How did they get there, we wondered, and who is on their way up right now? To attempt an answer, we present Issue 119 of The Escapist.
Chase Murdey interviews Tim Schafer, the LucasArts alum whose Psychonauts became a cult hit; Dana Massey profiles the company behind the Championship Manager games; Pat Miller looks at Mac mavens Ambrosia; and Shannon Drake spends some time with the twisted minds behind Postal.
Each week we publish letters sent to us regarding previous issues. If you'd like to comment on an article, send your letter to editor@escapistmag.com.
"One (perhaps unexpected) perk of the shareware distribution model was Ambrosia's games quickly became a communal experience. Friends who shared Ambrosia games often competed with each other over their high scores; Ambrosia would run high-score contests to put people in competition with each other all over the world. People would talk about the awesome games they had."
Pat Miller dissects Ambrosia, one of the other successful Mac developers.
"A lot of what the company does seems designed to antagonize, from the names of their products (the Postal Fudge Pack, for example), to the games themselves, to hiring Uwe Boll to direct the Postal movie, but at the same time, pulp can have power, too. Sometimes, being provocative can say more than all the nice words in the world."
Shannon Drake speaks to Running with Scissors, the makers of Postal.
"'You work your hardest to come up with not just a good idea but a really good presentation of the idea, and you really think you have something, and you take it out there, and the response you get sometimes is just appalling. It can be really depressing because, you see, the people in charge of green lighting projects are just lame. Some of them are really cool, don't get me wrong, but a lot of the people making decisions did not come to that point in that company because of their awesomeness.'"
Chase Murdey speaks to Psychonauts creator Tim Schafer.
Massey
"'There was not really a plan for world domination or anything like that - [founders Paul and Oliver Collyer] were just making games because that's what they did,' says Miles Jacobson, Managing Director of Sports Interactive. The duo wanted to play a good soccer manager, 'so [they] made one themselves for a bit of fun.'"
Dana Massey searches out the roots of Sports Interactive and Championship Manager.
Before Nintendo released their first home console system, their American branch was in the business of licensing games to other manufacturers. Spanner details a defining moment of Nintendo of America, its legal battle with Universal Studios over Donkey Kong.
