Console Wars (2015)
PART FOUR
CIVIL WAR
48.
MARCH OF THE LEMMINGS
The world is full of misconceptions, but perhaps none more fatally fantastical than those involving the lemming. As legend has it, these feisty creatures are prone to combating periods of overpopulation by blindly marching one by one off tall cliffs and unceremoniously plummeting to their deaths. It’s unclear where this global rumor began, but evidence suggests that its popularity spread from Disney’s 1958 Academy Award-winning documentary White Wilderness, which highlighted this unusual and unnatural behavior. Although it was later discovered that the filmmakers had flown in the featured lemmings from Canada and had actually tossed them off the cliffs by hand, it was too late to reverse this morbid misconception. The false legacy was further perpetuated in the 1970s with an outrageous off-Broadway show (National Lampoon’s Lemmings, which launched the careers of John Belushi and Chevy Chase), in the 1980s with a famous Super Bowl commercial (Apple Computer’s 1985 ad featuring a flock of blindfolded businessmen following each other off a cliff), and then again in the 1990s with the release of an extremely popular computer game (Lemmings, where players must stop these pixelated creatures from marching to their doom). Although Sony’s Olaf Olafsson was in the enlightened minority of individuals who knew the truth about lemmings, he also knew the metaphorical value behind this urban legend. And that’s why in May 1993 he traveled to Liverpool, England, for a pivotal meeting with Psygnosis, the publisher of the addictive, misconception-perpetuating computer game.
“On just the first day, we sold fifty-five thousand copies on the Amiga,” a Psygnosis employee explained while giving Olafsson a tour of the company’s headquarters in South Harrington. Although every game publisher’s offices are naturally tech-heavy, the piled-high workstations and futuristic 3-D renderings at Psygnosis gave Olafsson the impression that he had died and gone to high-tech heaven. “And several reviewers actually gave Lemmings an unprecedented perfect score!”
“Very impressive,” Olafsson commented, pleased with everything that he had been shown thus far. “Well worth the plane ride to Liverpool.”
After things had fallen apart with Sega, it became clear that the only way Sony could generate the developmental talent and technological resources to support their own console would be to acquire a publisher or partner with someone else. And since Sega and Nintendo were the only viable hardware makers (sincere apologies to Atari, SNK, and NEC), purchasing a game publisher was now a top priority. Since the top Japanese game makers would likely be too expensive (and also tip off Nintendo to Sony’s big plans), the most likely candidates for acquisition were the big U.S. publishers like Acclaim, Activision, or maybe even Electronic Arts. Although each of these companies had impressive track records, Olafsson was less concerned about what a potential acquisition had already accomplished, and more interested in what they were capable of doing next. It was this forward-thinking logic that led him into deep discussions with John Ellis and Ian Hetherington, the managing directors of Psygnosis.
Ellis, Hetherington, and a gentleman named David Lawson had founded Psygnosis in 1984 with the goal of fusing their devout interests in art, rock music, and videogames. In the following years, the company’s artistic ideals and strategy for selling games had much in common with the early years of Electronic Arts; both focused almost exclusively on computer games, both flaunted a bohemian fascination with graphics and technology, and both gorgeously marketed their software like music albums (Psygnosis, in fact, often had the packaging designed by Roger Dean, the artist famed for his album covers for the rock band Yes). But come the early 1990s, Electronic Arts transitioned to making games for consoles, while Psygnosis continued to remain dedicated to higher-powered computers. Why would two companies that started around the same time, with similar creative ambitions, take such divergent directions? Some of the difference can be attributed to EA being a publicly traded company (and beholden to bottom-line-focused shareholders), but most of the difference can be attributed to the console’s lack of popularity in Europe. Consoles were significantly less popular in Europe than they were in Japan, the United States, and even South America (although in the last of these this demand was mostly supplied through black and gray markets).
To better understand the state of the British videogame industry, imagine the 1980s as a pop-cultural experiment in which the United States was the test subject and the United Kingdom was the control variable. For both countries, the decade began with a pandemic of Pac-Man fever that infected the masses until the videogame crash of 1983. In the aftermath of this disaster, names like Atari, Arcadia, and Coleco were tossed aside in favor of Apple, Amiga, and Commodore, as both countries simultaneously swore off videogames and prepared to get their interactive entertainment fix from the burgeoning personal computer industry. As the science fiction novels had been prognosticating for years, computers were finally here to take over our lives (and our living rooms), giving rise to ambitious new software companies like Electronic Arts and Psygnosis. Given the high cost of computers, neither company enjoyed any sort of overnight success, but by 1987 both had developed a reputation for publishing highbrow, high-tech, caviar-quality products. And as the end of the decade approached and the prevalence of personal computers increased, the future looked bright for both companies until something unexpected happen in the United States: Nintendo.
In the process of miraculously resurrecting the videogame industry in America, Nintendo’s triumph had the strange effect of killing the computer game industry. Not directly, nor completely, but the seemingly inevitable personal computer revolution was thrown off course by Nintendo’s unexpected videogame evolution. At first, companies like Electronic Arts resisted, refusing to be stymied by the 8-bit console’s less sophisticated parameters, but soon that resistance became futile. By 1990, only 15 percent of households owned a personal computer, while nearly 30 percent owned an NES. But that was all just statistical static when compared to the frequency of game companies striking it rich by making games for Nintendo. And as more software developers migrated to consoles, the quality of computer games stagnated, which in turn hurt the computer industry, which indirectly helped the console industry. The circle continued viciously on and on until the only games that really mattered came in 8 or 16 bits.
This, however, was not the case in England, where Nintendo-mania had never happened in the 1980s and, therefore, the computer industry had never taken a backseat to consoles. And because England had not been the petri dish for Nintendo’s experiment to globalize videogames, by the time the NES finally invaded Britain (Nintendo of Europe was established in June 1990) the personal computer revolution was far enough along to temper the console’s initial reception. It sold well, very well around the holiday season, but it never set the country ablaze as it had in Japan and America. And as a result of all this, the kids in England tended not to argue about Sega vs. Nintendo, but rather debate the merits of consoles vs. computers.
Although this was a hot-button issue in classrooms around Great Britain, consoles vs. computers was never much of a battle amongst the country’s top game publishers. With the exception of Rare (who created NES classics like Battletoads and R.C. Pro-Am), most British developers had missed the 8-bit wave and, by default, remained committed to making computer games. Where EA had been forced to abandon making heady games like M.U.L.E. and The Bard’s Tale and do things like reverse-engineer the Genesis and develop a subbrand called EA Sports, companies like Psygnosis had never faced this type of identity crisis. As a result, while Electronic Arts was making games like Lakers Versus Celtics, Psygnosis continued publishing titles like Shadow of the Beast, a groundbreaking side-scrolling action game renowned for its cutting-edge graphics, parallax scrolling backdrops, and an incredible score composed by David Whittaker. Creatively, this type of work was likely more fulfilling, but financially the downside was that Psygnosis made significantly less money than Electronic Arts. Still, beneath this lost opportunity, there was a hidden financial upside, one that wouldn’t be realized until a few years from now. And that was precisely what had brought Olaf Olafsson to Liverpool.
“Thank you for inviting me out here,” Olafsson said, sitting down with Ellis and Hetherington to further discuss the reason for his visit. “I’m rather impressed by what I’ve seen today. It confirms my greatest hopes and expectations.”
“We appreciate your saying so,” Ellis replied.
“We do try our best,” Hetherington added.
“It shows,” Olafsson said, his mind quickly flashing back to everything he had seen: Lemmings, Shadow of the Beast, and the company’s latest creation, Microcosm, a satirical action game centered around a bloody, futuristic corporate rivalry between Cybertech and Axiom, the galaxy’s two largest conglomerates. Like the Sony game Sewer Shark and the Sony-turned-Sega game Night Trap, Microcosm was built with FMV animation, but it blew away those other titles because Psygnosis had rendered the graphics on workstations similar to those Hollywood used for special effects. When Microcosm was finished, Psygnosis was hoping that it would become one of the first games to bridge the gap between computers and consoles, with releases scheduled for both MS-DOS and the Amiga CD32, as well as Sega-CD and the 3DO system. This convergence between computer games and videogames was what really appealed to Olafsson. Now that the console world was catching up on the capabilities offered by computers, companies like Psygnosis were suddenly at the forefront of this next generation of gaming, particularly the kinds of games that Sony imagined for its PlayStation. “I think that Psygnosis would make a wonderful addition to the Sony brand,” Olafsson said, “and I very much hope you feel the same.”
They did, and on May 23, 1993, Sony Electronic Publishing acquired Psygnosis. To do so, they paid $48 million, which was an exorbitant sum that sounded even more astronomical when those hearing the news instinctively replied: Who the hell is Psygnosis? Why would Sony pay that much? Nearly fifty million bucks for a bunch of dopey little lemmings? Derision and mockery ensued, but Olafsson was deaf to these, because this deal had never been about the past, but exclusively about the future. And whereas in the past, the so-called future of videogames had looked at Europe as an afterthought, Sony wished to plant a flag in this market, which was primed for the convergence. Olafsson hinted at this in a press release issued that day, saying, “Psygnosis and its management will play an integral role in the development of industry-leading interactive entertainment, as well as our expansion into Europe.” But that explanation didn’t seem like nearly enough to adequately answer the lingering question of who the hell Psygnosis was.
“But why, oh why, would Sony pay that much?” Olafsson mockingly asked over lunch with Schulhof. Both smiled and laughed before moving on to the next order of business. It had little to do with the game Lemmings, and much more to do with the popular misconception. There was no truth to the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide, but like most great lies, this one was based on a figment of truth. Although they don’t march off cliffs together, they do have a rare talent for marching in unison and obediently following the leader during times of migration. And with the next generation of videogames right around the corner, Psygnosis had an important asset that Sony considered much more valuable than just games. Psygnosis had something that Sony believed would induce lemming-like behavior among other game developers and steer them to the Sony PlayStation when that great migration finally took place.