A Case Study in Mediocrity
By: Tim Monroe
January 31, 2008

There are few game developers out there that so vehemently earned my utter contempt, 989 Studios was Public Enemy No. 1. Their charge: repeatedly releasing terribly unbearable game after game onto an unsuspecting public. Man did their games suck some serious ass and man did I suck for playing these abortions they called videogames time after time.

I remember playing one of their basketball titles with John and everything about it just sucked, from the graphics to the controls, to the absurd music choices. I remember attempting to shoot a free throw which was near impossible, when I finally was able to make one, I was rewarded with a sound clip of Bachman Turner Overdrives seminal hit "Takin" Care of Business". I laughed myself to tears then promptly turned the game off.

First a little history about the company: 989 Studios was a division of Sony Computer Entertainment America where they developed Playstation and Windows Computer games. Things start to get a little confusing as the company endured many name changes due to the inner workings and shakeups and Sony Corporate Headquarters. In 1995, SCEA merged with Sony Imagesoft becoming Sony Interactive Studios America and in 1998, SISA became known as 989 Studios. In 2000, Sony wanted to consolidate their development houses for the upcoming release of Playstation 2, so 989 Studios was absorbed back into SCEA and became known as 989 Sports.

During all of this 989 managed to release a number of steaming piles of crap. However this company did manage to work on some pretty good games like the first Syphon Filter, the subsequent sequels became more of a "how can we make the next game shittier than the last". They also worked on Everquest, which as we all know was a revolutionary MMO for the PC that earned the dubious moniker Evercrack. However these would be the only games that 989 Studios either produced or developed that were actually good. Let us look at 989 Studios' videogame timeline, a sojourn through suckiness if you would, and let¹s see if we don¹t find a pattern:

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

And there you have it, notice anything funny about this list? 989 Studios was notorious for releasing sequel after uninspired sequel after the original game made mild success. While I have expressed a deep hatred for 989 Studios (who has since been absorbed back into Sony and now goes by 989 Sports or just SCEA depending on if they want the game to sell well) I do hope the various employees that worked at 989 have moved on to other more reputable developing and programming companies and continue to make games that we love today. Just hope that they never again work together. That is a recipe for mediocrity and shame.