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Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen

by Chris Remo, Jul 06, 2006 8:21am PDT
Related Topics – Atari

Next Generation has a rather depressing story up about several groundbreaking game studios that are now either defunct or devoid of their former glory. Five names are covered, four of which are easily recognized to veteran PC gamers: Atari, Origin Systems, Sierra On-Line, Black Isle Studios, and Looking Glass. In addition to the straightforward history it delivers, the article depicts a frighteningly common scenario among independent developers to practically vanish into thin air--as opposed to publishing entities such as Sierra and Atari, which tend to hang around for years in zombie form.

The story of Looking Glass is the familiar ahead-of-their-time tale. Now we can easily look back and say, hey – these guys are responsible for most of the best things that have happened in the last decade, so why did they take so long to get recognized? The answer's pretty simple: there was almost always someone cheaper, faster, simpler, or louder. If Ultima Underworld had been free, easy to run, and easy to play, Wolfenstein wouldn't have stood a chance against it. On the other hand, it also wouldn't have been Ultima Underworld. For nearly a decade, Looking Glass pushed so far that nobody could keep up. It's only after they vanished that it became clear what we had all been missing.
The article closes with an interesting contrast between the survival instincts of Western developers, many of which seem saddled with untimely expiration dates, and their Japanese counterparts, which tend to exhibit surprising resilience. It is almost paradoxical; despite the mainstream Japanese games industry being arguably more single-minded than the Western industry, that market seems somehow better equipped to support a range of smaller developers that still exist in the high-end development space rather than casual gaming--even if occasionally their games find a stronger audience over here than back home.


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Comments

32 Threads | 152 Comments
  • #134
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    By: playfulpassion x
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    I'm not surprised that so many people keyed into the "men in suits" parts of the story.

    Whiny gamers love to blame as many problems as possible on big, bad, evil corporate publisher types.

    But, if you read the article carefully, you'll see that it wasn't always the publisher that screwed things up.

    Sometimes the developer blew through their money and had nothing to show for it.

    Sometimes the market suddenly shifted focus, leaving a particular genre or technology in the cold.

    Sometimes gamers didn't buy the games because they didn't like them.

    I think it's really, really sad that some of these companies are gone. Nearly every game that article listed I played at one point or another. But let's not oversimplify the issue and make this yet another spin on the "Boo Hoo Death Of PC Gaming Publishers Are Evil" tilt-a-wheel.
    Jul 06, 2006 7:04pm PDT