Page 25 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #38 FREE Edition

YOU ARE WHAT YOU PLAY
THE HOLLYWOOD GAME
By Howard Scott Warshaw
NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.
That’s the first law of Hollywood.
The video game industry always wanted to be like Hollywood. Who would know this better than me, the man who did the most notorious movie conversion of them all? But then again, nobody knows anything.
If anybody knew anything then why would major Hollywood studios reject the original Star Wars movie because “sci-fi is dead?” Why would they green light Waterworld?
Why would anyone sell Atari for under 30 million just a few years before it was worth a billion? Why would the shrewd buyers who
made that purchase turn around and spend 22 million dollars for the privilege of rushing a game out in five weeks and then spend even more money burying those games in the desert?
Not that I claim to know whether or not that burial took place, but one thing I do know is nobody knows anything.
The other first law of Hollywood is: Nobody ever got fired for saying “no.”
Rejecting a blockbuster is merely a war story, but doing a flop is original sin.
Think about that.
In a business where every move is a high stakes gamble, people get punished for taking chances. Isn’t
it odd that the games industry (which lives or dies by inventing and delivering compelling strategies) chooses this strategy as its guiding light?
So, let’s talk about some of Atari’s greatest NOs. Let’s see, there was the time that some goofy guy came in to demo his radical new software application. It wasn’t even a game and no one gave it a second thought. It was some useless little text application called Visicalc, but he kept referring to it as a “spreadsheet.” What did Atari need with that? We were already working on
the electronic dictionary. Another time someone suggested a martial arts-based game and most of us laughed at that one. It’s a video game and they don’t even shoot each other? Ha!
Then there was the time when one of Atari’s own employees offered them a new and improved design for a home computer, but they already had a home computer in the works so they told Steve Jobs to take a hike. He took a frightfully short walk. One of the first Apple buildings was right next door when I started at Atari. We stole their sign once, which was ironic because nobody accepted their product when it was offered.
Repercussions? None.
In fact, the fellow who was in charge when these decisions were made was doing quite well at the time... until he said yes, that is. It was not too long after the whole E.T. fiasco that this CEO “stepped down” from the position and a new sheriff came to town. It was right around here that a truly great NO occurred.
It was clear that the 2600 was dying fast. Atari waited too long
to commit to a viable hardware platform that could move them forward in the industry. They
had plans going but it was too little too late. At precisely this moment, a Japanese company called Nintendo came to Atari with the opportunity to exclusively distribute their hot new NES system in North America. You know, Donkey Kong Nintendo. Mario Nintendo. Luigi too. For a company like Atari that was too
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