8 ms·

what's incredible about this is that Activision remains an industry leader whereas I'm not entirely sure if Atari even still exists.

denkmoon 4y ago
Ironically however modern day Activision has the exact same attitude of Atari that caused their founding.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Clearly the situation is very different. Activision is much much bigger than Atari was. 4 of the top developers leaving wouldn't cause the company to implode.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    percentages duh
  - boredtofears 4y ago
    The more I learn about game dev the less I think this is true. The number of programmers that can work on bleeding edge game engine tech is incredibly low and the learning curve has only gotten more severe over time. I mean, I'm sure they wouldn't implode, but I bet they pay their core engine devs a more than decent wage.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      The majority of devs don't work on bleeding edge game engine tech, though.
      - boredtofears 4y ago
        Of course, but presumably the top coders at a game shop are involved in whatever inhouse tech they're building.
  - rvanlaar 4y ago
    A top developer leaving also functions as a signal to others in the company. I once left a company quickly after a senior leader had left. That proved to be a good move since the company was going under and sold a few months after.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  But they might be right this time. Many game devs are fungible cogs, implementing a well-defined blueprint. Especially Activision games like Call of Duty. It doesn’t help that there’s just so many devs these days that they can seemingly abuse them for decades and nothing has collapsed.
  - Kapura 4y ago
    if you'd ever worked on a call of duty you'd realize how foolish a statement this is.
    - neatze 4y ago
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        Seems like you're speaking out of turn, and trying to pile in on some sort of weird meritless gatekeeping without doing any basic research first: https://github.com/ablakey https://github.com/ablakey
        neatze 4y ago
        The reason I said this is because of "implementing a well-defined blueprint" it just compelled me to say something, I am not expert developer by any means,but it is like saying to a degree; paintings are all same because most of them use same colors, arguably writing prototype code is simple, but fixing bugs and tuning everything so game is fun and fluid is where hard part is.
    - dahart 4y ago
      Try not to take it personally, there are both devs who are replaceable and devs who aren’t, and with ~40 Call of Duty titles on almost as many platforms, a million and one people have worked on it, some doing more mechanical port work than others. There’s truth in there; the games industry is tough, and it’s relevant that some studios that (for example) demand lots of overtime haven’t seen any large exodus, or sometimes there is high turnover and the studio still survives, to parent’s point. There’s a higher level layer to this, that from a publisher’s point of view, there are a lot of smaller studios that are easily replaceable, and I’d speculate studios go out of business over contracts lost to other studios far more often than over employee walkouts (which of course fuels the need for overtime to be competitive). This is true for games and for VFX production in the US, enough people want these jobs that high turnover doesn’t seem to slow the business.
- Rapzid 4y ago
  No way they don't pay bank the bulk of their irreplaceable programers.
- xwdv 4y ago
  It’s justified though. Games are basically a solved problem these days, and the developers of today are most of the time just building on abstractions and best practices that didn’t exist during Atari’s time. Once a particular domain of software becomes sufficiently mature, there is no real opportunity for heroic programmers to emerge who become too valuable to replace. Eventually more people emerge who are just as good.
  - danieltanfh95 4y ago
    I very much doubt that. There's a reason why innovation in games often happen, entertainment is not an easy problem to solve, with no set quantity to achieve
    - lmz 4y ago
      While "solved" is a bit optimistic, it is also true that e.g. sports games get sales every year with mainly updates to the player roster.
      - Ekaros 4y ago
        Or many locked in formulas. Think CoD, BF somewhat, Assassin's Creed. Whatever Ubisoft does.
        KptMarchewa 4y ago
        Decent amount of BF games flopped. Assassin's Creed had three "reboots" of the formula. Ubisoft recently realized they have to shake things up, since flops are more and more common.
    - chii 4y ago
      it depends on what the poster meant by "games" - do they mean engine and graphics? Or do they mean game design/mechanics? Game engines and graphics is "solved" if you stick to popular concepts (which are those that are easily available in commercial engines). Game design/mechanics is an unsolved problem imho - unless you consider it solved when merely taking an existing game design (like an FPS) and add nothing new to it (aka, those yearly COD military shooters). Consider a game like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141580/Taiji/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141580/Taiji/ (inspired by the witness). This game is quite unique, and cannot really be recycled in to another game (without it being just a clone).
- walrus01 4y ago
  Video game studios taking advantage of young, naive people who will burn themselves out working unpaid overtime for the privilege of working for a game studio? I'm absolutely shocked, shocked I tell you! Some of them probably get 50 applicants for every position they advertise. It's a meat grinder.
  - diob 4y ago
    Video game developers (and working class in general) desperately needs to unionize, young folks are too naive to realize they're working towards chronic health conditions.
    - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      In a sense, some do - by quitting and/or going indie. There's some good studios out there; Team Cherry (hollow knight) famously doesn't do crunch. They also don't (need to) make any announcements about games until they're ready.
      - boppo1 4y ago
        Isn't Team cherry like 10 people though?
        dawnbreez 4y ago
        I'd argue that's part of what makes it work. You can get ten people into one meeting room (or one zoom call) and still be able to talk to each other clearly.
    - wikfwikf 4y ago
      My sister is a vet. She works in a normal vet practice in our city dealing with mainly cats and dogs. Once I asked her why she doesn't work as a vet in the zoo, an extremely prestigious and wealthy institution with zoological research, wide variety of animals, etc. She just said that all young vets want to be a vet in the zoo. So they have much worse pay and conditions than other vet jobs. Video game developers don't have terrible conditions and relatively low pay because of some anomalous lack of bargaining power which can be fixed by unionization. They have lots of bargaining power, most of which they use to choose the industry they work in. There are lots of young men who want to work in games, and far fewer who want to work in financial software. So pay and conditions are far worse in games, to the point where supply meets demand in each type of development work.
coolandsmartrr 4y ago
Looks like they were facing extinction in 1991 until now-CEO Bobby Kotick took over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision#Purchase_by_Bobby_Kotick_(1991%E2%80%931997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision#Purchase_by_Bobby_K...
- MrMember 4y ago
  >Kotick and additional investors bought Mediagenic for approximately $500,000 in 1991. Wow,that's one hell of a successful investment.
walrus01 4y ago
atari very much does not exist, the trademark/name has passed through like 3 or 4 different hands now. whatever corporate entity is now calling itself atari has absolutely no relationship to the original.
- gabereiser 4y ago
  This is correct. Nolan Bushnell sold the brand to WMS Industries in 1996.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Atari still exists today. In 2018 I met Frédéric Chesnais in NY, and learned about the latest things related the company. Here's an interview I found from 2019. [0]. It seems that the current CEO is now Wade Rosen. [1] Company is still up and running. [0]: https://frenchamerican.org/interview-frederic-chesnais/ https://frenchamerican.org/interview-frederic-chesnais/ [1]: https://venturebeat.com/games/atari-ceo-wade-rosen-interview-returning-to-classic-video-game-roots/ https://venturebeat.com/games/atari-ceo-wade-rosen-interview...
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  It’s just a shell that rents the name to whoever gives them the most, right? There is “atari NFT” and “atari blockchain casino”
  - eloisant 4y ago
    Not really, it's a French video game company (Infogrames) that bought Atari when it was just a shadow of its former self and rebranded itself Atari. Anyway no relation to the original Atary.
- vintermann 4y ago
  No, the Atari name exists today. Famous defunct company names regularly get bought by entities wanting to cash out whatever goodwill or positive associations still left in them. Would-be buyers with less extractive ambitions can't compete in the auctions. So no, Atari doesn't exist today, what exists is a company wearing Atari's skin as a suit, in order to fool you. Don't be fooled by names without the organisational continuity to back it up.
  - zo1 4y ago
    Another famous example of this "brand" re-use that I only recently found out about: AEG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEG
    - 4y ago

denkmoon 4y ago

Ironically however modern day Activision has the exact same attitude of Atari that caused their founding.

Gigachad 4y ago
Clearly the situation is very different. Activision is much much bigger than Atari was. 4 of the top developers leaving wouldn't cause the company to implode.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  percentages duh
- boredtofears 4y ago
  The more I learn about game dev the less I think this is true. The number of programmers that can work on bleeding edge game engine tech is incredibly low and the learning curve has only gotten more severe over time. I mean, I'm sure they wouldn't implode, but I bet they pay their core engine devs a more than decent wage.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    The majority of devs don't work on bleeding edge game engine tech, though.
    - boredtofears 4y ago
      Of course, but presumably the top coders at a game shop are involved in whatever inhouse tech they're building.
- rvanlaar 4y ago
  A top developer leaving also functions as a signal to others in the company. I once left a company quickly after a senior leader had left. That proved to be a good move since the company was going under and sold a few months after.
Waterluvian 4y ago
But they might be right this time. Many game devs are fungible cogs, implementing a well-defined blueprint. Especially Activision games like Call of Duty. It doesn’t help that there’s just so many devs these days that they can seemingly abuse them for decades and nothing has collapsed.
- Kapura 4y ago
  if you'd ever worked on a call of duty you'd realize how foolish a statement this is.
  - neatze 4y ago
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      Seems like you're speaking out of turn, and trying to pile in on some sort of weird meritless gatekeeping without doing any basic research first: https://github.com/ablakey https://github.com/ablakey
      - neatze 4y ago
        The reason I said this is because of "implementing a well-defined blueprint" it just compelled me to say something, I am not expert developer by any means,but it is like saying to a degree; paintings are all same because most of them use same colors, arguably writing prototype code is simple, but fixing bugs and tuning everything so game is fun and fluid is where hard part is.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Try not to take it personally, there are both devs who are replaceable and devs who aren’t, and with ~40 Call of Duty titles on almost as many platforms, a million and one people have worked on it, some doing more mechanical port work than others. There’s truth in there; the games industry is tough, and it’s relevant that some studios that (for example) demand lots of overtime haven’t seen any large exodus, or sometimes there is high turnover and the studio still survives, to parent’s point. There’s a higher level layer to this, that from a publisher’s point of view, there are a lot of smaller studios that are easily replaceable, and I’d speculate studios go out of business over contracts lost to other studios far more often than over employee walkouts (which of course fuels the need for overtime to be competitive). This is true for games and for VFX production in the US, enough people want these jobs that high turnover doesn’t seem to slow the business.
Rapzid 4y ago
No way they don't pay bank the bulk of their irreplaceable programers.
xwdv 4y ago
It’s justified though. Games are basically a solved problem these days, and the developers of today are most of the time just building on abstractions and best practices that didn’t exist during Atari’s time. Once a particular domain of software becomes sufficiently mature, there is no real opportunity for heroic programmers to emerge who become too valuable to replace. Eventually more people emerge who are just as good.
- danieltanfh95 4y ago
  I very much doubt that. There's a reason why innovation in games often happen, entertainment is not an easy problem to solve, with no set quantity to achieve
  - lmz 4y ago
    While "solved" is a bit optimistic, it is also true that e.g. sports games get sales every year with mainly updates to the player roster.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Or many locked in formulas. Think CoD, BF somewhat, Assassin's Creed. Whatever Ubisoft does.
      - KptMarchewa 4y ago
        Decent amount of BF games flopped. Assassin's Creed had three "reboots" of the formula. Ubisoft recently realized they have to shake things up, since flops are more and more common.
  - chii 4y ago
    it depends on what the poster meant by "games" - do they mean engine and graphics? Or do they mean game design/mechanics? Game engines and graphics is "solved" if you stick to popular concepts (which are those that are easily available in commercial engines). Game design/mechanics is an unsolved problem imho - unless you consider it solved when merely taking an existing game design (like an FPS) and add nothing new to it (aka, those yearly COD military shooters). Consider a game like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141580/Taiji/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141580/Taiji/ (inspired by the witness). This game is quite unique, and cannot really be recycled in to another game (without it being just a clone).
walrus01 4y ago
Video game studios taking advantage of young, naive people who will burn themselves out working unpaid overtime for the privilege of working for a game studio? I'm absolutely shocked, shocked I tell you! Some of them probably get 50 applicants for every position they advertise. It's a meat grinder.
- diob 4y ago
  Video game developers (and working class in general) desperately needs to unionize, young folks are too naive to realize they're working towards chronic health conditions.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    In a sense, some do - by quitting and/or going indie. There's some good studios out there; Team Cherry (hollow knight) famously doesn't do crunch. They also don't (need to) make any announcements about games until they're ready.
    - boppo1 4y ago
      Isn't Team cherry like 10 people though?
      - dawnbreez 4y ago
        I'd argue that's part of what makes it work. You can get ten people into one meeting room (or one zoom call) and still be able to talk to each other clearly.
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    My sister is a vet. She works in a normal vet practice in our city dealing with mainly cats and dogs. Once I asked her why she doesn't work as a vet in the zoo, an extremely prestigious and wealthy institution with zoological research, wide variety of animals, etc. She just said that all young vets want to be a vet in the zoo. So they have much worse pay and conditions than other vet jobs. Video game developers don't have terrible conditions and relatively low pay because of some anomalous lack of bargaining power which can be fixed by unionization. They have lots of bargaining power, most of which they use to choose the industry they work in. There are lots of young men who want to work in games, and far fewer who want to work in financial software. So pay and conditions are far worse in games, to the point where supply meets demand in each type of development work.

coolandsmartrr 4y ago

Looks like they were facing extinction in 1991 until now-CEO Bobby Kotick took over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision#Purchase_by_Bobby_Kotick_(1991%E2%80%931997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision#Purchase_by_Bobby_K...

MrMember 4y ago
>Kotick and additional investors bought Mediagenic for approximately $500,000 in 1991. Wow,that's one hell of a successful investment.

walrus01 4y ago

atari very much does not exist, the trademark/name has passed through like 3 or 4 different hands now. whatever corporate entity is now calling itself atari has absolutely no relationship to the original.

gabereiser 4y ago
This is correct. Nolan Bushnell sold the brand to WMS Industries in 1996.

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

Atari still exists today. In 2018 I met Frédéric Chesnais in NY, and learned about the latest things related the company. Here's an interview I found from 2019. [0]. It seems that the current CEO is now Wade Rosen. [1] Company is still up and running. [0]: https://frenchamerican.org/interview-frederic-chesnais/ https://frenchamerican.org/interview-frederic-chesnais/ [1]: https://venturebeat.com/games/atari-ceo-wade-rosen-interview-returning-to-classic-video-game-roots/ https://venturebeat.com/games/atari-ceo-wade-rosen-interview...

shp0ngle 4y ago
It’s just a shell that rents the name to whoever gives them the most, right? There is “atari NFT” and “atari blockchain casino”
- eloisant 4y ago
  Not really, it's a French video game company (Infogrames) that bought Atari when it was just a shadow of its former self and rebranded itself Atari. Anyway no relation to the original Atary.
vintermann 4y ago
No, the Atari name exists today. Famous defunct company names regularly get bought by entities wanting to cash out whatever goodwill or positive associations still left in them. Would-be buyers with less extractive ambitions can't compete in the auctions. So no, Atari doesn't exist today, what exists is a company wearing Atari's skin as a suit, in order to fool you. Don't be fooled by names without the organisational continuity to back it up.
- zo1 4y ago
  Another famous example of this "brand" re-use that I only recently found out about: AEG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEG
  - 4y ago