He later ended up working with Apogee in Texas. Jim was working on the Apogee sound system in New York and I would have long phone conversations with him on many occasions. The best time I had working with Apogee was meeting Jim Dose. Screenshot from final version of Hocus PocusĦ) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee? Given that I have kept my head out of the computer gaming business for the last ten years, I don't feel that I'm qualified to give a good opinion about this issue.ĥa) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?ĥb) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)? Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not? Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding.
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You might go so far as to say that my resources were on the lean side.ĥ) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. My monitor died on me and for a few weeks I was using an old sony 6 inch black and white monitor. I hammered out Hocus Pocus on a 386 20 Mhz machine with an old 10 meg hard drive. They had contacts for sound engines, music, art, etc. Phil show, perhaps you saw it.Ĥ) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?Īpogee absolutely made my game better.
Still, I felt that I was unfairly treated. It was simple business sense not to spend money advertising my game. A dollar spent advertsing Raptor would always bring in more money that a dollar spent advertising Hocus Pocus. I understood the logic: Raptor sold better than Hocus Pocus. I recall hearing George Broussard mention to me that "advertising does not do much to improve sales." I couldn't believe that he was telling me this. Apogee always presented their company image as "not like the other companies" and that all games are given equal attention. I saw full page ads in gaming magazines for Raptor. Hocus Pocus was released immediately following the release of Raptor. I worked with Apogee because they asked me to.ģ) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game? Apogee was offering to market my work and toss a chunk of the profits my way. Further, I never really intended to make a career out of programming games. Given that Clyde's Adventure was a small, run and hop type game, it wasn't as if Electronic Arts and Sierra was banging on my door. I said okay.Ģ) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company? After a few months I received a letter from Scott Miller suggesting that possible fame and fortune was on my doorstep. I could almost make a small and very modest living. I created a game called Clyde's Adventure and tossed it into the shareware arena. I began to devote a large amount of time to programming.