The filmmaker definitely got too close to his material and didn't stay objective at the end of the film when there was a sequence defending the E.T. video game. It's almost like he forgot the eariler part of his own movie where he explained how millions of copies of the game were being returned because it was so awful to play.
The main thing he did wrong was continue the myth that E.T. brought down Atari for the sake of the narrative (which is why it's such a tough myth to kill, it just sounds better than the truth), and didn't really debunk that myth until late in the film and not very thoroughly.
I played the game when I was 6 years-old and yes it sucked. And even if there are technically worse made games than ET, no other game, except maybe the Pac-Man port to Atari which was also awful, had greater expectations to hit a home run than ET, and it failed tremendously.
Yeah, same here. It sucked hard. Along with a whole lot of other Atari games, made either by the company itself or all the third party publishers who were cranking out crap faster than we could buy it. Though not all the third parties were bad. Like Activision, one of the reasons (among many) Atari went under. Four of Atari's top programmers (whose titles, according to David Crane, made up half of Atari's cartridge sales) left the company around '79/'80 because they didn't feel like they were getting the treatment/recognition they deserved, and started Activision. Because Atari, as you said, thought kids would buy any old crap, and Ray Kassar wouldn't cave to the designer because he didn't think they were important and called them towel designers. Bad call, because Activision released some great games that really ate into Atari's profit margin. Pitfall, Kaboom, Chopper Command, Ice Hockey, Keystone Kapers, Boxing, Skiing, River Raid and more. Three of the Top 10 best selling Atari games of all time are by Activision, and two others by another third party publisher, Imagic. Which was also started by Atari defectors. So the revenue from 5 of the top 10 selling games on the Atari 2600 wasn't going to Atari. And one of those 5 Atari games was E.T., which technically sold many units, but it was the unsold cartridges and returns which caused a problem.
Bushnell and others can try and point the blame at a variety of other different factors leading up to the crash but ET does and should ultimately symbolize the crash. The industry leaders had no respect for the gamers at the time. They thought we were all just a bunch of dumb kids who would play anything they shipped. They gave us garbage game after garbage game and were shocked when we stopped wanting their crap. ET was the final straw.
Yes, it's very symbolic of what happened to Atari. That doesn't make it the cause. The reason it's symbolic is because it's a story that pretty much sums up Atari's woes and mismanagement with one example. As somebody said in the film, it was the type of decision-making that led to paying 22 million for a property to be rushed out in 5 weeks that led to Atari's downfall, not the actual game or event itself. Atari was going down before it had even heard of Spielberg's film. E.T. may have been the last straw for you, but for me it was just yet another crappy game, which I really didn't have very high expectations for anyway. Honestly, I didn't walk out of E.T. thinking that it needed to be a video game, it was just a really great movie. I was much more upset with how they butchered Star Wars: The Arcade Game. But just because something is symbolic, and nicely sums up a complicated tale, doesn't mean the facts should just be forgotten and we just agree to blame E.T. If you want to blame E.T., that's your thing, go ahead. The facts, when you're interested, will always be out there for those that want to know what actually happened. It's not as good of a story as cute little E.T. bringing down the un-stoppable Atari, but it's what happened.
See you guys at the 10 year prison reunion - Ben Richards
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