E.T. (game) - Development

Development

The process began in July 1982 and was completed before the end of the year. Total production costs were estimated to be US$125 million. Following the commercial success of the film in June 1982, Steve Ross, chief executive officer (CEO) of Atari's parent company Warner Communications, started negotiations with Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures to acquire the license to produce a video game based on the film. In late July, Warner announced its exclusive worldwide rights to market coin-operated and console games based on the movie. Although the exact details of the transaction were not disclosed in the announcement, it was later reported that Atari had paid US$20–25 million for the rights, a high figure for video game licensing at the time. When asked by Ross what he thought about making an E.T.-based video game, Atari CEO Ray Kassar replied, "I think it's a dumb idea. We've never really made an action game out of a movie." An arcade game based on the E.T. property had also been planned, but this was deemed to be impossible given the short deadline.

After negotiations completed, Kassar called Howard Scott Warshaw on July 27, 1982 to commission him as developer of the video game. Kassar informed him that Spielberg asked for Warshaw specifically and that development needed to be completed by September 1 to meet a production schedule for the Christmas holiday. Though Warshaw had spent over a year working on consecutive development schedules for games (seven months working on Yars' Revenge and then six months on Raiders of the Lost Ark), he accepted the offer based on the challenge of completing a game in a short time frame and at Spielberg's request. Warshaw considered it an opportunity to develop an innovative Atari 2600 game based on a movie he enjoyed. Kassar reportedly offered Warshaw US$200,000 and an all-expenses-paid vacation to Hawaii in compensation. Kassar then told him to arrive at the San Jose Airport a few days later to have a meeting with Spielberg.

Warshaw used those days to design the structure of the game and segmented the concept into four ideas: world, objective, path to achieve the objective, and obstacles. He envisioned a three-dimensional cube world as the setting and adapted part of the film's plot, E.T. phoning home, as the goal. Warshaw then conceived that E.T. would need to assemble a special phone to call his ship and arrive at a special landing site to achieve this goal. He considered obstacles as an element that would determine the success of a game, and experienced difficulties when taking into account the time constraints and technical limitations of the console. Inspired by the movie, adults were implemented as antagonists that would chase the alien. Feeling more adversity was needed, Warshaw included a time limit for players to accomplish the goal. Pits were devised as an element to hide the pieces of the phone as well as expand the game's world.

Warshaw and other Atari executives presented this design to Spielberg, who did not express enthusiasm. Spielberg instead asked him to create a game similar to Namco's Pac-Man. Believing the concept too derivative of a common game design, Warshaw proceeded with his concept, which he felt would capture the sentimentality he saw in the original film. In retrospect, however, Warshaw stated that Spielberg's idea might have had merit. He spent the remaining time programming the game. Atari anticipated enormous sales based on the popularity of the film, as well as the stability the video game industry was experiencing in 1982. Due to time limitations, Atari decided to skip audience testing for the product. Emanual Gerard, co-chief operating officer of Warner at the time, later suggested that the company had fallen into a false sense of security by the success of its previous releases, particularly its console version of Pac-Man, which was commercially successful despite poor critical reaction.