Accolade (company)
Infogrames (1999–2000) | |
Website | accolade.com (archived) |
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Accolade, Inc. (later Infogrames North America, Inc.) was an American
By the early 1990s, Accolade saw critical acclaim for Star Control (1990), as well as strong sales for Bubsy (1993). However, Sega sued Accolade for creating unauthorized Sega Genesis games by reverse-engineering the console's boot-protection. Accolade won the case on appeal, overturning an injunction from the lower court that had interrupted their sales and development. The founders soon left the company. The new chief executive, Peter Harris, attracted new investment from Time Warner. The following year, Accolade president Jim Barrett replaced him. He focused on existing franchises hoping to secure the company's future. However, technical issues undermined the release of Bubsy 3D (1996), and Jack Nicklaus 5 (1997) was considered a commercial disappointment, despite positive reviews. The company still had modest successes with games such as Star Control 3 (1996) and Deadlock (1996), and saw strong sales for both Test Drive 4 (1997) and Test Drive: Off Road (1997).
The French firm
History
Origins (1984–1985)
Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead founded Accolade in 1984; both had worked previously at Atari.[1] They believed Atari undervalued its programmers, leading them to leave the company and start Activision in October 1979.[2] Activision became the first developer to operate independently of the console companies and one of the few firms to survive the video game crash of 1983, though they still posted a US$18 million loss the following year.[1] After a large devaluation of their stock, Miller and Whitehead left Activision to form Accolade.[2][3]
Accolade was founded and operated in
When you've achieved so much success on a specific game system, it's hard to let go of it. We saw a new market, a new challenge, and some better hardware ... we wanted to move forward.
Alan Miller, Accolade co-founder[1]
Their goal for their first titles was to think beyond the gaming medium and draw inspiration from other forms of popular entertainment, including television and film.[6] Miller's first project was Law of the West (1985), a High Noon–inspired western that mixed gunfights with adventure game elements, pioneering a choice of dialogue options that later became common in games.[1] At the same time, Whitehead had seen success previously with the sports games Home Run and Football (1979) on the Atari 2600, which led to the baseball game HardBall! (1985) as his Accolade debut.[1] The game was the first to emulate the "behind the pitcher" viewpoint seen on television, and introduced new features such as player data and coach mode.[6] It became one of Accolade's bestselling games on the Commodore 64 and was considered one of the biggest commercial successes of its time.[7][8]
Success in sports and publishing (1985–1990)
Accolade aimed to balance its roles as a developer and publisher. Miller recalled, "we tried to have about half of the original titles done by employee developers and half by external development groups". Several outside groups would port the games to other hardware so that Accolade could focus their staff on creating original titles.[6] One of their first third-party games was SunDog: Frozen Legacy (1985) by FTL Games.[5] Accolade recruited Mike Lorenzen from Activision to create the science fiction game Psi 5 Trading Company (1985),[5] drawing inspiration from Star Trek.[6] Other early successes included the boxing game Fight Night (1985),[8] developed by Canadian developer Artech Digital Entertainment.[6] Artech also created the combat flight simulation game The Dam Busters (1984), inspired by the eponymous classic war film.[5] This led them to create another combat flight simulator called Ace of Aces (1986) with a development cost of US$80,000, which sold 500,000 units[5] and became one of Accolade's most successful games.[8] Accolade partnered with other publishing companies such as U.S. Gold to distribute their games in Europe, before later switching to Electronic Arts (EA).[5]
Between 1985 and 1986, Accolade's revenues grew from US$1.5 million to US$5 million, thanks to titles like Ace of Aces, a golf game called
Accolade continued to enjoy a strong reputation as a publisher and developer of sports games.[5] Their baseball game Hardball! became one of their most popular series,[13] with later entries created by outside developers such as Chris Taylor.[14] This allowed Whitehead time to develop original titles like the American football game 4th & Inches (1987), while the company published Steve Cartwright's basketball game Fast Break (1989), and Artech's tennis game, Serve & Volley (1988).[5] Many of these sports titles became commercially and critically successful, with Accolade's biggest successes coming from golf.[5] Their first golf game Mean 18, developed by Rex Bradford, became the Jack Nicklaus series.[6] These games pioneered the "three-click" system seen in most golf games,[5] where the player times their button presses to control their backswing, downswing and follow-through.[15] Accolade outsold other golf game publishers thanks to the Jack Nicklaus license.[5] By 1990, Accolade released Test Drive III: The Passion (1990),[16] developing the game in-house as the first game in the series with three-dimensional (3D) polygon graphics.[5]
At the turn of the decade, Accolade tried to diversify outside sports games and into other game genres. Hoping to compete with leading adventure game publishers
Console and legal challenges (1990–1993)
By the early 1990s, Accolade observed the rise of a new generation of gaming consoles, and sought to shift towards a market they had previously abandoned.[5] In 1990, Accolade CEO Allan Epstein expressed his opinion that the growing console market was both an opportunity and a challenge, since both the technology and audience differed from that of the computer.[21]
The company released several games for the Sega Genesis by reverse engineering the console's boot-protection.[5] Sega sued Accolade for doing this without their authorization, winning an initial injunction that forced Accolade to stop selling any games for the Genesis. Accolade, however, won on appeal, setting a precedent that became cited in numerous cases about reverse engineering. Accolade later reached an out-of-court settlement with Sega that allowed Accolade to continue building their own Genesis cartridges as an official licensee.[22] One condition of the settlement was that Accolade would develop several games exclusive to Sega consoles, as a way for Sega to maintain an advantage over their rivals.[5]
As Accolade rushed to develop the games promised to Sega, the company saw the departure of co-founder Bob Whitehead, who felt their games were slipping in quality and that the game industry had become tiresome.
The lawsuit with Sega continued to have serious long-term effects for Accolade.[25] Despite succeeding at the Court of Appeals and negotiating an agreement with Sega, the lower court's injunction had interrupted Accolade's sales and development for several months in 1992. Alan Miller estimated that "the commercial damage associated with this injunction ultimately proved to be somewhere around US$15 to US$25 million",[22] leading the company to report major losses in 1993.[25]
New leadership (1994–1999)
Accolade hired a new CEO in 1994, recruiting the former head of FAO Schwarz, Peter Harris, to help them attract much-needed investment.[25] Alan Miller initially stayed on as chairman and head of product development, but quit the company later in the year to work in medical software, marking the end of the founders' influence.[5][25] Harris led the company's efforts to build a new management team and secure new financing from Time Warner, before leaving to become CEO of the San Francisco 49ers in 1995.[26]
Accolade president Jim Barnett became the new CEO and largely focused their strategy on extending existing franchises.[5] Sales improved under his management.[27] The company expanded the Bubsy series with multiple titles released on several consoles, including Sega, Nintendo, Atari Jaguar, and eventually PlayStation.[5] However, the second and third installments of the Bubsy series were commercial disappointments, leading Accolade to ask series creator Mike Berlyn to return as the next game's producer.[28] Berlyn worked on Bubsy 3D (1996) with a new team, but 3D technology was challenging for the developers. When they requested more time to polish the game, Accolade insisted on keeping the scheduled release date.[29] After its release, the game's technical issues hurt the reputation of the Bubsy series, as well as that of Accolade as a company.[5]
Accolade asked Ford and Reiche to make a third Star Control game at the same budget as Star Control II, which they turned down to pursue other projects.[30] Instead, the publisher licensed Reiche and Ford's copyrighted character designs to make Star Control 3 (1996) with a different development team.[31][32] However, the third game in the series did not live up to Accolade's hopes for the franchise,[5] with reviewers noting the series' change in developer, tone and quality.[33][34][35] Still, Star Control 3 was considered a moderate commercial success for Accolade as a publisher, as was the release of Deadlock (1996), both released in 1996.[36] Accolade saw Deadlock as the start of a potential comeback.[5] Moreover, Test Drive 4 (1997) and Test Drive: Off Road (1997) sold well for both the PC and PlayStation platforms, with sales of more than 850,000 and 500,000 copies respectively, making it the top-selling racing series at the time.[37] Jack Nicklaus 5 (1997) was also a critical success, but was a commercial disappointment.[38]
Despite Barnett's efforts, Accolade was unable to replicate the success of their earlier releases.
Acquisition and end (1999–2000)
French publisher
Later, Infogrames acquired the
See also
References
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External links
- Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived October 23, 1996)
- Official website of Infogrames North America at the Wayback Machine (archived May 11, 2000)