Meet The Programmer Behind Atari's Legendarily Bad Videogame 'E.T.' (thehustle.co) 57
An anonymous reader quotes The Hustle:
Once the most highly coveted game developer -- a hit-maker with the Midas touch -- he had been immortalized as the man who created E.T., the "worst" video game in history. But Howard Scott Warshaw's story, like that of Atari, is a parable about corporate greed and the dangers of prioritizing quantity over quality... His first game, Yars' Revenge -- a story about mutated houseflies under siege -- took him 7 months to develop, and went through another 5 months of rigorous play-testing. When it hit the shelves in May of 1982, it became Atari's biggest 2600 game of all time, selling more than 1m copies.
The success of this game netted Warshaw a high-profile follow-up assignment: the video game adaptation of the Steven Speilberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Released in November of 1982 after 10 months of development, this, too, was a 1m-copy seller. Warshaw soon became known as the game designer with the golden touch -- and his success earned him rockstar status. According to press reports, he purportedly pulled in $1m a year and was "hounded for autographs by a devoted cult following of teenagers."
But in mid-1982, Atari had also begun to shift its business strategy in the games department. In its earlier days, Atari gave programmers ample time (5-10 months) to create and develop innovative games. But that window closed when the company realized that the real road to riches was in licensing the rights to films.... The typical game took 1k hours' worth of work over 6 months. Warshaw had less than 36 hours to come up with a concept [for his E.T. game] to present to Hollywood's hottest director. Worse yet, he had just 5 weeks to finish the game... Warshaw's only option was to create a small, simple, replayable game -- something with few moving parts that he could implement quickly. Less than 2 days later, he was standing in a conference room in Burbank, pitching his design to Spielberg: The player would guide E.T. through a landscape filled with pits, and collect pieces of a phone while evading FBI agents.
"He just looked at me and said, 'Can't you just do something like Pac-Man?'" recalls Warshaw. "But eventually, he approved it."
Warshaw then put in 500 hours over the next 5 weeks, "doing everything he could to make something halfway decent in the time he was given," the site reports.
"Unfortunately for Warshaw, the flop of E.T. coincided with a much graver event: The video game crash of 1983. A flood of low-quality, hastily created games, coupled with the rise of the personal computer, led to a moment of reckoning: In the 2 years following the release of E.T., the video game industry saw its revenue fall from $3.2B to just $100m -- a 97% decline..."
Warshaw gave up programming and became a real estate broker, and then a psychotherapist, the article concludes. "But true insiders knew that E.T. was merely a symptom -- not the cause -- of the crash."
The success of this game netted Warshaw a high-profile follow-up assignment: the video game adaptation of the Steven Speilberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Released in November of 1982 after 10 months of development, this, too, was a 1m-copy seller. Warshaw soon became known as the game designer with the golden touch -- and his success earned him rockstar status. According to press reports, he purportedly pulled in $1m a year and was "hounded for autographs by a devoted cult following of teenagers."
But in mid-1982, Atari had also begun to shift its business strategy in the games department. In its earlier days, Atari gave programmers ample time (5-10 months) to create and develop innovative games. But that window closed when the company realized that the real road to riches was in licensing the rights to films.... The typical game took 1k hours' worth of work over 6 months. Warshaw had less than 36 hours to come up with a concept [for his E.T. game] to present to Hollywood's hottest director. Worse yet, he had just 5 weeks to finish the game... Warshaw's only option was to create a small, simple, replayable game -- something with few moving parts that he could implement quickly. Less than 2 days later, he was standing in a conference room in Burbank, pitching his design to Spielberg: The player would guide E.T. through a landscape filled with pits, and collect pieces of a phone while evading FBI agents.
"He just looked at me and said, 'Can't you just do something like Pac-Man?'" recalls Warshaw. "But eventually, he approved it."
Warshaw then put in 500 hours over the next 5 weeks, "doing everything he could to make something halfway decent in the time he was given," the site reports.
"Unfortunately for Warshaw, the flop of E.T. coincided with a much graver event: The video game crash of 1983. A flood of low-quality, hastily created games, coupled with the rise of the personal computer, led to a moment of reckoning: In the 2 years following the release of E.T., the video game industry saw its revenue fall from $3.2B to just $100m -- a 97% decline..."
Warshaw gave up programming and became a real estate broker, and then a psychotherapist, the article concludes. "But true insiders knew that E.T. was merely a symptom -- not the cause -- of the crash."
Smart move (Score:4, Insightful)
"Warshaw gave up programming and became... a psychotherapist..."
A very logical move. Many of us who have worked in the software industry have concluded that it is, indeed, a branch of the study of mental abnormality.
Computers are eminently logical and consistent. If only one didn't have to interact with the human beings who keep infiltrating into the system.
Computers fail at anything imprecise. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what people don't get: Feelings and emotions ARE logic!
Feelings catch all those things where there is not enough information to be precise about it. (Like damn well *everywhere*.)
They are also the basis of every logical thought. (Source: Famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.)
And emotions do the same thing for determining your general course of action with an incomplete data set.
Without them, you'd have to do a statistically significant peer-reviewed double-blind study if the floor is still there, every time you want to step out of bed. :)
If you could even determine what you "want"...
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Your definition sounds curiously similar to religion. For example, accusing someone of witchcraft and punishing them for it due to lack of explanation of what the so-called "witch" was really up to.
I agree that emotions/feelings are necessary to guide us, but also that relying on them too much in the face of available information can be a mistake. For example, I "feel" like this casino machine is going to pay out any time, despite statistics showing it's very unlikely.
Re: Computers fail at anything imprecise. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Really? He went in to great detail to explain why the "gamblers fallacy" does not apply to certain kinds of gambling machines due to the laws in some states.
His claims can all be independently verified.
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there have to be failsafes to trigger payouts or else the machine becomes noncompliant
What jurisdictions require that? "Forced payouts" were certainly not required when I was developing gambling machines in Australia, and would likely have been considered illegal.
The random number source is verified statistically, yes, and the payout percentage is determined by the reel layout or equivalent, but the analyses of these was all the regulatory authority wanted to ensure the punters would get the average payout that the machine was certified for.
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I agree that emotions/feelings are necessary to guide us, but also that relying on them too much in the face of available information can be a mistake.
Don't confuse prejudices with emotions. If someone has a prejudice about doing/not doing something -- i.e. a fixed idea -- even though they undoubtedly have an emotional framework that supports it, it is the fact that it is an invariant idea not amenable to updating from evidence that makes is harmful, not the emotions associated with it.
The essential thing that emotions do is allow us to attach values to outcomes.
Is a decision that gets you an ice cream cone now, but creates an not insignificant risk to yo
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Also, motivation. Why do you work in the software industry? Why do you build your own electronics? Could it be because you "like" or "enjoy" doing so?
Dystopian stories where people have been modified to have no emotions don't seem logical to me, because they still involve people going to work in the morning and raising families. To me, it doesn't make sense to do anything if I don't feel anything. Of course, we often do less enjoyable things for work if it enables something nice in the long run, but the
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Computers aren't that logical or consistent because they are designed by humans. Most CPUs have some weirdness somewhere, and older ones that were not built from HDLs especially so. Actually even when HDLs became standard people often came to rely on certain behaviour only to discover later that it wasn't guaranteed or part of the test suite when the silicon gets revised.
Then you have stuff like the Rowhammer attack which relies on physics and the way the electrical side of the system was designed.
Re: Smart move (Score:2)
Worst? (Score:2)
Have you played Big Rigs Over The Road Racing?
It gets that same title.
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Re: Worst? (Score:3)
Desert Bus was intentionally bad as an attempt to be performance art.
Re: Worst? (Score:2)
Mod +1, "YOU'RE WINNER!"
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Hong Kong 97. Though it may be disqualified for being mostly a parody of how shitty games can be. Considering the goal was to create the crappiest game possible, one could say that it was a pretty good effort.
It's been fixed (Score:5, Informative)
Back in 2013: Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 [neocomputer.org]
Howard was given a copy on cartridge at the dig in New Mexico.
ET was a good game (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: ET was a good game (Score:2)
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rather than parroting critics and journalists.
Just because one agrees with critics and journalists doesn't mean they're "parroting" them. I was able to play ET all the way through with my cousin, then we put it away and went back to games we enjoyed more. That's not to say people like you who enjoyed it are wrong, but you can't pretend the dislike came from nowhere just because you don't agree. It was critically panned on release, long before the internet was in every home. Almost unanimously, from what I remember. A lot of us played it anyway, because
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I tried playing it recently, for the first time. It was very different than most games I know (the fact that you can do different things based on where you stand), and it had shitty collision detection. I do agree that it's not as worse as people make it out to be. Hell, I'd probably prefer it over some RPGs and other interactive movies pretending to be games.
Re: shitty collision detection (Score:2)
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I've played it. Found it rubbish and boring. Are you going to dismiss me now as one of those critics you hate?
People can have opinions. The biggest turds in history are praised by some. You like the game then more power two you. I along with critics regret the time I wasted playing it.
Re: ET was a good game (Score:5, Insightful)
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They fully expected to sell a load of 2600 units as well during the holiday season. Why they did is beyond me, considering that the market was more than saturated, but hey, it's probably be a really cold day in the red guy's lair when I understand the logic of C-Levels.
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Oh you must be talking about the great video game crash that happend at the same time and was mentioned in the article.
ET sold quite well actually (Score:2)
Atari made more ET carts than there were 2600s, assuming folks would buy an Atari to play ET. That might have worked actually, but there was a huge economic crash right as ET was being released. That meant stores got stuck with a lot of video games they couldn't sell. Back then focus groups and market research were in their infancy, so retailers just assumed the game fad was over and stopped sto
Nintendo wanted Atari as partner, they said no... (Score:2)
Ah but the there is a twist. In the 80ies, Nintendo approached Atari to distribute their console in America, they originally didn't want to do it themselves. Atari said no, the rest is history...
One would think people learned their lesson, but alas. In the 90ies it was Sony that approached Nintendo, for a CD console add on for the SFC (SNES), even a couple prototypes were made (found and repaired by some youtuber) this was the Playstation, Nintendo said no, the rest is history...
You know the biggest irony?
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IIRC it was for tax/tariff reasons. That way it could be declared as a toy and not a computer which was cheaper to import.
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Back in the day, I tried and gave up multiple times to understand the E.T. game. I figured I must be missing something, just couldn't figure out what I needed to do. Never did figure it out. Considering the poor guy's development deadline, it's amazing it didn't crash spectacularly. No wonder he left the industry.
I spent a lot of time playing Yar's Revenge, though.
The "game crash" they mention reminds me of the smart phone gold rush of low quality apps. The first people to come out with 99 cent apps th
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This was my experience and sentiment precisely.
I still have one of those joysticks with Yar's Revenge and composite video out. At one time it hooked up to an HDMI converter for the kids to enjoy.
Re: ET was a good game (Score:2)
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True, it wasn't really an awful game. It was complicated (which was quite unusual for an Atari 2600 game), it was quite monotonous (which was anything but unusual for an Atari 2600 game), but in general it was by no means any worse than many other Atari 2600 games.
My guess is that it got its title simply because it happened at the same time as the market crash. Much like the Dot.Com Superbowl ads (and the ensuing lack of response) were not the reason that the dot.com bubble blew up, it merely happened at th
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I played it back in the day (Score:3)
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The pits were hard to get out of due to the way the controls worked. Frequently you'd levitate out of the pit only to plummet back down into one when switching screens (which would switch up your control scheme). It took a lot of work to figure out how to transition from the side-scroller viewpoint to the isometric viewpoint.
You say work (Score:2)
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All they had to do was not have any control scheme that would lead you to re-enter the pit once you figured out how to get out of it on the side-scrolling portion. Just keep you afloat, and let you drift past the edge and onto solid ground. That was it. It's not like you were falling back down for lack of energy either (once you ran out, it was game over). There shouldn't have been any way to have an "oops" and fall back into the pit once you levitated out. It was a terrible design on what was supposed
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Just keep you afloat, and let you drift past the edge and onto solid ground.
That was exactly how it worked.
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Let me write this down... (Score:3)
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SO, it sounds like testing of software is good for the final product?
I wouldn't know about that, but I am certain that testing is terrible for time to market ;)
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That's why today it's been done so widely. Every single customer is a beta tester.
The game was rushed for X-mas (Score:3)
another old sw engineer found (Score:1)
I often wonder what happens to "old" software engineers. Their numbers seem to keep halving the older they get. I have seen some become sheep farmers, cosmetologists, or whatever. Interestingly this person did not go crazy in the end but rather someone to help us all after doing too much software engineering. A psychotherapist. Maybe he could specialize in treating burnt out software engineers. Good experience.
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It's been a long time ... (Score:2)
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What's bad about it is that nothing was learned from it.