A Tale of Assumptions, Failure, & an Extraterrestrial
By: Amber Kb Wilson
Tags: Designlab, UX, Assumptions, Game Development, Failure

Assumption #2 — Good products are easy to make.

When I heard about this modern tragedy, I played a scenario in my head of a bunch of suits telling a game designer that they had to make a game in an unrealistic time frame. While I’m not sure this was entirely the case, I feel like SOMEONE made some kind of assumption along the way. This person had no appreciation for how much time and what types of resources one needs to create an entire game that delivers.

Negotiations for the licensing were finalized at the end of July. Cool. Following that, it’s decided that in order to make a big profit, the game needs to be released in time for the Christmas shopping season. So…total time line? A whopping 5 weeks. That’s only 35 days. That’s only 840 hours. That’s only 50,400 minutes. That’s only…well…you get the idea. Big yikes.

Let’s bring back the train-wreck conductor/game designer, Howard Scott Warshaw. Bless him. In his mid-twenties and still high off the success of his last Spielberg-movie-based-game, Raiders of the Lost Ark, he had a lot of confidence in being able to get this done. Remember, he assumed his way into a pretty unrealistic situation.

Photo of Howard Scott “genuinely did his best” Warshaw.

After 5 intense weeks of barely functioning as a human being (food, water, sleeping, bathing optional), Warshaw was able to deliver a fully finished game. There are some in the gaming community that actually have positive things to say about the game; calling it innovative for the time. Different strokes for different folks. Too bad for Atari that not enough folks shared these beliefs. While Steven Spielberg gave his stamp of approval on it, I think we can all agree that he’s great at making… movies. It was quite astonishing to me that multiple adults of sound mind and body looked at this game and said, “Yep. Good.” I’m unsure of all the behind the scene happenings, though, so I wonder what was going through some of their minds.

It was indeed impressive that he managed to make ANY game in the span of 5 short weeks. However that 5-star effort really only amounts to a few brownie-points at the end of the day when money is the prize, and the user is the judge.

Take Away #2

Stakeholders should put effort into understanding the scope of projects that they spend over 20 MILLION DOLLARS on. Their assumptions on what it takes to build a successful game were a huge contributing factor in the failure of this product.

Additionally, developers should be more or less honest with themselves on what can realistically be done. It seemed as though Warshaw was confident he could do it. Fair enough. But it really didn’t seem to play out that way. EVEN IF the game were a success, I would not advocate anyone burdening themselves to such extremes for the sake of a product. Self-care, people!

It is unfortunate that the quality of the game suffered due to this time constraint. But it’s also unfortunate that Warshaw had to put himself through hell to get a product across the finish line that still haunts him to this day. Prior to that year, the video gaming industry was a delicious and lucrative pie that everyone wanted a piece of. After E.T….the gaming industry took a hit. Was E.T. the cause? Maybe. Many assume so.