[HN Gopher] The first game 'Easter eggs' were an act of corporat...
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The first game 'Easter eggs' were an act of corporate rebellion
Author : Anon84
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-04-09 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehustle.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehustle.co)
| QuantumSeed wrote:
| It's much harder to sneak in an easter egg now that it's common
| practice to require all code to go through code review.
| Maursault wrote:
| > The young fan's name was Adam Clayton.
|
| and who would go on to global fame and fortune playing bass for
| the rock band, U2
| pamelafox wrote:
| Apparently, they are different people:
| https://forums.atariage.com/topic/243163-programmer-adam-cla...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| In the early days of Electronic Arts (I wasn't there, but knew
| lots of people who were), Trip Hawkins used to say to his
| employees who wanted credit, "If you want that, give up your
| regular salary & stock options, take the risks, and go out on
| your own. If your game is any good, we'll produce it and you'll
| have the royalties."
|
| So he had a Hollywood-ish model: the big studio _backs_ an
| independent who makes the movie -- it doesn 't make the movie
| with its in-house talent, like in the 30's and 40's.
|
| I have no idea how it works now, by the way.
|
| ==== epilog ====
|
| We (Analytica) had a softball game against EA. They killed us and
| Trip hit a towering home run.
| elefanten wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, fun anecdote.
|
| Works both ways. There are publishing functions and development
| functions.
|
| A "studio" does development. It can be independent or owned by
| a bigger company.
|
| A "publisher" focuses on handling distribution / sales &
| marketing functions. It can publish games from studios it owns
| ("first party") or from external studios it has business
| contracts with ("third party").
|
| There are companies that do various mixes of these functions,
| but the biggest tend to do them all.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| Yes, that's a good overview.
|
| In addition, I think in the last few years the swing has been
| towards bigger publishers or corporate holding groups
| (Embracer, Microsoft/Sony, Tencent, etc) sweeping up lots of
| previously independant studios (Eidos, Riot, Double Fine,
| Mojang, etc) in acquisitions - for the sake of owning the
| intellectual property and freedom to do more with the
| license. But also, and crucially, stopping other rival
| companies doing the same thing first, leading to big
| arguments like this one:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23623363/microsoft-sony-
| ft...
|
| Perhaps the colder global financial situation will cool this
| acquisition/centralisation spree, but maybe not!
| lozenge wrote:
| Hollywood has credits, even for the accounting departments that
| are definitely getting salaries and not royalties.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| difference between "credit" and "royalties."
| someweirdperson wrote:
| From the letter:
|
| > I AM VERY PROUD OF YOU COMPUTER. I'VE COMPARED. YOU ONLY NEED
| MORE SOFTWARE AND PERIPHERALS TO BACK IT UP.
|
| The article talks about a request for backup software and
| hardware.
|
| > for backing up his Atari system
|
| My interpretation of the original letter is that it sees the
| greatness of the computer, but wants more use-cases as proof - to
| back up the claim of greatness.
|
| No-one gets that excited about backup-software.
| netsharc wrote:
| [flagged]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _a hidden message or feature that has become commonplace in
| movies, video games, and other digital content._
|
| The process of businesses turning acts of employee rebellion into
| product is a phenomenon called _recuperation_. Once you become
| aware of it, you can see it everywhere, from _star Wars_ to the
| establishment 's fondness for Gene Sharp.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Reminds me the Bill Hicks routine on marketing people. First
| telling them to kill themselves and then suggesting the
| marketing people are thinking "he's going for that anti-
| marketing dollar, there's a lot of money in that", etc.
|
| The machine will always extract whatever is useful and
| profitable. It co-opts everything to make itself bigger and
| bigger.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
| pydry wrote:
| Recuperation is more about the cultural appropriation of
| subversive symbols. E.g. "being aware of systemic racism in
| 1960s harlem" -> "2020s rich white women telling each other
| their pronouns"
|
| Theres nothing all that subversive about easter eggs is there?
| uni_rule wrote:
| At the time it was to sneak credits past corporate approval
| (Atari felt that since video games weren't considered art
| crediting game developers was as ridiculous as crediting
| their office window curtai). Their hidden nature sometimes
| allowd devs to vent their grievances or take pot shots at
| their management and colleagues. The whole point then was
| that they were hidden from the testing phase of the final
| product.
|
| In that specific context it is an act of rebellion.
| chronogamous wrote:
| Reminds me of Sierra's Space Quest III, where at some point in
| the adventure, you would encounter an arcade game called "Astro
| Chicken". Only if you were persistent enough in playing that
| machine, it would spawn a secret message, hidden in there by the
| programmers of the Space Quest-series - the secret message was a
| cry for help, as they were being held captive by ScumSoft, and
| were forced to write software without getting any of the credit
| for doing so.
|
| Later in the game you would actually get to rescue them, but only
| after traversing an enormous maze of office cubicles at ScumSoft
| HQ.
|
| For reference, see:
| https://biobreak.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/space-quest-iii-as...
| bitwize wrote:
| Ba-COCK!
| Dwedit wrote:
| Thank you Warren Robinett for making Adventure so awesome.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| And now, 'Easter eggs' are forbidden through policy and a
| fireable offense if you're not in a creative line of work where
| it is intentional. The same being for April Fools'.
|
| They seem to serve a legitimate purpose though. Provenance of
| creators/creation. While it is a cliche Hollywood plot line that
| true ownership of an entity is proved by an Easter egg, these
| seem to be harmless ways to stick it to the man.
| gambiting wrote:
| I work in video games industry for one of the top 3 publishers
| and easter eggs definitely aren't a "fireable offsense", unless
| I guess they are in particularly poor taste or something. If
| you mean things hidden in the game without explicitly telling
| the player about them and hoping they find them, that still
| happens all the time. But even things which are hidden which no
| one really approved also happen on pretty much all levels, both
| from programmers as well as artists.
| snarfy wrote:
| They are by definition something an engineer snuck in.
| Anything else is a regular feature that has been
| premeditated.
|
| If it was snuck in, what else has been? What does it say
| about your security policies and practices if engineers can
| sneak stuff in?
|
| This is why they are fireable offenses. It might not be for a
| piece of entertainment software like a video game, but sneak
| one in while working at FAANG and you'll most likely get
| fired.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Maybe these days. There's a famous story from early YouTube
| though and no one got fired. And Google frequently throws
| in Easter eggs like the time searching for cats or dogs let
| you trigger a mode where you can make paw marks on the
| page, although those are more formal affairs probably and
| not some random thing you throw in there on a whim.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| No experience in gaming but given the amount of creative
| control I'm given in other dev work it's not surprising when
| you're talking about projects at the scale of most video
| games.
| gambiting wrote:
| My last project had 800 people on it and little things were
| added pretty much all over the place without the art
| directors ever knowing - even us as programmers shipped
| some programmer art that definitely wasn't meant to be
| there but it got "accidentally" left in the game files and
| shipped. And then there is a whole category of "official"
| easter eggs that obviously get approved by creative
| directors and are meant to be there for players to
| eventually find.
| userbinator wrote:
| Emphasis on _if you 're not in a creative line of work_.
| klabb3 wrote:
| So managers, accountants and VPs?
| motohagiography wrote:
| It's older than video games, and there's a spectrum between
| easter eggs and watermarks. Consider mapmakers adding fictional
| places to prove map copyright.
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/trap-streets-with-no-n...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| That's a different motivation
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Anything is a fireable offense if you're at-will. A termination
| like that is not likely to hold up in better jurisdictions.
| nimbius wrote:
| God I love a good easter egg so I'll spill the beans on one we
| routinely do at the truck shop I work at:
|
| If you're in for new mudflaps, we'll sneak a small pin on the end
| of the mount point and laser cut the upper edge of the drivers
| flap. The pin gives you a place to hang your clipboard when
| you're doing pre drive checklists, and the laser cut? Gives you a
| bottle opener on the mudflap :).
| neilv wrote:
| > _Ron Milner, who worked at Atari from 1972 to 1985, inserted an
| Easter egg in the arcade game "Starship 1." If a player followed
| a certain sequence of controls, the message "Hi Ron" would flash
| on the screen and the player would be awarded 10 free games._
|
| I'm very sympathetic to having credits in video games and other
| creative artifacts.
|
| But would this particular "10 free games" Easter egg be a big
| problem if the secret spread?
|
| (The entire reason for buying an arcade game then was to generate
| money, by charging for games played, with minimal supervision.
| And firmware updates to remove an Easter egg once shipped seem
| expensive.)
| xapata wrote:
| Maybe. Arcade owners might buy a game that doesn't offer free
| plays instead.
| lelandfe wrote:
| > would this particular "10 free games" Easter egg be a big
| problem if the secret spread?
|
| Similarly, this Galaga trick/easter egg/bug:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34542064
| elzbardico wrote:
| It is incredibly amazing how every story about a former tech
| company that lost its mojo and ended up being sold for peanuts
| always have this bit about "they brought XXX as CEO, a Harvard
| MBA..." Sometimes I feel like Harvard Business School was a
| communist plan to bring a faster demise to capitalism.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The part that had me scratching my head was this. Atari went from
| founding in 1972 to $40M in revenue in 1974, and Bushnell sold
| the company for $28M in 1976, and revenue was $120M the next
| year.
|
| Why did Bushnell sell for so cheap? I realize that revenue is not
| the same as profits, but with a growth ramp like that, I'd expect
| it to sell for more than $28M.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| > The process involved a difficult mix of left brain and right
| brain
|
| Is this still a thing? I had an EEG done with charts, and it was
| all top-down view with quite a bit of symmetry broken down into
| 20+ nodes, but most importantly there was no L/R terminology at
| all.
|
| To the article's point, I wondered if the humans.txt initiative
| in web work came from a desire to claim more space for this kind
| of expression...seems like there are also more creative ways to
| get recognition in development these days if it's really needed.
| sdwr wrote:
| You'll have to pry left- and right- brain specialization out of
| my cold, dead hands, irregardless of the evidence.
|
| Reading Mcgilchrist next to the san diego face statue was a
| formative experience.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| [dead]
| bitwize wrote:
| > Is this still a thing? I had an EEG done with charts, and it
| was all top-down view with quite a bit of symmetry broken down
| into 20+ nodes, but most importantly there was no L/R
| terminology at all.
|
| Brain lateralization is complex, and the pop-psy ideas of "left
| brain logic, right brain emotion and intuition" is a vast and
| incorrect oversimplification -- one that is often used to
| disparage logically minded people and rational thinking in
| general. While it is true that Broca's and Wernicke's areas,
| brain regions important to language, are typically (not
| always!) found in the left hemisphere, other areas of
| linguistic processing can be found in the right hemisphere.
| Women and left-handers tend to have less brain lateralization
| than do men and right-handers, respectively.
|
| They are not going to talk about lateralization in your EEG
| charts because fundamentally, it doesn't really matter.
|
| Apparently this is one of those ideas that people cling to,
| much like "Pluto is a planet" for emotional (right
| hemispheric?) reasons.
| Mezzie wrote:
| > Women and left-handers tend to have less brain
| lateralization than do men and right-handers, respectively.
|
| Interesting. Can you recommend any reading/content about
| this? My left-handed female self is curious.
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(page generated 2023-04-09 23:00 UTC)