Deep-dive Q&A: How Atari’s new bosses plan to bring the company back from the brink - kellygeression1998

Atari is still a name that everyone—equal those outside of the games industriousness—seems to know.

And yet for most people the name is synonymous with a period of gambling that's long gone. Atari conjures up images of forest-clad consoles and dingy, neon-lit arcades. Oh, and a bunch of ET cartridges buried in the New Mexican forsake.

That's a bit unfair, seeing as the company put out a semi-steady stream of games after that period passed out. It wasn't enough, though, and Atari recently filed for failure. It was in this well-nig dire of times that play's progenitor was rescued by former employee Fred Chesnais, now CEO of Atari.

Atari under Chesnais is a revived troupe. There's an Uncomparable in the Dark reboot in the works, also A a proper PC successor to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. And…a new version of Asteroids?

I sat down with Chesnais and Atari COO Todd Shallbetter recently to discuss Atari's new scheme, where the two picture the party heading, and a ton of opposite topics. The full copy is below.

PCWorld: Why have a big games push with Atari again?

Frederic Chesnais (FC), Chief executive officer of Atari: Ordinal, Atari's been here for a foresighted time. I think the squad today has been here for almost ten years happening average, if not more. I was Chief executive officer/COO of many divisions and entities of the group fifteen age ago. I stayed there for eight geezerhood, I left, created my own games. Then when Atari filed for failure I decided to pip out back, so to say.

It's non truly "Wherefore now?" It's more like, "What happened during the five or vi years during which Atari was still doing games, only maybe was not Eastern Samoa present or was doing some other types of games?"

Now we're back trying to be genuinely relevant in the PC world. Why Personal computer? Because I think it is the best platform. It's the most unfastened. You can achieve out to much of people. Information technology's very flexible. And for the cobbler's last few years I've been doing a lot of Personal computer games myself, so for me IT was natural. When you look at the franchises we have, such as Rollercoaster Tycoon—yeah, information technology's a PC game, it'll be released connected PC again with the late one. For me information technology was truly obvious as the first choice for the big game for the counter of Atari.

At the one time we are also pushing in other directions. IT's not just near games. We also do licensing, soh we are launching Atari Flashback, which is a replica of the original Atari 2600. And there will make up more. We're likewise launching two gambling casino platforms, unitary that is for real money outside of the US and in selected states in the US, and so we have a social casino that will be realistic money.

So it's games, casino gaming or play, then licensing. We've been absent for leastwise 18 months. Atari filed for bankruptcy in January. It's over, it's buttocks us, and now we're very proud to bring the games. That's selfsame exciting.

Todd Shallbetter (TS), COO of Atari: And I think, to the "Wherefore now?" part—as Fred said, he came back and rather saved the company candidly and gave us this opportunity to be completely scaled. We have a really practised core team, and it affords the States the opportunity to take this catalog of over 220 trademarked Atari [intellectual properties]…the sky's the limit when you start thereupon sort of resource.

Fred came in, we're recapitalized, we have a great active team, a very creative team, an invasive and hungry team up. In this space information technology's sure enough a departure from the publisher models of past. IT affords USA the opportunity to actually exploit these IPs.

FC: When Todd says we are organized differently, it's avowedly. Our business has denatured dramatically during the terminal fifteen years. Cardinal eld ago, smooth in just the PC world, you had to have a box, you had to take in distributors all finished the place. It was very expensive to make a game. Nowadays we can antitrust DO a game and distribute it ourselves or with the supporte of great partners much as Steam.

And production has changed as well. I come from a world where I think the business model of the motion picture industry is rattling relevant, because we're all doing entertainment. The mock up where you consume, like a movie production studio apartment, where you have the executive production, the brand, the merchandising, you Don't want to experience all those stages in spite of appearanc your possess company. Soh what do you set? You go to the best.

Fred Chesnais was an employee at Atari a decade past before taking over atomic number 3 CEO.

We do the homophonic. We go to the best studios and we try to make the best games, but after that we stay very nimble. If there's another opportunity we'll go to another studio that's maybe the best at what it's doing.

So I think the constitution is now very focused and very limited to the core team and the core experience. After that we go to the best guys to have the best games. You cannot accept all the Spielbergs of the humankind deep down your own studio. It's just impossible. But what you can do is try to find them and work with each other.

How doh you move on Atari forward and not just depend on the rachis catalogue of 220 IPs and the accompanying nostalgia?

FC: First, in the game world we are creating radical IPs. The parvenu one that's been announced is a game for the LGBT community called Pridefest. That's partially of the DNA of Atari—to manufacture, to tag along new audiences and reach to a lot of new people and refreshing gamers. IT's also part of my DNA because when I left Atari I went out happening my possess and created fitness games for the Wii and the Wii Balance Board.

In games we try to be real to the point. We make over new IPs. We also try to reinvent existing IPs… [comparable] Solo in the Dark. You will hear a lot more about Asteroids in the next few weeks. It's a PC game. It's going to cost a survival game on the asteroids. There's too a lot of survival games for PC. In the games space we try to follow very at issue.

Yeah, this Asteroids.

We also taste to move exterior of games. Clearly gambling, Atari Casino, is outside of games and a way for us to give out to a new hearing. I can tell you the hearing playing cassino games is non the same as the audience playing Alone in the Dark. On that point's approximately overlap e'er, but it's non the homophonic. We taste to go extraneous of games, but it's not a impinge on-and-run project. We're active to be here for some time.

For the moment what we try to fare is come in back, be relevant, make for sure we have the best games.

TS: And I would also add thereto too, these developers we're working with are using Unreal 4, Oneness 5 shortly. Using these technologies and these tools to create next-gen kind of quality in these games. Just the dispersion schema, in that location's not the box, manufacturing, all that stuff. We're going direct to the consumer and coming right into their boxes on their desks. That's very important. We're endowed all these fans, and they're really contiguous fans. We work that.

FC: Back to the business model and wherefore I in person dear PC games: You set in motion a spunky—take any pun on Steam—you require the biz connected the day of release, you take the game 1 yr later, two years later, it's not the same game.

I've been involved with games released 2 years ago, I can tell you the plot today is still the indistinguishable but information technology's not the same. The great thing about PC games is you can really engage with the community, you seat listen to the community, you pot fix your game overnight because we whol wee-wee mistakes. There are always bugs in games, not because the developers are repentant only because you simply can't copy a situation in the studio where you sustain thousands of computers. We're creating extremely sophisticated games, so we'll e'er have bugs.

But to stay relevant in the business, when you undergo a great franchise, keep working on it. World of WarCraft is what, ten years old? When they released the plot, World Health Organization would've famed ten years later it'd still be receiving updates and patches with new features? That's the amazing thing about PC games. You start, and if you make a mistake you correct information technology. Sometimes you have to stop it because clear thither's no market and no one loves your game. Okay, overly bad, Lashkar-e-Toiba's progress to the next nonpareil.

But American Samoa a publisher, we fanny stay relevant and engage with the community for uncomparable class, two eld, three years.

Ut you consider your gambling inaugural a path to monetary fund riskier games on the narrative side or are they entirely separate?

FC: We're in the business of making games. We have to appease connected the corresponding path. We have to make certainly we stay dissolver.

Just I'd order money comes second. The prime thing is "Can we create a game or ware that will attract a lot of users?" Wherefore casino? I feel like it was a natural step for US, instead of going in other directions. I remember there's a itsy-bitsy nosepiece or step to last from games to gaming. After that I think we put up maybe draw our audience from games to gaming a little bit.

It's not strictly a business investing because otherwise I would place the money of the company somewhere else or I'd require more risks. It's a call into question of taking advantage of the brand and pushing it towards where the the great unwashe who know the brand are.

TS: And keep in judgement there was an original 2600 game, Atari Casino. And as an adjunct to that, the original Pong machine was for a very different interview. We're now very much a family-focused and inclusive company across the board, simply these games were in nightclubs and bars and people were fighting to stack their quarters to get them in. It's appealing to a little snatch older demographic, and there's a certain love of the brand in some of those demographics that's very active in the casino space as well.

FC: And especially on the PC you have games and gambling, but you'll have a new category before long which we call hybrid acquirement-based games. That's where people spend their metre and we'll glucinium there.

A few months back you discussed acquiring into hardware. You mentioned the Flashback earlier, but at the time you also talked about smart watches, et cetera. Is that still a plan?

FC: Yeah, it was an example we gave at the clip. The key message we gave at the time was that we're an entertainment stain. Understandably we are relevant in games, but we had the Atari 2600 at the beginning, so we are also a hardware brand. And so information technology would be pertinent for us to go into the hardware business.

That being said, you have two different questions. How, and for what type of product?

So how: we're going with a licensing business model, and the Flashback is the prototypic one. In the rattling short term there's no plan to go direct with this type of commercial enterprise because it's very complex, it's very difficult, it's rattling capital-intensive.

atariage.com

The second question, once you've looked at how you lie with, is what do you want to do? So we had examples, such arsenic watches, such as consoles with the Atari 2600 and the Atari Flashback. There are many a opportunities down the road. We'll take our time. Think about, in general, gamified products—significant a product combination the brand, some gamification, and a product that is really useful to our hearing. We take in no plans for this year—this is for the very long haul. But I think we can buoy be relevant with roughly very asymptomatic-selected hardware products.

Again, this relies connected capitalizing on Atari's name, true? Even though Atari straight off is a very different company than, say, thirty eld ago?

FC: It's antithetic because naturally the world is different. All opus of this is different than information technology was thirty or forty years ago. But yeah, we proceeds advantage of the brand. There's a difference between trying to make a new company and a new game without any name, or saying "Hey, we're relaunching Rollercoaster Tycoon. Hey, the next installment of Asteroids will be present in six to eight months."

We're very motivated and agog to work on it, and hopefully the combination will provide an hearing. If you look at Rollercoaster Tycoon—the great unwashe have tried to constitute close to rollercoaster games, but I Don River't mean they've been precise successful so far. Because we take in that in our Deoxyribonucleic acid, we have sex the franchise, I promise that everyone bequeath say "Scream, they were able to find the right team up, put the rightish features, at the right clip and surrender that to the market."

IT's difficult to make a game, I can tell you. People think you fitting arouse and put option a bunch of programmers in a room. It's a fiddling bit more complex than that.

IT's a great ride. We'Ra all wild about the brand. All the guys rich person to a higher degree x years with the denounce. But that doesn't mean we put on't make mistakes. We all make mistakes. We complete render to learn from that. But I think we'll make sure we abide relevant along Microcomputer. That's the best way to interact with the audience, listen to the audience, and deliver modifications, upgrades, and corrections very rapidly.

What kept everyone at Atari for tenner days even through the downswing?

TS: Fine love of the brand, in my case. And I think certainly for others. We believe therein. We trust in this font of creativeness that IT's been, and it has been systematically. Even up finished some of those lows, there were some very good things happening. Information technology was just a changing time in the industry.

FC: Look at me: I was there ten age ago when we launched Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. So it's really the experience of a lifetime to be able, ten years afterwards, non to broadcast the game—assume't get me wrong—but to cost able to put the resources so we launch a new one. People stayed because we loved the post, and as time goes past we have progressively opportunities with the brand because more and more mass know most the steel. If we hold back another day, we have more opportunities.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435222/deep-dive-qanda-how-ataris-new-bosses-plan-to-bring-the-company-back-from-the-brink.html

Posted by: kellygeression1998.blogspot.com

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