Greg Kasavin Executive Editor

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A Farewell to Acclaim

You may have heard that one of gaming's most venerable publishers, Acclaim, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this week. The word "bankruptcy" has a bad reputation in society, because most people think that when a company declares bankruptcy, it's totally hosed--which isn't always true, depending on the type of bankruptcy. Well, unfortunately, Chapter 7 is the bad kind. It means that Acclaim has no hope of ever recovering from all the debt it's incurred, and now it needs to liquidate all of its assets (we're not just talking intellectual property but everything down to office supplies and equipment) to soften the blow as much as possible. It's possible that the writing was on the wall for Acclaim, which has struggled during these past several years. Nevertheless, when news such as this breaks, it's still sudden and hard to swallow.

The most disturbing side effect of the news of Acclaim's going out of business involves some of the reactions I've seen from people on the Internet, who've engaged in the equivalent of parading in the streets. They're cheerful about this downturn. "Good riddance," they're saying. These people aren't aware that Acclaim was going to publish one of this fall's most promising potential sleepers--a game called The Red Star. For what it's worth, I expect the game will find its way on to store shelves by hook or by crook, because someone will grab those rights. Hell, I'd do it.

Hopefully this won't be the end for Red Star.

Anyway, it's not my place to try to explain to these people cheering the death of Acclaim that when a company like this goes under, it means a lot of people lose their jobs and livelihoods--and that's not a happy incident. Truthfully, though, I myself am more or less immune to these types of sympathy arguments. Survival of the fittest, I say. I'm sure Acclaim's most talented, most dedicated former staffers will go on to become gainfully employed elsewhere in the gaming industry. They'll be that much the wiser in their new places of work.

Acclaim produced a number of games that I hold near and dear to my heart. At the top of the list is the Super Nintendo Entertainment System version of Mortal Kombat II, which was a near-perfect port of one of the greatest fighting games of all time. Sure, Acclaim only published the game, but still--Acclaim published the game. Acclaim also did Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, the first great first-person shooter for the Nintendo 64, and Turok 2, which was a pretty solid game too. More recently, Acclaim did the underappreciated Aggressive Inline, which rivaled the quality of the nigh-untouchable Tony Hawk series. Yes, this company put out some stinkers over the years, but it's hard to make good games, and it's harder still to make good games that sell well. Acclaim certainly tried, and it did well enough to survive for as long as it did.

Juiced was but a week away from being released when Acclaim filed bankruptcy.

Regardless of whether you liked Acclaim as a company or liked any of its products in the past, you shouldn't be happy about its demise. It only goes to reinforce the notion that large-scale consolidation is looming in the gaming industry. We recently reported on how one notable analyst is predicting a "hellish" holiday season for the relatively little guys in the gaming industry, because most analysts expect that a handful of big games are going to completely dominate the charts. That seems pretty plausible, doesn't it?

Trust me: You don't want all of the industry's B-list publishers to disappear. You don't want to live in a world in which you can count the total number of game publishers on one hand. That type of high-level competition stifles the sort of creativity that's rare enough as it is in gaming.

You couldn't save Acclaim, and the company's failure resulted only from its own inability to remain competitive. Don't feel bad. Still, we can dig in our heels to help slow the inevitable consolidation, or maybe we can even stop it. For our part, as consumers, what we can do is continue keeping an eye out for the relatively little guys out there, and we can continue supporting products that are original and inventive rather than rehashed.

Along with what happened to Interplay, what just happened to Acclaim represents some of the most unfortunate news in the gaming industry in years. But don't consider it doom and gloom. Consider it a wake-up call.