E.T.'s Grave Disturbed

[Jak]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/26/5656282/atari-et-landfill-new-mexico-found-cartridges

You couldn't leave this buried. You just couldn't do it. Now we're all doomed.

[Trender]

Now let sell them on ebay

[Jak]

Now let sell them on ebay

Someone write a creepypasta about that. Someone buys one of these unearthed ET cartridges and then ET comes and kill him in his sleep or haunts his house or something.

[Kiyza]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/26/5656282/atari-et-landfill-new-mexico-found-cartridges

You couldn't leave this buried. You just couldn't do it. Now we're all doomed.

The console game market has been doomed to collapse for a while now. This time, gamers will just blame it on the curse of E.T.

Someone write a creepypasta about that. Someone buys one of these unearthed ET cartridges and then ET comes and kill him in his sleep or haunts his house or something.

I'm in a mood to write, so I'll do this if you want. Just say the word.

[Xeyon]

How could they release this curse from its seal again ? Whyyyy? 

[Chadek]

WE ARE DOOMEDDD

[Griffel]

WE ARE DOOMEDDD

  Chadek Dont Worry Shrek Will Save us from The Ancient Evil!!!

[Nia]

When you hear someone say "I've played worse games," this is the game they are referring to.

[Shinozaki]

Can someone please explain this E.T. Or Atari curse to me please?

[Nia]

You know how Atari used to have the Dragon Ball game licences?
Now you know why they don't anymore.

[Griffel]

Can someone please explain this E.T. Or Atari curse to me please?

it used to be an urban legend until now

[Steady]

Can someone please explain this E.T. Or Atari curse to me please?

E.T. was a lazily thrown together game that Atari put a lot of resources into producing way too many copies of.
E.T. the movie was super successful so they thought the name was enough to get people to buy it.
It wasn't though, the game was horrible and no one wanted it. It crashed the gaming market and there wasn't a success in home consoles or gaming in general until Nintendo's NES rose like a phoenix.

Like Griffel said, it used to be an urban legend that they had to go out to the desert and bury all the excess copies in a remote landfill.
Apparently it was no legend after all.
By the curse of E.T. I think Kiyza means that since the market is looking kind of grim these days that it will be blamed on those E.T. carts being unearthed if it crashes again. It's a funny thought.
This concludes the history lesson.

[Kiyza]

Can someone please explain this E.T. Or Atari curse to me please?

Let me see if I can explain this a bit more comprehensively.

There is no "curse". There has never been a curse. Almost no one believes in one. It's a joke. It's a joke because similar legends have arisen from people unearthing graves and getting cursed, perhaps most famously King Tuts tomb or Ootsi the iceman.

To understand this, it's going to take a bit of time traveling. Way back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were two main ways to play video games: the arcades, or the Atari 2600, the only major home console in America. Okay, so there were systems like the Magnavox Odyssey, but they weren't as popular. Oh, and computers. But no one had a computer then either -- PC gaming wasn't really a thing until Myst and Doom, both of which were influential for Microsoft, but that's another story.

In 1977, there was a major industry crash which I won't get into, but one of the things that revived the home console market was the Atari 2600. It was incredibly popular for its day, largely due to having ports of popular arcade titles like Pac-Man. Modern gaming wasn't started by the 2600 -- that's really the NES's role -- but it was a part of the evolution.

In 1983, there was a second market crash, mainly due to Atari. Contrary to popular belief, the E.T. game did not cause the crash itself, but it was indeed a symptom of a disease.

The issues with Atari and its system are multifaceted. To list:

Spoiler for Why the game market crashed:

• Too many consoles. There were a lot of consoles at this point on the market, each with their own games. It's not like today where almost everything released on a PlayStation gets an Xbox version -- it was like the Sega and Nintendo exclusives, but with like, four or five home consoles. Atari was just the biggest, but even they had two consoles when the crash occurred.
• Lack of financing. All of the up and coming game companies were small and lacked a lot of funds to even make games and systems.
• Poor quality. Many ports in particular were hastily made and were worse than the arcade versions of games in terms of bugginess. Pac-Man suffered from this for the Atari 2600. Wonder why most arcade versions of Pac-Man are actually Ms. Pac-Man? The game suffered from a lot of problems and Ms. Pac-Man fixed them. The 2600 port made them worse.
• Poor treatment of workers/publishers. Atari did not credit game designers, let alone give them royalties like we do today. This led to protests from developers and some turned into their own companies, like Activison today.
• Shareholder issues. Atari's shareholders expected way too much and the stock crashed when they were disappointed. This actually caused one of the biggest shocks to the system.
• Producing too many copies of a game that wouldn't sell. E.T. was guilty of this, but so was Pac-Man's ports. They were rushed for Christmas 1982 and way too many copies didn't sell. Atari expected these games to be what would sell the system and become the killer app for the system. It didn't work. Retailers sent the games back to Atari. Exactly what happened wasn't known for sure until now, but Atari did bury a lot of stuff in a Nex Mexico landfill.

I'm missing a few issues, but those are the main ones. Essentially, it was a build up of too many negative factors. E.T. was a major issue, but it was only part of it. A bigger issue was shareholders expecting profits from that game and Pac-Man was just as major a contributer. It's just that we associate Pac-Man with much more than this, so we ignore it.

By the way, I wasn't joking about a video game console crash itself, though. I think it will happen this generation, judging by console sales for it. We're clearly overdue for a crash time-wise and I think the current game market will collapse under its own weight given a bit more time.

[Jak]

Let me see if I can explain this a bit more comprehensively.

There is no "curse". There has never been a curse. Almost no one believes in one. It's a joke. It's a joke because similar legends have arisen from people unearthing graves and getting cursed, perhaps most famously King Tuts tomb or Ootsi the iceman.

To understand this, it's going to take a bit of time traveling. Way back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were two main ways to play video games: the arcades, or the Atari 2600, the only major home console in America. Okay, so there were systems like the Magnavox Odyssey, but they weren't as popular. Oh, and computers. But no one had a computer then either -- PC gaming wasn't really a thing until Myst and Doom, both of which were influential for Microsoft, but that's another story.

In 1977, there was a major industry crash which I won't get into, but one of the things that revived the home console market was the Atari 2600. It was incredibly popular for its day, largely due to having ports of popular arcade titles like Pac-Man. Modern gaming wasn't started by the 2600 -- that's really the NES's role -- but it was a part of the evolution.

In 1983, there was a second market crash, mainly due to Atari. Contrary to popular belief, the E.T. game did not cause the crash itself, but it was indeed a symptom of a disease.

The issues with Atari and its system are multifaceted. To list:

Spoiler for Why the game market crashed:

• Too many consoles. There were a lot of consoles at this point on the market, each with their own games. It's not like today where almost everything released on a PlayStation gets an Xbox version -- it was like the Sega and Nintendo exclusives, but with like, four or five home consoles. Atari was just the biggest, but even they had two consoles when the crash occurred.
• Lack of financing. All of the up and coming game companies were small and lacked a lot of funds to even make games and systems.
• Poor quality. Many ports in particular were hastily made and were worse than the arcade versions of games in terms of bugginess. Pac-Man suffered from this for the Atari 2600. Wonder why most arcade versions of Pac-Man are actually Ms. Pac-Man? The game suffered from a lot of problems and Ms. Pac-Man fixed them. The 2600 port made them worse.
• Poor treatment of workers/publishers. Atari did not credit game designers, let alone give them royalties like we do today. This led to protests from developers and some turned into their own companies, like Activison today.
• Shareholder issues. Atari's shareholders expected way too much and the stock crashed when they were disappointed. This actually caused one of the biggest shocks to the system.
• Producing too many copies of a game that wouldn't sell. E.T. was guilty of this, but so was Pac-Man's ports. They were rushed for Christmas 1982 and way too many copies didn't sell. Atari expected these games to be what would sell the system and become the killer app for the system. It didn't work. Retailers sent the games back to Atari. Exactly what happened wasn't known for sure until now, but Atari did bury a lot of stuff in a Nex Mexico landfill.

I'm missing a few issues, but those are the main ones. Essentially, it was a build up of too many negative factors. E.T. was a major issue, but it was only part of it. A bigger issue was shareholders expecting profits from that game and Pac-Man was just as major a contributer. It's just that we associate Pac-Man with much more than this, so we ignore it.

By the way, I wasn't joking about a video game console crash itself, though. I think it will happen this generation, judging by console sales for it. We're clearly overdue for a crash time-wise and I think the current game market will collapse under its own weight given a bit more time.

We need a crash too. Hopefully we come out the other side of it this time and leave behind all the nonsense we had to deal with in the 7th and now the 8th generation: DLC, microtransactions, excessive and completely ineffective DRM tactics, every dev company trying to make Call of Duty clones, fanboy wars etc etc.

Before you can rebuild you must first tear down.

[Kiyza]

We need a crash too. Hopefully we come out the other side of it this time and leave behind all the nonsense we had to deal with in the 7th and now the 8th generation: DLC, microtransactions, excessive and completely ineffective DRM tactics, every dev company trying to make Call of Duty clones, fanboy wars etc etc.

Before you can rebuild you must first tear down.

I hate to tell you this, but if there's a market crash, we're probably going to see a lot more DLC and microtransactions. They've proved to be remarkably profitable, with games like Candy Crush Saga making $1 million a day in microtransactions. DLC, too, is often overpriced and people still buy it. Microtransactions are great for some genres of games, like MMORPGs and some cell phone games because they allow some user to play for free. The problem is with games that are "pay to win" and that attempt to suck money out of you at every possible point. I have no problem with the notion of paying a bit of money -- read me here, I'm talking about the amount of money I'd pop into an arcade machine to get a few extra continues -- to get bonuses in a game like extra inventory slots or something cosmetic. Or, for that matter, paying real-life currency for continues in phone games that use an energy system. I just don't want it hounding me for those digital quarters.

Call of Duty clones and the big first-person shooter boom are probably going to go away with time as tastes change. Keep in mind, a few decades ago, platformers were all the rage. Tastes change. I think negative public reaction to DRM tactics is going to keep companies away from anything like, especially if they end up skating on thin ice. Keeping people back for more is eventually going to be important than squeezing every penny possible out of the customers -- which is exactly what companies have been focusing on lately, from phone games to the blockbusters of the gaming world.

I think the big shift is going to be a result of things like phone games being all the rage with the average Joes and grandmas, as well as PC gaming becoming increasingly more accessible with things like Steam and a thriving independent development community. We'll probably have more downloadable games in the future and we'll see a shift toward that. The future of gaming is precarious to say the least.