Transcription
A single guy, no 200-man studio army, no fat publisher behind him, no engine that does half the work for him. A single Scottish programmer releases a game in 1999 that sells better than pretty much anything else that year. And the truly crazy thing about it, he wrote it in a programming language that most developers today wouldn't even touch with a ten-foot pole. The game was an absolute masterpiece. And then a company called Atari came along and turned this masterpiece into one of the most embarrassing stories in all of gaming history with online casinos, its own cryptocurrency, and yes, even a genuine crowdfunding scam, if you can call it that. This is the story of Rollercoaster Tycoon. This man, whom we raved about earlier, is named Chris Sawyer, and he is basically living proof that the coolest games arise from pure obsession, not from a quarterly report. In the 80s, he was one of those legendary bedroom or garage programmers. As a teenager, he bought a cheap 8-bit computer with his pocket money, programmed arcade clones, and learned one incredibly important thing very well: to get the absolute most out of lousy hardware. Later, he ported tons of games to the PC as contract work, including for David Braben, the man behind Elite. So, he wasn't a big creative visionary at first, but simply a damn good craftsman, until he made his first own thing in 1994. Transport Tycoon, an economic simulation where you build transport routes, inspired by Railroad Tycoon and Sim City. It did quite well, especially in Europe, it had a small, loyal fan base. And then what happens surprisingly often with brilliant games happens. He starts with the sequel but somehow loses interest, buys himself out of the contract, and takes a vacation, a long vacation. And it was on exactly this vacation that probably the most important thing in his life happened. It shows again how important vacation is. So, he drives through Europe and the USA, visiting one amusement park after another, until he becomes a complete rollercoaster nerd. This might sound random now, but simulating rollercoasters is technically not that far from trains, tracks, cars, stations, it's all the same principle. So, he throws the Transport Tycoon sequel overboard and starts building a game about rollercoasters. The working title was White Knuckle. He even had concerns that it would be too niche and only appeal to a tiny bubble of coaster fans. But he didn't care. And spoiler alert, he was wrong about his concerns. And now comes the part for which some people seriously consider Chris Sawyer the god of game programming. Rollercoaster Tycoon was written almost entirely in Assembly. And to understand why that's so absurd, we need to briefly explain what that even means. Languages like C or Java are like reading English for programmers. You write semi-understandable commands, and the computer translates them itself into the zeros and ones it then understands. Assembly is another level up. You're talking almost directly to the processor and moving data through memory by hand. No comfort, no nice variable names, nothing. A single line of C can quickly become four or five lines in Assembly. It's simply a nightmare for most programmers, but it also has an advantage. It runs brutally fast because the computer practically has no work left with the translation. And that's exactly the point. Sawyer basically had to have the entire game in his head. Every system, the physics, the behavior of hundreds of guests walking through the park simultaneously, the entire rollercoaster logic, simply everything. And the result was a game that ran on absolute potato PCs without stuttering and practically without bugs, because back then there were no patches over the internet. Compare that to modern 80 GB releases that look like a construction site at launch. Sawyer created a bug-free, almost bug-free, perfectly optimized game, practically carved in stone, all by himself. But "all by himself" isn't quite accurate. Of course, he was the main guy, but in the end, three people actually worked on it, which is still ridiculously little. Chris Sawyer on design and programming, Simon Foster on graphics, and Alistair Brimble on music. Three people. At the same time, games like Sim City 3000 or Age of Empires had teams of 100 people with 10 or more programmers. And yet, Rollercoaster Tycoon was the best-selling PC game of 1999. In the US, over 700,000 copies in the first year alone, by 2002 over 4 million, and in the end, almost 10 million copies. And Sawyer, well, he pocketed about $30 million for a game that was even distributed in cereal boxes at times. Yes, really. That was somehow a thing back then. You only understand it if you were there. But success alone doesn't explain why people still play this thing today. The genius of Rollercoaster Tycoon was the design philosophy behind it. Sawyer didn't want a hardcore strategy game that punishes you. He just wanted fun. The scenarios were deliberately never overly difficult. There was hardly any tutorial, and the game just lets you learn at your own pace. That this was precisely the optimal formula for fun wasn't really clear back then. It was a happy coincidence, easy to play, yet with infinite possibilities for creativity. The best example is a legend called Mr. Bones Wild Ride, built by an anonymous user. An almost 10 km long rollercoaster, through which guests struggle for four in-game years. And because the guests can't starve in the game, they simply end up back in the queue. This was, of course, not directly intended by the developer. This is the community that pushes a perfectly built toy to its absolute limit. And that's exactly what makes a good game. In 2002, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 was released, and for most fans, it's the absolute peak of the series. Same engine, same visuals, but everything a bit better, newer, better building system, more control, more user-friendly. It became the tenth best-selling game of the year. And Sawyer himself later said that his personal vision of Rollercoaster Tycoon was completely fulfilled with part 2. Remember that sentence, it will be important soon, because around this time, everything changes. The publisher Infogames renames itself Atari, and Atari now had full control over the brand and wanted more. I mean, who doesn't want more? More can be a good thing, and that's why there's more from us now, because for the first time ever, we're releasing a batch of highly limited Hit or Shit merch. Order as fast as you can. Once the first batch is gone, it will probably take a while until something new is available. And the first 100 orders will even get every piece of clothing signed by me. Treat yourselves or your partners or your mains under the video. And back to the actual problem. The problem is, Sawyer didn't want more. His vision was fulfilled. He had zero interest in crafting someone else's vision for the next installments. So, he withdraws and only works as a consultant. For Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 from 2004, Atari brings in another studio. Frontier Developments, David Braben's studio. Ah yes, we know him already. This is indeed the David Braben for whom Sawyer ported games way, way back. Small world. Part 3 was also the first leap into 3D with a free camera, day-night cycle, and the ability to ride your own rollercoaster in first-person perspective. Objectively, it wasn't a bad game at all and sold very well, but for many fans, the charm that made the first two parts so special was lost. It felt somehow more sterile, interchangeable, and from here on, the story slowly becomes, well, disgusting. In 2005, Sawyer sues Atari for around $4.8 million in unpaid profit sharing. He lists 13 individual cases where Atari allegedly withheld or deducted money from him. Atari sees it a bit differently, or rather, very differently. They sue back. But the Pandora's Box of Atari withholding money was now open, and it quickly turns out they haven't done this for the first time. In the end, the lawsuits were unfortunately settled behind closed doors, or fortunately for those involved, unfortunately for us. Specifically, one name becomes relevant here: Fred Chesnais. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. At some point, the CEO of Atari. His list of decisions reads like a parody: an online casino, Atari hotels, its own cryptocurrency, and our personal favorite, Atari branded caps with built-in speakers. This is the guy who was at the helm during the entire Rollercoaster Tycoon downfall. It quickly became apparent that this guy wasn't the ultimate gamer genius. Instead of a real new main game, there was first a wave of mobile garbage. Rollercoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, for example, a mobile game as you know them, with annoying wait times and microtransactions at every corner, but at least free play, you think? No, no hope, people. It costs $2.99. And in parallel, Atari is planning the big comeback for PC: Rollercoaster Tycoon World. The next real main installment, a whole decade after part 3. And that turned out to be a complete catastrophe. The development process alone was a complete chaos. Atari starts with a studio called Pipeworks, fires them, brings in Area 52 Games, fires them too, and finally lands with Envizio Creations. Three developers for a single game. Each one works on the leftovers from the previous one. Atari sets the release date for November 16, 2016, exactly one day before a competitor is released: Planet Coaster. But it's important who is making this game. Frontier Developments, the studio that made Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 back then. Exactly. They just continued their own Rollercoaster thing without Atari. And you can probably guess it, but we'll say it anyway. The game was really, really good. So, the duel begins. Roller Coaster Tycoon World launches and is a failure on practically every level. Bugs, glitches, a dysfunctional rollercoaster builder, abysmal performance, worse than the almost 20-year-old original, because that was also what made the original great, the incredibly difficult programming language, and it's no longer used. The reviews were devastating. Planet Coaster, on the other hand, was celebrated. Because of the failure of Rollercoaster Tycoon World, the game probably sold even better than it would have anyway. So, thanks to Atari for the great indirect support. Rollercoaster Tycoon World had its peak player count at around 5875, so roughly exactly there. Planet Coaster reached around 22,000. It's quite clear who had more hype here, but it wasn't just the hype, but the general reception was simply much better for Planet Coaster. But now comes the point where "embarrassing" just becomes "brazen." Atari saw how successfully Frontier financed its game through crowdfunding and thought, "We can do that too." So, for a new Rollercoaster Tycoon on the Nintendo Switch, Atari asked the public for money. Yes, exactly. It's like a huge real estate investor publicly asking for money to build his next building. And not with a fiver or something. No, no. The minimum investment was $250 for US citizens. And the alleged mega-project turned out to be just a slightly adapted port of the mobile game. And what Atari forgot to mention is that it would have happened anyway. So, whether you donated money or not, it was simply a price gouging cash grab from a huge corporation. And the absolute crowning glory is in the fine print of the funding page. Atari openly lists possible irregular uses of the revenue. Translated, this means they reserve the right to use the collected money for things like travel, entertainment, or paying off company debts. Nearly $56,000 from over 100 people were collected before Atari quietly took the page offline. And the finished game was, as promised, the aforementioned mobile port. But as bleak as it all seems, there was a silver lining, and even the original creator was involved. At some point, Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic was released, a port of the first two originals, and for that, the ancient Assembly code had to be painstakingly translated into a more modern language. And Sawyer's only major condition was no microtransactions and a fair price. And that's exactly the version everyone should play if they want original Rollercoaster Tycoon. Rollercoaster Tycoon is the perfect example of something we're seeing far too often on this channel. A single person with real passion builds something out of pure enthusiasm that millions of people love, and then a corporation that doesn't care about the game itself takes over and squeezes the brand until only a name remains that can be used to make money. The story of Sawyer and the story of Atari is basically passion versus greed. But the good thing is, passion sold better in the end. A guy with a rollercoaster obsession and a programming language nobody wants to use created something that is still played 25 years later. And a huge corporation with all the resources in the world couldn't even manage to build anything on top of it. Actually, that's something positive. What do you think, which part was the best for you? And can you think of any other stories like this that we might cover here? Let us know in the comments, and now we'll read a few comments from last week, from the last video. We talked about how GameStop wants to buy eBay. Awesome video. I feel so well represented as an ape, like not in a long time. High-quality channel. May you never step on Lego bricks. Let's change the world together. Thank you. Those are nice, positive words. May you never step on Lego bricks. You only wish that for your best friends. And yes, I was very active in that community of Apes with GameStop back then. I found it funny. I didn't invest, but I found it funny. Isn't eBay itself also a dying brand? Everyone used it once. Now I don't know anyone who uses it. I honestly don't know. I don't think so. I actually think eBay is still quite relevant, precisely because of the trading card market, but also for many other things. So, I know that for example. Why do you sound so much like ultralativ? Are you? No, I'm not. Well, I'll take it as a compliment. I find ultralativ extremely cool, but I don't think I sound like it. I find your current mix of topics really great. It doesn't have to be just gaming, you can also present other topics from pop culture with charm. We will. I'm also up for other topics. I would also find it interesting to see videos about individual games, the creation of special moments, like for example in WoW. That story about the illness. Didn't we cover that before? Or how CS:GO originated, we covered it something like that. So, to go deep into individual games and possibly understand things that you didn't know before, even though you've been playing some games for years. We do that often and with great pleasure, and we will continue to do so. So, exactly these kinds of stories will come gradually. So, one more comment, we'll do a short one. How about a video about Netflix Games? I think the story behind it would be interesting. I think we've covered that before, but I'll look at it again. Maybe there's something new or relevant. Okay, I'll read one more comment, that's not enough for me. With all the English garbage, I unfortunately didn't understand anything. Just stick to the German language, then people will understand something. I think 99% of people understood it because the German language doesn't mean that everything has to be a German word, but every language is also made up of Anglicisms. That's just how it is. That's just how it is. We use foreign words in the German language too. They establish themselves at some point, and then they are German for us, and you just have to be a little more open-minded. That helps, that helps with everything. In that sense. Okay. Okay. Bye.