Lecture+13+Notes

= __Lecture 13 Notes__ = ===For the Fall 2010 Discussion Board, Click [|HERE] ===

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 * Atari started its consumer-division to create software for VCS
 * Didn't search country or schools for programmers – put ads in local newspapers
 * Surprisingly, great deal of programmers responded who could get power from VCS
 * Alan Miller – Cal-Berkley Graduate
 * Addicted to coin-op games like late in college – responded to Atari's newspaper ad
 * Hired as one of first consumer-division programmers
 * Early consumer games had 1 programmer responsible for entire game creation
 * Coin-Op division had teams making games – consumer division only 1 person
 * Included game programming, in-game graphics/artwork, sound effects, even music
 * Great deal of early games based off of arcade hits – made things easier on programmers
 * Combat – one of 1st VCS games – based off of Kee Games Tank
 * Combat claimed to have 27 unique games – really just a few variations on Tank
 * 5 Tank games with different mazes – 4 Tank Pong – 5 Invisible Tank
 * 6 Biplane and 7 Jet-Fighter – basically Tank with plane or jet icons instead of tanks
 * Miller didn't create combat – did create other arcade-based games
 * 1st assignment for Miller – create a knock-off of a specific type of arcade game
 * Design had player controlling a moving dot – created a growing line behind it
 * Goal to trap other player's dot within your own line
 * Final VCS game called Surround
 * Giving programmers existing concepts sped up production
 * VCS versions of popular Atari hits common – Pong, Breakout, etc.
 * Other early games not based off of existing arcade concepts – still incredibly simple
 * Next, Miller created games based on real-world games – Hangman and Concentration
 * Second-generation VCS games a little more complex
 * Miller decided to create VCS game based on basketball
 * Final game – Basketball - One-on-One game – Player Vs. Player or Player Vs. Computer
 * Complex graphics (for the time) – Recognizable human figures (stick figures)
 * Course drawn in perspective – used trapezoidal shapes to simulate “realistic” 3D look
 * Simple by today's standard – big step in home-game realism for late 1970's
 * When VCS released in October 1977 – sold for $199 – came packaged with Combat
 * Atari had number of shipping/other problems (already discussed)
 * VCS still outsold early competition – did not sell as well as Warner had hoped
 * Steve Ross, Warner President, disappointed in VCS sales
 * Began to second-guess buying Atari – firing of Bushnell furthered his concerns
 * Kassar took over having to prove Atari's worth to Warner
 * Atari was technology-driven company – Kassar turned it into business-driven company
 * Ultimate goal under Kassar to make Atari profitable – employees disliked Kassar's style
 * Saw number of problems – relations with retail partners failing
 * Sears reporting defective VCS units – Atari not responding
 * Kassar fixed problems – like or dislike Kassar, he made Atari extremely profitable
 * Made $75 million in 1977 (pre-Kassar) – made over $2 billion in Kassar's 1st 3 years
 * Atari fastest growing business in US history (at this time)
 * Kassar's business-style of running things had consequences – hurt employee morale
 * Kassar focused on consumer division – needed most attention to make money
 * Coin-Op employees felt neglected – disliked Kassar
 * Consumer division employees also disliked Kassar
 * Kassar made all employees feel untrusted – had security system installed
 * Tracked employee activity – made them carry electronic key-cards to enter doors
 * Kassar also had strict policy – didn't let programmers receive credit for their work
 * Didn't even let them see sales figures on their games – Infuriated programmers
 * Felt that they deserved credit for their work
 * Warren Robinett – managed to get around Kassar's policy in 1 project
 * Had finished game called Slot Racers – very basic maze-racing game
 * Next project much more ambitious – turned to early entry into video-game RPG's
 * Adventure – text-based video-game RPG – by Will Crowther and Don Woods
 * Essentially giant interactive novel in fantasy world – players typed in commands
 * Commands did actions, got items, moved through massive text-described world
 * Robinett wanted to create graphics version of Adventure on VCS
 * VCS not well suited for text-based games – joystick-style inputs only
 * Not much memory on VCS – 4k of code per game – much less than text-based Adventure
 * Robinett made compromises – greatly reduced size of game
 * Took out commands entirely – player moved cursor to move through world and get items
 * Limited number of items players could carry – one at a time
 * Added strategy – player had to decided what to take when for what challenge
 * Still in era of 1 person making entire game – Robinett had to make all graphics
 * Made enemies that he says looked more like ducks than dragons
 * Robinett able to sneak in subversion to Kassar – put hidden room in Adventure
 * Player had to do convoluted series of tasks to find hidden room
 * Hidden room contained big words in rainbow letters - “Created by Robinett”
 * Robinett didn't expect anyone to find it – so difficult to do
 * Proud of secret – later said entire game became experiment to see if anyone could find it
 * Couldn't tell anyone about his secret – would probably get him fired
 * Games cost about $10,000 to manufacture – expensive at this time – extra info cost more
 * Secret took up 5% of Adventure's memory – felt if anyone found it, it would be removed
 * Roughly 300,000 copies of Adventure manufactured – Robinett's secret intact and hidden
 * 1980 – after Robinett already left company – 12 year old boy sent letter to Atari
 * Said he found something strange in Adventure game – Robinett's secret room
 * Word quickly spread of Robinett's secret prank on Atari
 * Magazine – Electronic Games – wrote story about – described it as “Easter Egg”
 * Easter Egg has come to describe any secrets in games
 * Atari saw popularity of secret – embraced idea – later games built entirely around secrets
 * VCS still gaining steam in early 1979 – hadn't reached level of sales Warner wanted
 * Manny Gerard – Warner exec. – saw Space Invaders arcade game in Atari coin-op
 * Suggested to Kassar that Atari license Space Invaders – turn it into VCS cartridge
 * Kassar loved idea – amazed no one thought of it before
 * Home conversions of Atari's own games common
 * No one had ever converted someone else's game – needed license to do so
 * VCS Space Invaders 1st time an arcade game was licensed for use on home console
 * Kassar knew about Space Invaders success at arcade – thought VCS version would be hit
 * Believed people would buy VCS just to play Space Invaders at home
 * Focused most of Atari's advertising budget to promote VCS version of Space Invaders
 * Result – VCS version of Space Invaders best selling game of 1980
 * VCS sales benefited from success of game – Atari's consumer division expanded
 * Meant more executive control – programmers, already frustrated, now further unhappy
 * Employees began leaving – first and biggest – Alan Miller
 * Miller wanted more compensation and recognition for his work
 * Saw video-games as art-form – wanted same benefits as other popular artists
 * Devised new contract mimicking contracts of popular musicians and writers
 * Discussed ideas with fellow employees – Larry Kaplan, David Crane, Bob Whitehead
 * All agreed with him – all 4 presented new contracts to Atari executives
 * VCS had surpasses sales projects – Kassar and Warner happy with it
 * Comfortable that VCS would grow with or without Miller and friends
 * Said that asking prices were too high – could get 6 programmers for the price they asked
 * Denied contracts – all 4 quit Atari – large chunk of consumer division gone from Atari
 * Miller and friends decided to form independent company
 * Third-party game manufacture for VCS – sought legal advice on how to start
 * Pointed toward Jim Levy – great deal of experience in music industry
 * Came on board to hand business-side – company ready to begin
 * April 1980 - Activision formed
 * 1st independent video-game creator creating games for others' console
 * Mere 2 months after formed had products ready to show at summer CES
 * General reaction at show was confusion – Atari already had tons of VCS cartridges
 * Few believed consumers could see improvements in Activision's cartridges over Atari's
 * Didn't think people would pay $3-$5 more on Activision game, company no one heard of
 * Activision confident – prepared to release first games in fall
 * Atari sued them – claimed since Atari made VCS hardware, it had rights to make games
 * Claimed no one else, including Activision, could make games for VCS
 * Not 1st time software made for another company's computer system
 * Was 1st time video-game made for another's console – and 1st time that company sued
 * Atari had no choice – relied on selling hardware for cheap – make money on software
 * Allowing Activision to make VCS games would severely cut into Atari profits
 * Atari didn't win law suit – continued to try to sue Activision over a year and a half
 * Kassar publicly called Activision a parasite on video-game industry
 * Never admitted any regret over not re-negotiating contracts when had chance
 * Atari did start treating employees better – too little, too late
 * Programmers remaining at Atari felt stupid – those who left started own companies
 * Made lots of money compared to those who stayed – only making $30,000 a year at Atari
 * One of last to leave – Warren Robinett – took extended European vacation after leaving
 * While in Europe, secret in Adventure found – also new company founded – Imagic
 * Bill Grubb – Atari's formed Vice President of Marketing – founded Imagic
 * Like Activision, Imagic took top Atari programmers – created independent VCS games
 * Also like Activision, overnight success – Kassar more angry at Imagic than Activision
 * Grubb took Atari's National Account Manager – Mark Bradley
 * Kassar personally made large offers to Bradley to stay at Atari
 * Bradley and Grubb long-time close friends – Bradley would not stay
 * Kassar told Bradley that he'd do everything in his power to destroy the new company
 * Kassar had personal vendetta against Imagic – severely harmed company when started
 * Robinett applied to Imagic when he returned from Europe
 * Felt he was a shoe-in, being former Atari programmer
 * Did get job offer – only after Grubb had insulted him – Robinett declined offer
 * Continued to look elsewhere – eventually got government grant
 * One of only 4 people given grant from National Science Foundation
 * Funded creation of education software to teach children math
 * Grant money ran out – 4 recipients formed their own company – Learning Company
 * Years later – 1995 – SoftKey International bought Learning Company
 * Paid $600 million – Robinett made out well in the end
 * Beginning of VCS lifetime – battled a number of competitors – easily beaten
 * Fairchild Channel F and RCA Studio II early example – Odyssey II somewhat later
 * Not quite as easy to beat – Odyssey II had full keyboard, claimed to be a PC, unlike VCS
 * Consumers no fooled – VCS quickly overshadowed Odyssey II
 * Another early attempt by Coleco
 * Coleco had taken sales away from Atari's Home Pong with its original Telstar
 * New console released called Telstar Arcade – glorified Pong system
 * Very odd design – essentially a short pyramid – game controls on 3 sides
 * Steering wheel for driving games, Gun for shooting games, knobs for Pong-like games
 * Had interchangeable cartridges – triangular in shape – plugged into top of pyramid
 * Telstar Arcade did not catch on – very few cartridges made – not successful at all
 * 1980 – Atari has first major threat to its home video-game dominance
 * Mattel Electronics – division of Mattel created to make hand-held LED-based games
 * Capitalized off of success of those games – decided to enter home-game market
 * 1980 – Mattel released Intellivision
 * Had newer and more powerful processor than VCS – also slightly more memory
 * Resulted in more detailed, more colorful, overall better-looking graphics than VCS
 * Intellivision controller had more interactivity – 12 digit keypad and joystick disk
 * Disk allowed for 16 points of movements, twice VCS's 8-point joystick – more precision
 * Driving force of Intellivision – massive line-up of sports games
 * VCS had some sports games, but Mattel truly focused on sports for Intellivision
 * Set out to make every sports game imaginable – From baseball to backgammon
 * Even licensed names of official sports leagues – from MLB to U.S. Chess Federation
 * Sheer scope of sports titles on Intellivision brought new players into video-games
 * 1980 – Intellivision's release-year – Mattel sold 100,000 Intellivision units
 * 1982 – over 1 million sold – 1983 – peak year – over 3.5 million sold worldwide

**__ Atari VCS (2600) __**
1979 Atari VCS Game Catalog - shows earlier games, including Hangman and Concentration, as well as later games like Pac-Man

Game Reviews and Screenshots for Atari 2600 Games

An Alphabetical List of Atari 2600 Games, Including Videos and Playable Versions

Flash recreation of Adventure

Info on Advenutre, including a map which shows how to find Robniett's secret room

**__ Competitors to Atari VCS (2600) __**
History of Activision - the 1st Third-Party Video-Game Publisher (partially competitor, partially helpful to Atari... though Ray Kassar hated them)

Telstar Arcade - Coleco

Magnavox Odyssey2

Magnavox Odyssey2 Website, Featuring Info, Screenshots, and Links

Game Reviews and Screenshots for Magnavox Odyssey2 Games

Massive Site for Mattel Intellivison Information (as well as links to play Intellivision games online)

Game Reviews and Screenshots for Mattel Intellivision Games

A Site Showing Side-By-Side Comparisons of Atari VCS and Mattel Intellivison Games

**__ Writer George Plimpton Compares the Mattel Intellivision to the Atari VCS (2600) __**
1st Video of Sports Games on Atari VCS/2600 and Mattel Intellivision

2nd Video of Sports Games on Atari VCS/2600 and Mattel Intellivision

Video of Space Games on Atari VCS/2600 and Mattel Intellivision