Author credits, oftentimes even extremely long end credits, are ubiquitous in video games. (Some video games go to absolutely ridiculous extents with this. For example, you wouldn't believe how long the end credits scroll of Assassin's Creed 3 is. It goes well over a half hour of slowly-scrolling credits, that cannot be skipped nor interrupted in any way, other than killing the game from the Windows task manager.)
It might be a bit surprising, but this hasn't always been so. In fact, in the late 70's and early 80's, sometimes even throughout the 80's, many game developer companies had a strict policy that the creators of a video game (programmers, graphic artists, etc.) could not put their names in the games they created. It was strictly forbidden.
Atari was perhaps the most infamous example of this, in the early 80's. It is, in fact, one of the major reasons why another company, Activision, was created (and which exists to this day.) A group of disgruntled programmers left Atari and created their own company, mainly because Atari strictly forbade them getting credit for their work, in any way, shape or form.
(Incidentally, this totalitarian attitude is listed as one of the causing factors of the famous video game crash of 1983.)
However, Atari was not the only company doing this. Nor did it end in the 1983 market crash. For instance, the original Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive has no credits, precisely because of the exact same policy by Sega. The game was published in 1991.
(The fact that this was something that the developers themselves were not completely happy with is apparent from the fact that there exists a hidden easter egg in the game, which can be activated with certain keypresses, that brings up a list of developers on screen.)
Today we take creator credits for granted in video games. For some reason in the early days of video games this was sometimes strictly avoided. The reason? Who knows. I have no idea.
It might be a bit surprising, but this hasn't always been so. In fact, in the late 70's and early 80's, sometimes even throughout the 80's, many game developer companies had a strict policy that the creators of a video game (programmers, graphic artists, etc.) could not put their names in the games they created. It was strictly forbidden.
Atari was perhaps the most infamous example of this, in the early 80's. It is, in fact, one of the major reasons why another company, Activision, was created (and which exists to this day.) A group of disgruntled programmers left Atari and created their own company, mainly because Atari strictly forbade them getting credit for their work, in any way, shape or form.
(Incidentally, this totalitarian attitude is listed as one of the causing factors of the famous video game crash of 1983.)
However, Atari was not the only company doing this. Nor did it end in the 1983 market crash. For instance, the original Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive has no credits, precisely because of the exact same policy by Sega. The game was published in 1991.
(The fact that this was something that the developers themselves were not completely happy with is apparent from the fact that there exists a hidden easter egg in the game, which can be activated with certain keypresses, that brings up a list of developers on screen.)
Today we take creator credits for granted in video games. For some reason in the early days of video games this was sometimes strictly avoided. The reason? Who knows. I have no idea.
hey buddy wont you write about the google engineer who got fired for writing a document about divercity policy there?
ReplyDeleteYouTube is full of videos on the subject. I doubt I could add anything to it. If you want a very good summary of the entire YouTube attack against skeptics, here's an excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxU7rHHoFzw
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