Accolade (company)

Accolade was founded in 1984 by Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, both previously working at Atari.[1] Miller and Whitehead believed that Atari undervalued its coding team, leading them to leave the company and start Activision in 1979.[2] Activision became the first ever third-party game developer, and one of the few game companies to survive the video game crash of 1983, though they still posted $18 million dollars in losses the following year.[1] After the large devaluation of their stock, Miller and Whitehead left Activision to form Accolade in 1984.[2][3] Where Activision had focused on consoles, Whitehead and Miller felt there was a future in diversifying their efforts to include home computers such as the Commodore 64.[1] They also hoped to take advantage of the emerging medium of floppy disks compared to the more expensive cartridge format seen on consoles, not to mention the licensing fees that console brands were charging developers.[4]

Whitehead and Miller were unable to attract investment in the video game climate of the time, leading them to self-fund their new venture. The pair hired CEO Tom Frisina to handle managerial duties and began to each work on their own launch titles.[5] They also hired Mimi Doggett, a veteran visual artist from Atari, to compete with other developers on graphical detail.[4]

HardBall!, here seen on the Commodore 64, started a series that went on to become one of Accolade's most popular franchises.

Their goal for their first titles was to think beyond the gaming medium and draw inspiration from other popular entertainment, including television and film.[5] Miller's first project was Law of the West, a High Noon inspired western that mixed gunfights with adventure game elements, pioneering multiple dialog options to be seen in later games.[1] At the same time, Whitehead had previously seen success with the sports games Home Run and Football on the Atari 2600, which led to HardBall! as his Accolade debut.[1] The game was the first to emulate the "behind the pitcher" viewpoint seen on television, and also introduced new features such as coach-mode and player data.[5] It became of Accolade's best selling games on the Commodore 64[6] and was considered a commercial blockbuster at the time.[7]

Accolade aimed to balance their role as both developer and publisher. Miller recalled that "we tried to have about half of the original titles done by employee developers and half done by external development groups," with external groups handling ports so that Accolade could focus more energy on original titles.[5] One of their first third-party games was SunDog: Frozen Legacy by FTL Games.[4] Accolade recruited Mike Lorenzen from Activision to create the science fiction game Psi 5 Trading Company,[4] drawing inspiration from Star Trek.[5] Other early successes included boxing game Fight Night,[6] developed by Canadian developer Artech Digital Entertainment.[5] Artech also created the flight simulator The Dam Busters inspired by the classic war film, which led to another flight simulator called Ace of Aces.[4] Ace of Aces became one of Accolade's most successful games,[6] selling 500,000 units on a budget of less than $80,000.[4] As a publisher, Accolade partnered with peers such as U.S. Gold to distribute their games in Europe, before later switching to Electronic Arts, who would eventually become Accolade's biggest domestic competitor.[4]

Between 1985 and 1986, Accolade's revenues grew from $1.5 million to $5 million, thanks to titles such as Ace of Aces, a golf game called Mean 18, and a driving game called Test Drive.[8] Test Drive was created by Distinctive Software, another developer from Canada who had previously helped Accolade with ports.[5] The game pioneered the concept of driving exotic cars at the risk of being chased by the police[4] and became one of Accolade's longest lasting and most successful series.[5] In 1987, Frisnia left as CEO and went on to found Three-Sixty Pacific,[9] with Miller taking over as CEO.[10]

Accolade credits the Jack Nicklaus license with giving them an edge as a sports game publisher.

Accolade continued to earn a strong reputation as a publisher and developer of sports games.[4] As a publisher, their baseball game Hardball went on to become a consistent and prolific series,[11] with later entries created by outside developers such as Chris Taylor.[12] This allowed Whitehead time to develop original titles such as the American football game 4th & Inches, while the company published Steve Cartwright's basketball game Fast Break, as well as Artech's tennis game, Serve & Volley.[4] Most notably, Accolade's biggest success would be in golf.[4] Their game Mean 18, developed by Rex Bradford, went on to become the Jack Nicklaus series of games.[5] These games pioneered the "three-click" system seen in most golf games and edged out competitors thanks to the Jack Nicklaus license.[4] By 1990, Accolade released Test Drive III: The Passion,[13] developing the game in-house as the first game in the series with 3D polygon graphics.[4]

At the turn of the decade, Accolade was also exploring other game genres, developing their own graphic adventure game engine to compete with LucasArts and Sierra.[5] Infocom alumni Mike Berlyn created the adventure game Altered Destiny, while Activision veteran Steve Cartwright created the Les Manley series.[5] Around this time, Accolade also gained notoriety as the publisher of the Star Control series of games, created by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford.[4] Released in 1990 and 1992 respectively, both games received numerous awards.[14] Journalists have listed Star Control among their best games of all time,[15] with Star Control II earning even more "best game" rankings through the 1990s,[16] 2000s,[17] and 2010s.[18] Because Accolade had focused their success around sports games, they accidentally placed a sticker on the box of Star Control II calling it the "Best Sports Game" of 1992.[19][20]

A screenshot of Sega's Trademark Security System. Accolade reverse engineered the security measure, leading to a landmark legal dispute.

With the rise of a new generation of gaming consoles, Accolade sought to shift towards a market they previously abandoned.[4] In 1990, Accolade CEO Allan Epstein expressed that the growing console market was both an opportunity and a challenge, as both the technology and audience were different from that of the computer.[21] The company soon released several games on the Sega Genesis by reverse-engineering the console's boot-protection.[4] Sega sued Accolade for doing this without their authorization, winning an initial injunction that forced Accolade to remove all Genesis products from store shelves. Accolade, however, won on appeal, setting one of the most important precedents on reverse engineering in software law. Accolade later reached an out of court settlement with Sega that allowed Accolade to continue building their own Genesis cartridges but as an official licensee.[22] One of the conditions of the settlement was that Accolade would meet a quota of games for Sega, as a way for Sega to preserve its advantage over other consoles.[4] Despite Accolade earning an agreeable court ruling and settlement, the company estimated that they had lost somewhere between $15 million and $25 million during the injunction period.[22]

As the company rushed to fulfill its mandate to Sega, co-founder Bob Whitehead quit the company, feeling that he lost interest in the diluted quality of their games.[4] Peter L. Harris was brought in as a new CEO in 1992, a veteran of the toy industry.[23] He led the company's efforts to build a new management team, and secured new financing from Time Warner.[24] As the company transformed, Accolade published another breakthrough hit with the platform game Bubsy, created by Infocom veteran Mike Berlyn.[4] The Bubsy series of games would eventually be released on consoles for Sega, Nintendo, Atari Jaguar, and eventually PlayStation.[4] Accolade also tried to replicate its advantageous golf license in other sports, including their soccer game Pelé! and football game Mike Ditka Power Football.[4]

Jim Barnett became their new CEO in 1994, and largely doubled down on existing series.[4] However, Alan Miller quit the company that same year to work in medical software, marking the end of the founders' influence.[4] Barnett earned the praise of the company's board of directors for increasing sales.[25] However, the second and third installments of the Bubsy series were commercial disappointments, leading Accolade to ask series creator Mike Berlyn to return as the next game's producer.[26] Berlyn worked on Bubsy 3D with a new team, but the 3D technology proved to be a challenge, and Accolade insisted on releasing the game on-time.[27] The unstable release would hurt the reputation of Bubsy series, as well as Accolade as a company.[4]

Accolade asked Ford and Reiche to make a third Star Control game at the same budget, which they turned down to pursue other projects.[28] So the publisher licensed Reiche and Ford's copyrighted character designs to make Star Control 3 with a different development team.[29][30] The third edition did not enjoy the acclaimed legacy of the first two games, with reviewers noting the change in developer.[31][32][33] Still, the 1996 release of Star Control 3 was a modest commercial success for Accolade as a publisher, as well as the release of Deadlock that same year.[34] Moreover, Test Drive 4 and Test Drive: Off Road sold well on both PC and the Sony PlayStation, with more than 850,000 and 500,000 sales respectively, making it the top-selling racing series at the time.[35] Jack Nicklaus 5 received positive reviews, but was ultimately a commercial disappointment.[36]

With Accolade experiencing mixed success, Electronic Arts decided to invest in the company in 1997 and agreed to take over their distribution.[37] Accolade planned to show off several upcoming 1998 titles at E3, with entries in major series such as HardBall 6, Test Drive 5, Test Drive: Off Road 2, and Star Control 4, as well as two original titles Redline and Big Air Snowboarding.[35] By that fall, Accolade cancelled their plans for a fourth Star Control game, with the Test Drive sequels coming out as scheduled.[38][39] Pitbull Syndicate completed development on Big Air, which was released at the start of 1999 after a delay.[40] Development also completed on Redline, and the driving-and-shooting game was published by Accolade in April.[41]

Accolade was purchased by French publisher Infogrames in April 1999, as part of the European company's strategy to gain a distribution network in North America.[42] Infogrames paid $50 million to acquire Accolade's employee base of 145 employees, their sports franchises Test Drive and Hardball, and Accolade's licensing deals with brands such as Major League Baseball.[43] They retained CEO Jim Barnett to lead a new subsidiary company that became Infogrames North America, combining Accolade's workforce with an Infogrames office of 29 employees.[44] As a result, major franchises such as Test Drive 6 were published as Infogrames North America starting in 1999.[45] What followed were a series of acquisitions and consolidations, when Infogrames purchased GT Interactive and renamed it Infogrames Inc.[46] By 2000, Infogrames merged Infogrames North America into Infogrames Inc.[47][48][49] This marked the end of Infogrames North America as a separate company, and what was left of Accolade as an entity.

Later, Infogrames acquired the Atari brand from Hasbro Interactive in 2001, and slowly re-branded their properties under Atari SA through the decade.[50][46] Atari/Infogrames declared bankruptcy in 2013, with Tommo purchasing the Accolade trademark and several related assets.[51]

In June 2017, Hong Kong-based holding company Billionsoft announced that they had acquired the Accolade trademark, and, together with developer Black Forest Games and publisher Tommo, announced the upcoming release of a fifth instalment in the Bubsy franchise, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back.[52] The game was met with negative reception, where Metacritic aggregated "generally unfavorable reviews" with a weighted average score of 44 out of 100 for the PC version,[53] and 45 for the PS4 version.[54]