At 10:44 PM 8/26/00 -0700, Glenn Saunders wrote:
>Yeah, the main irony in all this was that I gave the producer of Activision
>Classics a highlights reel that had clips like this in it, clips that
>should be mandatory viewing for any nameless game company drone, clips that
>I thought might motivate him to continue the great legacy of Activision,
Maybe the inherent irony in that case was what led him not to pursue that
footage any further ;)
>I walked away from that negotiation thinking to myself, WHY BOTHER being a
>videogame producer if you aren't passionate enough about videogames to
>FIGHT to make your product as good as it can be?
Why bother being a musician if you're not passionate enough to fight to get
your art released with no compromises?
Why bother being a movie director if you're not passionate enough to eschew
the focus groups and the studio execs' notes and make the movie perfect?
The answer, as you later discuss, is money. But here's why it isn't all
that ironic: In 1982 video games were big business, but still not quite an
Industry(tm) yet. Now video games are an Industry(tm), one supposedly
bigger in terms of revenues than the movie and music industries put
together, and commercial games are product, not art. This actually began
prior to the crash when everyone and his brother was releasing 2600 carts.
But "independent labels" like Activision and EA were the big fish in the
little pond back then, and 17 years later they're, well, The Man(R).
Of course, I'd still go for a sufficiently non-Tomb-Raider-like 3D
adaptation of Pitfall ;)
Rob
kudla@xxxxxxxxx ... http://kudla.org/raindog ... Rob
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