The Extensively Complex History of Humongous Entertainment: A Retrospective

Comments · 437

• MR

  @MrEightThreeOne · 5 years ago · pinned

  I&apos;m a diehard fan of Humongous, been a devoted fan since I was 2 years old and largely credit them with discovering my love for computers, and I have to say I adored this video! You put so much work into it and you pretty much got every fact right on the money. You even got some of the lesser known details right like Let&apos;s Explore The Farm being released in 1994. You dug into all the other side-stories too like Cavedog Entertainment too. I also think the amount of executive meddling they did to Humongous is something criminally overlooked; a lot of people like to point fingers at Atari but everything they did pales in comparison to Infogrames (and props too for making a genuine attempt at comprehending that web of companies, haha). This is incredible work and I have tons of respect for you for putting forth all the work into this. I enjoyed this a ton! Your hard work definitely paid off!<br><br>And yeah, all around Humongous is an inspiring yet tragic story. It&apos;s amazing how they just sort of dipped overnight and then they just kinda slowly faded away little by little. I still adore the legacy of the company so much though and hearing all the stories of their old days is really some inspiring stuff. Very happy to see that legacy documented in this form!

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• LU

  @Luka-ty4qr · 2 years ago

  I damn near shed a tear listening when the opening seconds of the video played, that sound effect and logo just brings me back to my 5 year old self playing putt putt and pajama sam for hours

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• RI

  @risingofthethorn1197 · 5 years ago

  Given how most of the people who played this games are in their mid 20s to early 30s, it&apos;d be cool if we got more games, but more akin to the difficulty of monkey island.

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• KE

  @kevinsmith2933 · 1 year ago

  When I &nbsp;was little, I used to play these. They were my favorites. My aunt had a stroke when I was about 6 months old. She used to play kids&apos; games to try and rebuild her mental faculties... I remember we used to play these games together. She passed away this week, and I looked up Freddi Fish to remember our time together 30 years ago. I&apos;ll miss you, Aunt Di.

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• AE

  @AeonKnigh432 · 5 years ago

  Missed opportunity to call this a &quot;Humongous Retrospective&quot;

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• AR

  @arthurdurham · 4 years ago

  It&apos;s surprising to find out how much one company positively effected my childhood so much. I have only fond memories of these games, they never felt pandering or dumbed down, just genuinely fun.<br><br>Thanks for this video! With all the nostalgia on the internet I&apos;m really surprised how little they&apos;re talked about

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• LE

  @LegendofBen · 3 years ago

  My copy of the Humongous Classic Collection for Switch arrived in the mail today, these games will never die. Ever.

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• CA

  @captaincomedian6320 · 4 years ago

  I was a Humongous &quot;insider&quot; for a couple of years and was there for the demise of Cavedog. You missed a bit of dirt on that whole situation, which I&apos;m happy to fill you in on. Also, if you can humor me a couple of petty corrections: Infogrames, being a French company, is actually pronounced &quot;InfogrAHm.&quot; Hulabee is pronounced &quot;HOOLAbee&quot; (think &apos;hula skirt&apos;).<br><br>Here&apos;s how I remember it:<br>The reason you&apos;ve never heard many details about Cavedog&apos;s downfall is that it was largely a setup with ulterior motives. The sale of Humongous to GT Interactive a few years earlier had clearly been a mistake. GTI&apos;s stock was overwhelmingly held by a single family which barely ever traded it, thus limiting its circulation and stagnating its business strategies and momentum. Ron Gilbert and Shelley Day were rightly skeptical about GTI&apos;s pending purchase by Infogrames. They plotted to buy back Humongous as its own autonomous company; but a significant &quot;problem&quot; was that subsidiary Cavedog&apos;s assets (Total Annihilation and 3 widely anticipated works-in-progress) added a lot of value to the company. Citing &quot;budget issues&quot; (that had somehow not come up before), Cavedog was abruptly shut down. In truth, it was done to deliberately devalue Humongous, so that Ron and Shelley could offer less money for their proposed buyback! Sadly, they had no qualms about laying off several artists and developers in the process. The whole situation was shady AF. As lame a company as it was, GTI saw through this and rightly didn&apos;t agree to their scheme. They invited Ron and Shelley to leave if they were unsatisfied with the way things were being run. Ron and Shelley ultimately took them up on that offer.<br><br>This all happened during a particularly robust time in the Seattle-area game industry, which further backfired on Humongous. The company began to bleed talent in a mass exodus of employees who no longer trusted the company. It got so bad that an email eventually went out, essentially begging the remaining employees to stick around. They were invited to fill out a questionnaire to identify problem areas of management, with the promise that the feedback would be considered and acted upon. One particular person in upper-middle management was extensively complained about. She was let go, resulting in a celebratory day across multiple local game companies where former Humongous staff had come to land.<br><br>One last note: Hulabee closed owing thousands of dollars to several employees. AFAIK, they&apos;ve never seen any of that money. Shelley has not been heard from in years. She&apos;s largely forgotten, but remains a figure of shame and disgust to those who were privy to these events.

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• RA

  @ravenclawesome9093 · 5 years ago

  Holy cow this video was 2 hours long, and it&apos;s only part 1 of a series!

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• KE

  @KeybladeMasterAndy · 4 years ago

  &quot;You know, for all the talk of corporate success, we Infogrames folks are an unimaginative lot when it comes to naming things&quot; -an Infogrames employee, probably.

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• TA

  @TayoEXE · 5 years ago

  I can&apos;t believe how much animation went into these games for kids. They were definitely not lazy. Just from a programming perspective, I would feel a bit overwhelmed implementing them all as well.

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• TA

  @TayoEXE · 5 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOVZE7AHXmo&amp;t=6708">1:51:48</a> Me: &quot;Dang, that was a nearly 2 hour long, super thorough video.&quot;<br>&quot;Which is why I&apos;m proud to announce that this video is part 1 out of a 8-part series I&apos;m working on.&quot;<br>OH SNAP

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