eagle (1999) an alternative history adventure game. The engine from this was used to make the hugely successful Battlefield 1942 (2002) and its sequels and expansions.
DICE has an addition studio called CE Digital Illusions Canada, Inc. and is located in London, Ontario. The studio was acquired from Sandbox Studios in 2001.
New Business Directions
In November 2005, EA teamed up with Nettwerk Music Group to launch EA Recordings, a digital music distribution label that brings EA's catalogue of wholly owned musical compositions and remixes to Digital Service Providers worldwide.
EA in December 2005, opened a new development studio in Singapore, which will customise popular EA games into at least five different languages for distribution throughout the Asia region.
Jamdat
In December 205, EA acquired Jamdat Mobile, Inc for $680 million which publishes games for mobile phones, PDAs and PCs and became EA mobile.
Jamdat was founded by Scott Lahman and Zack Norman, two ex-Activision executives, in March of 2000. They were joined in November of that year by Mitch Lasky, who had also worked at Activision, and became the CEO of Jamdat. Jamdat grew rapidly and went public in 2004. Jamdat had offices in Los Angeles, Montreal, London, Tokyo, Hyderabad, and Honolulu.
As a publishing company in the wireless video game industry, Jamdat's primary service is linking game developers, with wireless telecommunications service providers or "carriers", such as Sprint, Verizon, and Cingular, as well as many minor North American and some major European and Asian carriers, who sell the games to their customers.
Jamdat most well-known products include their series of bowling games - Jamdat Bowling and Jamdat Bowling 2, a mobile conversion of the widely-known PC puzzle game Bejeweled, a conversion for Pocket PC of the PC game Worms World Party and their NFL, NBA, and MLB -branded games, in addition to holding the license for the mobile version of Tetris.
Mythic Entertainment
On June 20, 2006 EA purchased Mythic Entertainment based in Fairfax, Virginia, with the full 175 man team in place including all the company heads, which became EA Mythic. Mythic had been listed on the Deloitte Technology 500 list of fastest growing, by revenue, technology companies in North America since 2002 and were successful in developing and running online games a growth games area that EA needed.
Mythic has a complicated history and evolved out of Adventures Unlimited Software Inc. (AUSI) that was founded in 1984 when it launched Aradath, a commercial online RPG that charged players $40 per month. AUSI later developed games for GEnie, creating an online version of Diplomacy with Eric Raymond in 1990 and another online RPG Dragon's Gate. Mark Jacobs was the president of AUSI and he and other employees would later work for Mythic.
Interworld Productions was formed by Mark Jacobs and Rob Denton in 1995. However, another "Interworld" had been founded in the same year the company changed its name to Mythic Entertainment in November 1997. The new company transferred Dragon's Gate (1985) from GEnie to America Online in 1996. Mythic made a number of online games in the late 1990s, ranging from online action first-person shooters to online RPGs such as Starship Troopers: Battlespace (1998) and Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict (1999). In March 2001, Silent Death: Online (1999) was transferred from AOL to the EA.com Platinum game service, where it resided for 8 months before EA ended the service.
Mythic spent $2.5 million, more than double the sum used to develop previous games with Dark Age of Camelot (2001) published by Vivendi Universal. This was at a time when all game budgets had increased massively in size. DAOC was also the company's first massively multiplayer online role-playing game and was very successful for the company.
Mythic received the largest investment given to an independent game developer when TA Associates invested $32 million in March 2003. Mythic has had developments problems and cancelled its game Imperator in 2005 just before it was due to be launched. In 2005 Mythic acquired a licence from Games Workshop to develop an online version of the miniatures fantasy wargame - Warhammer, just before been bought by EA.
U.S. Gold
U.S. Gold a British publisher
was an offshoot of Centresoft, a computer game distribution company. Geoff
Brown founded U.S. Gold in 1984 to publish popular American Atari and Commodore
64 games made by small start-up developers that were too small to sell their
products across the Atlantic by themselves. The company later converted them
to other popular 8-bit home computer formats in the European market, such
as the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. The company would expand by seeking out
licences that they could commercialise, acquiring smaller developers such
as Core Design and they founded there own developer Silicon Dreams. However,
as the industry changed a number of their more lucrative licensing deals,
particularly one with LucasArts (formerly Lucasfilm Games), fell through,
threatening their income. To consolidate their finances, they joined forces
with UK software distributor CentreSoft to form the CentreGold PLC Group.
However, not long after the group was acquired by Eidos Interactive in April
1996. Eidos sold off CentreSoft and maintained Core Design as a developer
but decided to discontinue the U.S. Gold brand. Silicon Dreams was sold back
to U.S. Gold founder Geoff Brown and became the keystone for his new development
venture Geoff Brown Holdings (GBH).
Brown founded AudioMotion, a GBH company that supported game developers with audio, video, CG and motion capture production services. GBH acquired Attention To Detail in March 1997. ATD started life in 1988 and was founded by five graduates from Birmingham University, and had started life making built business software and designing electronics for arcade machines before switching to game development. ATD produced such titles as Cybermorph (1993) and Blast Chamber (1997). Under GBH ownership its most successful game was Rollcage (1999), a futuristic racing game published worldwide by SONY-Psygnosis on both PlayStation and PC. ATD had grown to 75 employees working in a converted barn in Warwickshire. The group changed its name to the Kaboom Group. A further acquisition of Kaboom was Pivotal Games which had been formed in March 2000 in an another converted barn in Bath, releasing its first title: Conflict: Desert Storm (2002). Kaboom Group ceased trading in August 2003. Attention To Detail and Silicon Dreams were closed while SCi acquired Pivotal Games.
Microprose
One company that developed
and published computer games in this early home computer period but failed
to change with the times was MicroProse Software, Inc. Microprose was an American
video game developer founded in 1982 by Sid Meir and Bill Stealey. MicroProse
was primarily known as a publisher of flight and military simulation titles
for 8-bit home computers such as the Commodore 64, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit
family. As the industry changed, it moved with it, supporting IBM PC compatibles
and 68000-based machines like the Amiga and Atari ST. Also in the mid- to
late-1980s, MicroProse began publishing a number of strategy games.
In 1990 and 1991 it released the blockbusters Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, which quickly became two of the best-selling strategy games of all time. However, the company quickly ran into financial trouble because it followed those releases with a large number of titles into a saturated market. It also made an unsuccessful venture into the creation of an arcade flight simulator.
In 1993, MicroProse was acquired by Spectrum Holobyte. Both brand names continued until 1996, when the combined company consolidated all of its titles under the MicroProse brand. The hit games it produced included majority of Meier's hit computer games, such as Silent Service (1985), Pirates (1987), Railroad Tycoon (1990), Civilization (1991) which defined a number of game genres. Microprose were also the publishers of the highly thought of Geoff Crammond's Formula One Grand Prix (1992) and the sci-fi X-COM (1994) series
A lot of talent left Microprose to found their own companies in this period. Sid Meier and Jeff Briggs departed the company after the buyout, forming a new company called Firaxis Games in 1996. The company continued to produce ground breaking games by Sid Meier including Gettysburg (1997) and Antietam (1998), SimGolf (2002), with Will Wright developer of SimCity and The Sims, Civilization III (2001) and IV (2005), and Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004). On November 7, 2005, Take-Two Interactive acquired Firaxis. The company was consolidated with PopTop Software in March of 2006, the resultant combined studio is headed up by Sid Meier.
Bill Stealey founded Interactive Magic in 1994 after the buyout of Microprose. I-Magic was a prolific developer and publisher of Flight simulators and strategy games in the late 1990s. Like the earlier experience of Microprose this proved unprofitable and the company stopped publishing games in 2000, acquired Interactive Creations Incorporated (ICI), the maker of Warbirds and formed I-Magic Online to move into on-line gaming. Stealey left the company in 1999 but was subsequently asked to return as CEO in 2002, when the on-line gaming side failed.
A core group of disillusioned artists, designers and programmers left MicroProse UK to join Psygnosis, which opened an office in Stroud, UK, specifically to attract ex-MicroProse employees.
Psygnosis
Psygnosis, the British publisher
and developer began like in 1984 after the collapse of 8-bit game company,
Imagine, the now unemployed Financial Director, Ian Hetherington joined with
Jonathan Ellis to form a new company. Imagines name and trademarks were bought
by Ocean Software, while the rights of the software remained with original
copyright owners. Psygnosis in the late 1980s employed a group of artists
at is Liverpool headquarters to improve the art of third-party developers
who were often just single programmers.
Pysgnosis main game innovation was the introductory cut scene which began with Obliterator (1989), which paved the way for increasingly sophisticated intro animations, starting with 2D hand drawn sequences, and then progressing into 3D rendered movies created with Sculpt 4D on the Amiga. Eventually, Psygnosis would buy many Silicon Graphics workstations for the sole purpose of creating these animations. Psygnosis like over developers of the mid to late 1980s produced identical games for the Amiga and Atari ST, but Psygnosis started to use the full potential of the Amiga's more powerful hardware to produce technically stunning games which brought the company success, starting with Shadow of the Beast (1989) with advanced multi-layered parallax scrolling and stunning music.
Although Psygnosis published many titles few of them, were genre defining and were more marked by a trendy pop culture than a gaming ethos. The company had its greatest success with the Lemmings (1991) titles and under Sony was notable for its marketing of Wipeout (1995) using costly TV adverts that likened the gameplay to drug addiction. Psygnosis was acquired by Sony in 1993 who believed they needed their own in-house developer to ensure the success of the PlayStation and in March 1999 lost the Psygnosis branding to become known as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Studio Liverpool.
More to follow
Copyright: 1998 and 2006 Mark Gallear
