Intellivisionaries Episode 40 is Up!

[+nurmix]

In this special Christmas episode we have no group discussion, no Feedback, no News, and no game reviews. So why should you listen? Because there are two great interviews; one with former Marketing Director for hardware at Mattel Electronics, Gary Moskovitz. Another with current Art Director of Intellivision Entertainment, Mike Dietz. George gives us his Top 10 of the original 125 Intellivision games, and we sprinkle in some Christmas cheer, along with a special holiday message from Intellivision Entertainment CEO Tommy Tallarico. Grab some eggnog and enjoy… oh, and also listen to the show.

http://intellivisionaries.com/episode-40-marketing-art-christmas/
 

[Zendocon]

I read about this on Reddit last night, and I was very interested to know that Gary Moskovitz was in charge over marketing the ECS and Music Synthesizer.  I downloaded the podcast and fell asleep listening to the interview.  He mentioned some other people to find, I think on LinkedIn.  That's significant because we've known the programmers' side of the story since the early days of Keith Robinson's Makingit website, but we've heard precious little from those ogres in Marketing.  Maybe we'll find those Burgertime commercial props.

[mr_me]

It sounds like there wasn't a whole lot of internal communication between departments at Mattel Electronics.  Gary was the product manager for the ECS but knew (or remembers) little about the Intellivision III.  Gary inherited the ECS but according to intellivisionlives, the intellivision iii was born out of marketing while he was there.  Maybe sales marketing was different than what he was doing.  Then you had a different group doing the documentation, the instruction books that came with the cartridges.  There was a hardware group led by Richard Chang who I think engineered the ECS and Intellivision II, (also did the handhelds).  There was a programming group at Mattel Electronics making the games and a separate group of artists led by Dave James that did not program but designed the early games.  And there was APh, the outside consultant, that did both hardware and software and I think engineered the Intellivision III.  My impression is that Dave Chandler and his group was also quite separate from the other groups, never becoming part of Mattel Electronics.  I'm not sure if the ECS was mentioned in any of his documents, nor should it be.  I know he mentioned the intellivision ii when he wrote the case should be redesigned to fit the keyboard component.

 

I'm not surprised the marketing group was pretty high with expectations on the ECS.  But even Mattel knew it wasn't a decent entry level computer; that's why they had the Aquarius.  It's great hearing Gary's perspective, but we didn't hear about supergraphics or how the intellivision iii was cancelled because the ECS does it all.  His comment about the company drifting after summer 1983 sound about right.

 

When the book comes out we'll know a lot more.

Edited December 18, 2020 by mr_me

[+nurmix]

9 hours ago, Zendocon said:

I read about this on Reddit last night, and I was very interested to know that Gary Moskovitz was in charge over marketing the ECS and Music Synthesizer.  I downloaded the podcast and fell asleep listening to the interview.  He mentioned some other people to find, I think on LinkedIn.  That's significant because we've known the programmers' side of the story since the early days of Keith Robinson's Makingit website, but we've heard precious little from those ogres in Marketing.  Maybe we'll find those Burgertime commercial props.

I'm planning to do a lot more interviews with marketing and management folks in 2021.

 

6 hours ago, mr_me said:

It sounds like there wasn't a whole lot of internal communication between departments at Mattel Electronics.  Gary was the product manager for the ECS but knew (or remembers) little about the Intellivision III.  Gary inherited the ECS but according to intellivisionlives, the intellivision iii was born out of marketing while he was there.  Maybe sales marketing was different than what he was doing.  Then you had a different group doing the documentation, the instruction books that came with the cartridges.  There was a hardware group led by Richard Chang who I think engineered the ECS and Intellivision II, (also did the handhelds).  There was a programming group at Mattel Electronics making the games and a separate group of artists led by Dave James that did not program but designed the early games.  And there was APh, the outside consultant, that did both hardware and software and I think engineered the Intellivision III.  My impression is that Dave Chandler and his group was also quite separate from the other groups, never becoming part of Mattel Electronics.  I'm not sure if the ECS was mentioned in any of his documents, nor should it be.  I know he mentioned the intellivision ii when he wrote the case should be redesigned to fit the keyboard component.

 

I'm not surprised the marketing group was pretty high with expectations on the ECS.  But even Mattel knew it wasn't a decent entry level computer; that's why they had the Aquarius.  It's great hearing Gary's perspective, but we didn't hear about supergraphics or how the intellivision iii was cancelled because the ECS does it all.  His comment about the company drifting after summer 1983 sound about right.

 

When the book comes out we'll know a lot more.

Yeah, I was disappointed Gary didn't know much about the Intellivision III and IV.  He did say he worked under Richard Chang, although I don't recall if that was said in the interview or if that was something he told me when we weren't recording (I have it in my notes).  I'm actually working with the book authors, Tom & Braxton, to put together an Org chart of the Intellivision group / Mattel Electronics.  Trying to line up as many interviews with the folks they've managed to find too.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by nurmix

[decle]

Hi @nurmix

 

Thanks for sharing the interview with Gary Moskovitz.  Fascinating, as always.  For those that want to know more about some of the projects Gary references documents can be found on the Papa Intellivision website:

 

EECO - https://papaintellivision.com/pdfs/CCF10242011_00011.pdf

Chemical Bank / Project Pronto - https://papaintellivision.com/pdfs/CCF10242011_00007.pdf

 

It's interesting to note that the Chemical bank design detailed envisages reusing aspects of the Keyboard Component technology, keeping the 6502 second processor and text overlay, but ditching the troublesome tape drive, to create something akin to an intermediate step between the K/C and the ECS:

 

 

 

 

Documents related to a number of other viewdata type initiatives can also be found, largely under the Other and Vendor headings.  The possibilities of a connected world seem to have been a passion of Dave Chandler's team.

 

One point made by Gary I would question is his suggestion that PlayCable had limited games.  Assuming PlayCable would always be restricted to Mattel titles, I think it's clear Mattel did not look favourably on third party developers, there were 61 titles PlayCable could have broadcast in early '84 when Mattel Electronics closed.  Of these, 48 were completely compatible with the PlayCable adapter.  We know that 38 of these games were definitely broadcast on PlayCable, based on schedules and adverts, and a further four were probably broadcast based on personal recollections.

 

Of the remaining six games:

• AD&D Treasure of Tarmin - no evidence whether it was broadcast
• Kool-Aid Man - no evidence whether it was broadcast (but probably wasn't because it was a niche marketing exercise)
• Scooby Doo's Maze Chase - although compatible, probably not broadcast because of ECS dependency
• Space Spartans - partially compatible, probably not broadcast because of Intellivoice dependency
• Tron Deadly Discs - restricted by Disney licence
• Tron Maze-a-Tron - restricted by Disney licence

 

So PlayCable definitely broadcast at least 80% of the compatible Mattel games and probably broadcast somewhere between 87% and 91% depending on how you assess compatibility.

 

Side note - It is interesting to consider that Mattel's restriction of PlayCable to first party titles had a bigger impact on the number of games broadcast on PlayCable (restrictions on 38 titles) than the over-hyped 8K RAM limitation (restrictions on 13 titles).  Without this walled garden PlayCable might have had Pitfall!, Donkey Kong, Carnival and Mouse Trap in 82; and River Raid, Centipede, Donkey Kong Jr, Zaxxon, Frogger, Q*bert and Star Wars in '83.  I'm not suggesting that these are the best Intellivision titles (some of them really aren't), but they are definitely marketable!

 

[mr_me]

The 8k playcable limit is relatively new; some reports said the limit was 4k, even intellivisionlives said 8k games were not compatible.  So there is that misunderstanding.  Internally at Mattel there was probably some competitive behaviour between projects and their managers for limited resources.  We know how Mattel felt about third party publishers; they tried to block them with an updated exec.  Playcable was still technically an independent company.  But if they were to include third parties they would have had to figure out how to give coleco, nintendo, exidy, sega, activision, atari, parker brothers, konami, gottlieb, lucas, a cut of the subscription revenue.  Another issue with playcable is that, for whatever reason, they had to rotate titles in an out of the lineup.  I would have been a little frustrated if one of my favourites was removed for a month.

 

So the Eeco/Pictureware project was about on demand images; real estate sales as an example application.  If Mattel invested in developing these ideas you can begin to see how they lost their millions.

Edited December 21, 2020 by mr_me

[+nurmix]

On 12/21/2020 at 2:13 AM, decle said:

Hi @nurmix

 

Thanks for sharing the interview with Gary Moskovitz.  Fascinating, as always.  For those that want to know more about some of the projects Gary references documents can be found on the Papa Intellivision website:

 

EECO - https://papaintellivision.com/pdfs/CCF10242011_00011.pdf

Chemical Bank / Project Pronto - https://papaintellivision.com/pdfs/CCF10242011_00007.pdf

 

Great info as always, thanks for that, Decle!
 

If any of you have follow up questions for Gary, please post them here and I will get some answers.

 

[+nurmix]

On 12/21/2020 at 5:50 AM, mr_me said:

If Mattel invested in developing these ideas you can begin to see how they lost their millions.

Combined with unsold product returns and a stagnating market, absolutely.