Great Failures in Video Gaming

Video games are like any business. A few products go on to become bestsellers, a few more skim along and a large portion of the "next big thing" turn out duds, dead on arrival, or subject to disapointing returns. It's a fact of life.

In video games, however, the trend might be even more pronounced. At the turn of the century, industry types estimated that 10% of games produced 90% of revenue, and only 20% of games turn a profit, even if this profit isn't enough to make them successful (1). According to information from Gamasutra.com, today's hottest and most anticipated games are all sequels and spinoffs--every one (2). New intellectual property has a hard time breaking out. Of course, this isn't breaking news, but with the economic downturn the trend is going to get more pronounced.

In these troubled times, let's remind ourselves that nothing was rosy even before the economy tanked. Here's a look at some of the games that often weren't bad, or even were great, yet failed in the marketplace. Here's to you, lost games.

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst

Cyan Inc. was formed by two brothers who made kids' games. And after a few minor successes, they decided to make a game for adults. The result was Myst, an adventure game which spawned numerous imitators and led to a franchise encompassing games, novels, and a film-in-production. Myst sold millions of copies and together with its first two sequels sold 12 million worldwide. It was a smash. After completing Riven, the Sequel to Myst, Cyan began work on what would become Uru: Ages Beyond Myst--a game where players interacted over the internet to solve puzzles. In many ways a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) before it was fully developed, Uru fizzled before launch as the online component was promised but not shipped. The game received decent reviews, but was a commercial disappointment. Worse still for Cyan, the game had cost nearly $12 million to make, and its failure caused Cyan to close (3); it would reopen, but as a ghost of its former self, and is still facing difficulties.

Grim Fandango

As it happened, Myst became the most successful adventure game of all time--and according to some critics, helped usher in its slow death. As the 1990s wore on fewer and fewer adventure games were successes, perhaps due to the flood of substandard Myst clones that invaded mid-decade. Either way, while Myst might have started the bleed-out of the genre, it was LucasArts' Grim Fandango that finally finished it off. LucasArts is known for their Star Wars games, but they became a successful company in part due to their adventure games, in particular the Monkey Island series. Grim Fandango combined Aztec beliefs of the afterlife with film noir feel and art deco touches, and was widely praised on release. However the game only sold between 100,000 to 500,000 units worldwide (4). This caused LucasArts to pull the plug on several promising adventure games (5). The genre was in decline by the time Grim Fandango started development, but it was considered dead by the time it came out; a pity.

Psychonauts

Poor Tim Schafer. After the Monkey Island games, he made Grim Fandango; we saw how that turned out. And then came Psychonauts. The game was commended as one of the best console platformers out there, and one of the best platformers of the console generation, period (6); too bad no one played it. Selling only around 100,000 companies, the game cost developer Majesco millions (7).

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

Just to balance out the list, a game that proves it's not only good games that get the shaft. While the above games might have ruined a game company, this game ruined the game business, period. No small feat. Developer Atari was riding high. It couldn't keep up with video game orders, its previous cartridges had sold well despite being critically panned, and now it was going to make a video game based on the successful film E.T. What could go wrong? The company even skipped audience testing of the game to make it ship on time, confident it would be a hit.

And it was, in a way.

E.T. sold well, shipping 1.5 million units. But the problem was that Atari had made 4 million units of the game. The game is constantly considered one of the worst or the worst game ever made, and along with other subpar games, filled up the market. Atari was left with millions of unsold cartridges and ended up dumping them in a landfill (8). the glut of poor video games and numerous consoles led to a massive crash in 1983-1984. The result: Atari was broken up and sold, never to regain its dominance. Most of the console startups evaporated. And taking advantage of the opening, the Nintendo Entertainment System from Japan took over the market in 1985, leading to an era of Japanese console domination that was largely unchallenged until Microsoft's Xbox in 2001.

Sources
(1). "Video Game Makers Go Hollywood: Uh Oh" (http://www.exent.com/news/industry_articles/NYT_August%2022.pdf) and "Mapping the Canadian Video Game Industry" (http://publish.uwo.ca/~ncdyerwi/Mapping-Queens.pdf).
(2). "GamePlan Shows Halo 3: ODST, Final Fantasy XIII Top 'Purchase Intent'" (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23110).
(3). "Sayonara to Cyan" (http://www.adventuregamers.com/newsitem.php?id=1057).
(4). "Walk, Don't Run" (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_139/2994-Walk-Dont-Run).
(5). "Sam & Max Sequel Cancelled" (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/samandmaxfreelancepolice/news.html?sid=6090535).
(6). "Psychonauts (Xbox) Review" (http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/psychonauts/606972p1.html) and "Psychonauts Review" (http://www.gameshark.com/index.asp?s=311_9bba5022-a7a5-4709-92b1-45517d70a6d1&a=reviews&id=2069).
(7). "An experiment failed" http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/23/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/).
(8). "ET The Extra Terrestrial" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(Atari_2600)).