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For more information, visit GotTheGold.com... I'm your host, Justin two-point-oh... This is Game Theory. Today we're talking E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for Atari. Gaming's worst disaster. Now let's get into it...

The Setup — Summer 1982

• Steven Spielberg's E.T. movie was a massive hit in summer 1982
 • Atari wanted a game for the Christmas season
 • They secured the license in July
 • That gave developer Howard Scott Warshaw five weeks to design, program, and ship a game
 • Most games took six to nine months

The Developer

• Howard Scott Warshaw was a talented programmer
 • He created Raiders of the Lost Ark and Yar's Revenge for Atari
 • But five weeks wasn't enough

The Game Was Broken

• E.T. fell into pits constantly
 • The objective was unclear
 • The gameplay was repetitive and frustrating
 • It wasn't fun — it was a chore

The Commercial Disaster

• Atari manufactured 5 million cartridges, expecting a massive hit
 • It sold 1.5 million copies
 • That left 3.5 million unsold cartridges
 • Stores returned them — Atari had nowhere to put them
 • So they buried them in a New Mexico landfill
 • Literally millions of cartridges in a desert grave

What E.T. Represented

• Everything wrong with the early gaming industry:
 • Publishers prioritizing movie tie-ins over quality
 • Impossible development timelines
 • Shovelware flooding the market
 • No quality control

The 1983 Video Game Crash

• By 1983, the video game market crashed
 • Revenues dropped 97%
 • Companies went bankrupt
 • Retailers stopped stocking games
 • The industry was dead
 • E.T. didn't cause the crash alone, but it became the symbol of it

The Lessons Learned

• Nintendo learned from Atari's mistakes
 • When they released the NES in 1985, they implemented the Nintendo Seal of Quality
 • Games had to meet standards before release
 • They controlled third-party licensing
 • They limited how many games publishers could release per year
 • Quality over quantity

The Cautionary Tale

• E.T. is a cautionary tale about greed, hubris, and corner-cutting
 • Atari believed the brand was enough
 • They thought people would buy anything with E.T. on the box
 • They were wrong
 • Players care about quality — always have, always will

The Legend Confirmed

• In 2014, archaeologists excavated the New Mexico landfill
 • They found the cartridges — proof the legend was real
 • The worst game ever made, buried and forgotten
 • Teaching an industry how not to fail

That's Game Theory. Subscribe if you haven't already, and visit GotTheGold.com for more... Make it a great day!