The issue with ET, just like today, was circumstance. A bunch of suits came to a programmer with almost no time to develop the game and shoved it out the door. The reason it’s cited as the industry killer is so many people bought that trash game they lost faith. There was so much shovelware back then.

Nintendo learned from that mistake, that’s why they had their console on lock down. If you didn’t have their blessing, you didn’t make a game on their platform. There was a lot of lawsuits towards Nintendo because of that, but their intense scrutiny is why those games were generally quality and why they revived the home console industry.

Today we are back to where we were with the Atari, companies that don’t have the skills to develop certain games are being asked to do it, often under extreme deadlines. Look at what happened with Gollum, basically a modern day equivalent to ET imo. The reason the industry almost died is because so many people got burnt by things like ET. You would think it’s bound to happen again, and it might, but then again people still preorder stuff post disasters like no man’s and cyberpunk.

There are a lot of mistakes that could be learned from in that era of gaming, but damn if we aren’t hellbent on repeating it.

Sweet, I’ll check them out myself. Thanks for the suggestions

If you’re into gaming I would suggest

• NoClip (video game documentarians about modern video games)
• video game history hour (general video game history done by the video game history foundation)
• insert credit ( almost game show style, the hosts have only a few minutes to answer all kinds of questions about games, the gaming industry, or even opinions.)

Otherwise I really enjoy

• behind the bastards ( kind of like deep dives into shitty people of the world and what makes them tick)
• cautionary tales ( true stories about disasters, humon error, and catastrophies )
• 99 percent invisible (weekly episodes on all kinds of deep dives into things that often go without notice in our lives, the most recent episode covers the history of album art for example)