Name: Howard Tullman
Age: 57
Occupation: President of Kendall College, Evanston
Other pursuits: Fundraiser for national Democratic Party, venture capitalist
The mistake I made was thinking that interactive CD-ROM games for the computer were just another media product that could be built, marketed and sold in the same way and by the same distributors as the books, videos and audio CDs, which were already on shelves.
Each time a new technology is rolled out, it eventually provides a highly profitable opportunity to re-sell existing content. As books, movies and CDs matured, major supplementary revenue streams were created.
Everyone assumed a similar economic model applied to interactive computer games, and that huge upfront investments in development and marketing/promotion of each new game could be justified by all of the eventual trailing revenue streams.
However, the rapidly advancing technology was the enemy, not the enabler.
As soon as better, faster, smoother technology became available, existing games died almost immediately and weren’t worth anything since absolutely no one wanted to play the old, slower games when new, faster and more visual offerings were available.
The development path was disruptive and revolutionary, not evolutionary.
For my company, this played out quite dramatically with three successive distribution partners that imploded one way or another, as they struggled to cope with the emerging games distribution marketplace.
I formed Imagination Pilots in 1993 after two individuals with a plan to specialize in entertainment CD-ROM software came to me with the idea.
We were able to produce good games, relatively quickly and on deadline, which earned us a solid reputation for producing on budget or “for a price.”
But we also recognized that in order to be successful we had to get our games to consumers. We thought it would be too much of a challenge to market and distribute the games as well as continue to complete the software in about a year.
Our first alliance was with a company that produced audio and graphics computer hardware. The partnership ran into problems almost immediately. This company bundled software titles with its hardware but often packaged older generations of software with the newest hardware, which just caused the games to crash because it was not compatible.
But what ultimately killed the alliance was the company’s financial woes, which led to the ultimate closing of the business.
Our second deal was with a publisher of electronic medical guides. The deal ran into problems after the firm got cold feet about the sector. Unlike medical reference software disks that are published annually and which retailers keep in stock, entertainment software was a riskier, hit-driven business.
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That’s where Time Warner comes in.Our mistake was to assume Warner Music would be a good distribution partner for our games. It became clear that Warner’s executives lacked experience in the field and did not have the same clout they had in the video- and record-selling industries.
Imagination Pilots is no longer. Pretty much the whole team moved to start an Internet music business called JAMtv.
The biggest lesson I learned was not to confuse a clear view with a short distance. We knew where we needed the company to go, but we had no idea how long and hard the journey would be.