Managers would call up contract workers at 2 AM to make sure they were still working. When a studio was in desperate need of cash, developers and artists would work 16-hour days and beyond. Clashing egos and arguments, fights over poorly-worded or non-existent contracts, and disappearing funds would stretch friendships to the breaking point. Most teams never made it past their second game. These teams, often staffed with green developers, were dangerously unstable. Some of the larger development firms, like Ocean, had a stable of in-house developers, but for most games the work was contracted out to a third-party team. In many cases it was a matter of people fresh out of their teens hiring their peers-people they knew from high school or from computer clubs. Life in the trenchesįinding these people wasn't easy. Finally, new management positions were needed to oversee the work of these creative people. The larger size and complexity of the games required that someone other than the programmers be asked to test the games before they were released. The four-channel sampled sound chip cried out for musicians to make it sing. The Amiga's rich, 4096-color palette demanded people who were skilled artistically to create the sprites and backgrounds. The success of the Commodore 64 (and on the other side of the pond, the Sinclair Spectrum) meant that more money was available for computer game development, and it was a good thing too, as the more powerful 16-bit machines were starting to seriously test the limits of a one-man development team.įor the first time, specialized careers were starting to emerge in game development. Even the younger and smaller computer game industry had moved far beyond Roberta Williams putting floppy disks into ziplock bags and answering phone calls from players in her kitchen. Long gone were the days where a lone coder would stay up all night in his basement for six weeks and bang out a hit for the Atari 2600. The Amiga was born a game machine, but it entered a world where the video game industry was well-established and changing rapidly. Unfortunately, it was not possible to include everyone's stories in the article, but I did make an honest attempt to reply to every email I received. Author's note: I want to personally thank the literally hundreds of people who replied to my call for stories from Amiga game developers, without whom this article would not have been possible.
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