[game_preservation] U.S. Crash was Re: Generations standards?

[Henry E Lowood]

I guess you then. :)
Henry

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Goldberg" <wgungfu at gmail.com>
To: "IGDA Game Preservation SIG" <game_preservation at igda.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 2:50:24 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] U.S. Crash was Re: Generations standards?

Hi Henry, not sure if you meant to address me, Devin, or both with the
below since the dual management statement was mine.

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:

> Devin,

>

> One point I wanted to address: From what several Atari veterans have told me

> (some pretty high up), Warner was running the company.  Some of the key

> people (Bushnell, Alcorn) left or were pushed out,


By the time Nolan left, he wasn't really doing much with the company
of his own accord.  After he quit, he had second thoughts and wanted
to try and by the company back (we have a copy of the letter with him
crying about it) - but of course it was to late.  He wasn't really
pushed out, though has gone back and forth on that in his recounts
over the years.  But then that's Nolan, you have to take just about
everything he says with a grain of salt.


> and the Warner brass were

> making the key decisions about product development by the early 1980s.   I'm

> not sure that "dual management" is the right term to use by this time, it

> was Warner management.


I'm not sure if what you mean to imply by that is the people in place
in management at Atari during the late 70's were all people brought in
by Warner vs. people that had been there earlier.  That is not what I
was addressing with the dual management comment, and is more of a
statement of what went on after the takeover.

Literally, you actually had a dual management situation going on by
the early 80's where you had a full management structure at Atari
Inc., lead by Ray, making decisions, creating projects, etc.  Then you
had Warner (Steve and Manny) coming in at their own behest and many
times counteracting, conflicting, and outright bypassing the
management at Atari Inc.  It was a common complaint of all the
different team members and project people I've talked to from that
time period (early 80's) when trying to nail down what went wrong.
And trust me, we've talked to the same higher ups all the way one
down, from just about every period.  A perfect example was the high
end 68000 based dual processor next generation computer that was being
worked on in one of the divisions (under Atari management and
supervision).  When it came time to demonstrate it to visiting Warner
brass, they went through the whole presentation and then asked "Yes,
but it isn't a game, is it?" and summarily brought the axe down on it.
 This was a common occurrence during that early 80's period, with
Atari Inc. throwing a lot of money in to next gen computers and
consoles, only to have them canceled by Warner management.  Look at
the Spielberg E.T. licensing issue, which was initially pursued by
Atari Inc. management and then dropped completely because they felt it
was too expensive a deal.  They had offered their most expensive
licensing ever, $1 million and 7 percent royalties and MCA/Universal
wanted more.  Fast forward a few months and Steve Ross has been
courting Spielberg to come over to Warner Bros. for his future films.
The E.T. deal wound up being one of his many "gestures".  He flies
Spielberg in to New York to stay at his place for a 4 day weekend, and
proceeds to make the deal at Atari's expense by offering a guaranteed
$23 million royalty to him for E.T. for simply licensing the name and
the image of E.T. itself.  He further guaranteed creative input to the
game, and Spielberg's demand that it be ready and in stores that
Christmas - mind you this was summer time already.  Also realize, the
$23 million Atari was now saddled with was just for licensing, and did
not include production costs (coding, art, manufacturing, etc.) and
advertising (which was another $75 million alone).  According to
Kassar, they had to manufacture and sell 4 million of them just to
make a profit.  The most expensive game Atari had ever produced, on a
game they had already decided not to do, all so Ross could woo
Spielberg.



>

> Some of this is in my oral history with Al Alcorn.

>

> Henry


Al's a great guy, and has been helpful with a lot of things.  Ralph
was actually the reason for him getting out more doing appearances at
museums and events (including a couple they were at together), trying
to get Al more credit for the things he did that Nolan usually takes
credit for.  Actually worked with Al on doing the logic level
simulations of the arcade PONG and Breakout for the current Atari a
number of years ago.  Learned a lot of undocumented bugs (what he
calls "features"), design decisions, and more that he decided to share
during the process.


Marty
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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
     Film & Media Collections
HRG, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall, Stanford University Libraries
Stanford CA 94305-6004 USA
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
lowood at stanford.edu; 650-723-4602