Mindscape started out selling educational software on behalf of a school-textbook publisher, and within five years it was the American home of Deja Vu, Balance of Power and Paperboy. Its founder, Roger Buoy, was an Australian running a company in the Chicago suburbs. It changed hands again and again: a management buyout, a merger with The Software Toolworks, the British media group Pearson, The Learning Company, and finally a French management that kept the name going until 2011. British Amiga owners knew it best as the name on the box, from its office in Sussex, of games by Tony Crowther, New Zealand’s Acid Software and the French studio that became Kalisto.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1983, in Northbrook, Illinois, by Roger Buoy, as a subsidiary of SFN Companies.
- Owners: SFN (1983–1987); a buyout by John Purcell and Roger Buoy (1987); The Software Toolworks (1990); Pearson (1994); The Learning Company (1998); then Mattel and Gores; from 2001, Mindscape SA in France.
- In Britain: Mindscape International, in Lewes by 1989 and at Burgess Hill, West Sussex, by 1992.
- Best-known games: Deja Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate (ICOM Simulations), Chris Crawford’s Balance of Power, Paperboy and Gauntlet in America; Captive, Skidmarks and Liberation on the Amiga.
- Bought: Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) and the Bordeaux studio Atreid Concept, both in 1994.
- End: left the games business in August 2011 and was liquidated.
Software for a textbook publisher
Mindscape’s first owner was SFN, which its advertisements called “the country’s #1 text book publisher for elementary and high schools”. In 1984 Mindscape sold programs for children aged four to eight under the Sprout label, starring two robots called Tink and Tonk, and leaned on the parent company’s name: “we’ve got a hundred years of experience to lean on.” The magazine Ahoy! noted that October that it was “easy to be bold when you’re a subsidiary of SFN”, and that Mindscape’s programs would come from independent developers.
That was the model from the start. Mindscape published other people’s work, and it looked for them hard. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1985, a bad time in the American software trade, Buoy told Compute!’s Gazette that he had been offered four software companies by the third morning. “People make all this noise about the shakeout, but it’s really a lot of nonsense,” he said.
Deja Vu and Balance of Power
Some of Mindscape’s best-remembered games began on the Macintosh. Deja Vu (1985), by ICOM Simulations, was a mystery adventure played almost entirely with the mouse. Its objects appeared on screen as icons to pick up and use. Writing about Macintosh games in February 1987, the British magazine Computer Gamer called it “one of Mindscape’s most inventive games”, which “works because it does away with the keyboard almost entirely”. ICOM followed it with Uninvited and Shadowgate, and when Mindscape brought all three to the Amiga its advertisements listed the prizes: Deja Vu was Family Computing’s Graphic Game of the Year for 1986, and MacUser chose Uninvited as the year’s entertainment product. The point-and-click entry follows where the idea went.
The other big name was Chris Crawford’s Balance of Power, which Mindscape’s advertisements sold as a “global geo-political simulation of the cold war” with the player as President of the United States. In November 1996 Computer Gaming World placed it 78th in its “Top 150 Games of All Time”, calling it “a wonderful game of political intrigue that felt just like the Cold War”.
The buyout and the arcade licences
In January 1987 Mindscape’s chairman, John Purcell, and Buoy bought the company from SFN. Compute! reported the buyout alongside a string of purchases: the educational publishers Scarborough Systems and Learning Well, and CBS Interactive Learning. Computer Gaming World later described the buyout as the moment Mindscape turned into an entertainment software company. Among its games of the next few years were conversions of Atari Games arcade machines: in America Mindscape published Gauntlet and Paperboy for the home computers, and advertised the two together at the end of 1987. It also published for Nintendo’s NES, where its Paperboy was still in a German magazine’s NES charts in 1991.
Buoy spoke for the industry as well as for his company. When RUN asked publishers in January 1987 why software cost so much, he broke down where a dollar spent on entertainment software went: 40 cents to the shop, 15 to the distributor, 20 on making the product, and 25 on everything else, from advertising and staff to the publisher’s profit. By 1988 Mindscape was a public company with about 130 employees.
The Software Toolworks
In December 1989 The Software Toolworks, the Californian publisher of the Chessmaster series, agreed to take Mindscape over by exchanging shares. The merger was due to complete in March 1990. Buoy stayed on to run the combined company’s entertainment and international divisions and to serve as its creative director. Buoy and the Toolworks’ Les Crane told Computer Gaming World that Nintendo products would be a main part of the combined company’s range.
Mindscape in Britain
In Britain the company traded as Mindscape International, from a PO box in Lewes, East Sussex, and later from Priority House in Burgess Hill. Its European director was Geoff Heath. By 1990 Mindscape was selling the games of Origin Systems in Britain, in advertisements that carried Origin’s logo and Mindscape’s address. In 1991 Heath signed a deal to distribute the games of the new label Renegade, home of the Bitmap Brothers, so the Amiga charts listed The Chaos Engine as “Renegade/Mindscape”.
Amiga Power’s reviews and previews named each game’s publisher and its authors, and Mindscape’s entries show a catalogue gathered from many studios, from Britain to France and New Zealand:
| Game | Authors | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Captive | Tony Crowther | £24.99 |
| Captain Planet | Tony Crowther | £25.99 |
| Wing Commander (Origin’s game, converted) | Nick Pelling and Justin Garvanovic | £34.99 |
| TV Sports Boxing | Malibu Interactive | £14.99 |
| Overkill | Mark Sibly | £19.99 |
| Alfred Chicken | Twilight | £25.99 |
| Liberation: Captive 2 | Tony Crowther | £34.99 |
| Skidmarks | Acid Software | £24.99 |
| Fury of the Furries | Kalisto | £25.99 |
Not everything came from outside. When Amiga Power previewed Worlds of Legend in 1993, it gave the authors as “In house”. Mindscape also sold the Miracle Piano, a keyboard with tuition software, which Amiga Format listed at £299.99 for Christmas 1993.
Pearson
In 1994 the British group Pearson, owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books, bought The Software Toolworks for $462 million, or $14.75 a share. The Toolworks then renamed itself after the company it had bought four years earlier, and ran as Mindscape. The same year Mindscape bought Strategic Simulations Inc., the wargame and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons publisher, which carried on in California as a subsidiary.
It also bought a studio. In 1994 Nicolas Gaume sold his Bordeaux company, Atreid Concept, to Mindscape, which renamed it Mindscape Bordeaux. Three years later the studio broke away as an independent company and became Kalisto. Gaume told Edge in 1997 that there had been “a huge amount of pressure from the parent company, Pearson, who had paid an extortionate amount for Mindscape and were looking to cut costs.”
The Learning Company and after
Pearson sold Mindscape to The Learning Company in 1998, for $150 million according to public sources. This was the company formed when SoftKey took over the original Learning Company in 1995 and adopted its name. The toy company Mattel bought the enlarged Learning Company in 1999, and in 2000 passed it, Mindscape and SSI included, to Gores Technology Group. According to public sources, Gores dropped the Mindscape name for its games business early in 2001 and sold that business to Ubi Soft.
The name survived in France. In October 2001 Jean-Pierre Nordman, a former executive of the Learning Company group, bought what remained of its international business and reorganised it as Mindscape SA, based in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris. It published games for another decade. In August 2011 it closed Punchers Impact, its last in-house studio, with the loss of 40 jobs, after the studio’s multiplayer PC game Crasher “was not a success”, in a spokesman’s words. Mindscape, he said, would no longer work in games software. The company was liquidated later that month.
Sources
- Antic vol. 3 no. 8, December 1984, and Compute! issue 52, September 1984: Sprout advertisements (Tink and Tonk, SFN as “the country’s #1 text book publisher”, “a hundred years of experience”, Mindscape of Northbrook, Illinois).
- Ahoy! issue 10, October 1984: news item on Mindscape as a subsidiary of SFN, its educational line and independent developers.
- Computer Gaming World issue 200, March 2001, twentieth-anniversary history: “Mindscape’s Australian founder, Roger Buoy”.
- Compute!’s Gazette issue 22, April 1985: CES report, Roger Buoy on being offered four companies and the “shakeout”.
- Computer Gamer issue 5, August 1985: Chicago CES report (Deja Vu, “a mouse driven adventure from Mindscape”, on the Macintosh). Issue 23, February 1987: Mindscape as “an Illinois-based company” and Deja Vu.
- Ahoy! issue 53, May 1988: Mindscape advertisement for Deja Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate on the Amiga, with their awards.
- Commodore Magazine vol. 10 no. 2, February 1989, and The Games Machine issue 4, March 1988: Shadowgate and Uninvited credited to ICOM Simulations, published by Mindscape.
- Compute!’s Atari ST vol. 2 no. 6, August 1987: advertisement for Balance of Power “by Chris Crawford”.
- Computer Gaming World issue 148, November 1996, fifteenth-anniversary section: Balance of Power 78th in “The Top 150 Games of All Time”; the Purcell and Buoy buyout making Mindscape “an entertainment software company”; its early hits.
- Compute! issue 87, August 1987: the January 1987 buyout from SFN by John Purcell and Roger Buoy; the purchases of Scarborough Systems, Learning Well and CBS Interactive Learning.
- Antic vol. 6 no. 8, December 1987: Mindscape advertisement for Gauntlet and Paperboy.
- Video Games (Germany), January and March 1991: charts listing Paperboy (Mindscape, NES).
- RUN vol. 4 no. 1, January 1987: Roger Buoy on where a dollar of software spending goes.
- Computer Gaming World issue 52, October 1988: Mindscape’s first quarter as a public company and its 130 employees.
- Computer Gaming World issue 67, January 1990: The Software Toolworks acquires Mindscape by exchange of stock; Buoy as creative director; Nintendo products as a primary factor. Compute! issue 118, March 1990: the merger terms, the March completion date and Buoy’s roles.
- ACE issue 19, April 1989, and issue 35, August 1990: Mindscape International advertisements, PO Box 1019, Lewes. AMIGA POWER issue 13, May 1992: advertisement with the Burgess Hill address. ACE issue 46, July 1991: Geoff Heath, European director, and the Renegade distribution deal.
- AMIGA POWER issues 1 (May 1991), 8 (December 1991), 15 (July 1992), 20 (December 1992), 22 (February 1993), 26 (June 1993) and 31–35 (November 1993 to March 1994): reviews, previews and buyers’ guide entries giving Mindscape as publisher, with authors and prices (Wing Commander’s converters in the issue 15 preview, Alfred Chicken’s and Worlds of Legend‘s authors in issue 26, Fury of the Furries’ in issue 32, Skidmarks reviewed in issue 34).
- The One issue 66, March 1994: Mark Sibly “also wrote the A1200-only game Overkill for Mindscape”.
- Amiga Format issue 54, Christmas 1993: the Miracle Piano Teaching System from Mindscape, £299.99.
- Computer Gaming World issue 119, June 1994: Pearson’s purchase of The Software Toolworks for $462 million ($14.75 a share). Issue 125, December 1994: The Software Toolworks renamed Mindscape; Mindscape’s purchase of SSI, a subsidiary of Pearson. Issue 134, September 1995: “when Mindscape changed its name from Software Toolworks”.
- Retro Gamer issue 43 (2007), SSI feature: SSI sold to Mindscape in early 1994; Mindscape sold to The Learning Company by 1998, which Mattel then acquired.
- Mark Asher, “Mattel Dumps Games Division”, Computer Gaming World issue 198, January 2001: Mattel passes The Learning Company, with Mindscape and SSI, to Gores Technology Group.
- Edge issue 44, April 1997: Kalisto feature (Gaume’s sale of Atreid Concept to Mindscape in 1994, Mindscape Bordeaux, the break three years later, and his words on Pearson).
- Frank Cifaldi, “Report: Mindscape Leaves Video Game Industry After Nearly 30 Years”, Game Developer, 10 August 2011 (web, secondary): the closure of Punchers Impact, 40 jobs, the exit from games and Nordman’s independent company from 2001. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-mindscape-leaves-video-game-industry-after-nearly-30-years
- Wikipedia, “Mindscape (company)” (web, secondary): the October 1983 founding in Northbrook; the Toolworks merger’s completion on 13 March 1990; the $150 million sale to The Learning Company in March 1998; Gores, Game Studios and Ubi Soft in 2001; Mindscape SA in Boulogne-Billancourt; Crasher and the 2011 liquidation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindscape_(company)