Results

Balance of the Planet was a commercial and critical near-failure. We sold about 12,000 units in total. Because of a combination of errors on the part of our distributor, we ended up losing about $20,000 on extra copies of the game that we need not have manufactured. This was counterbalanced by an unexpected offer for licensing rights in Japan. What saved the game was the unexpected sales to educational institutions; Marylyn Rosenbloom orchestrated this effort for us. For several years, we continued to sell copies into schools and colleges all over the country. All in all, we made a small profit on the game, probably not enough to justify our time expenditure, but enough to repudiate any sense of failure.

The critical response to the game was two-pronged. Basically, gamesters and computer people hated it, and educators and environmentalists loved it. One magazine reviewer lambasted it because, in his words, it "just isn't fun." I suppose this is understandable in a games magazine, but it still bothered me that a serious environmental game was being measured by the standards of shoot-em-ups. Another magazine gave it a negative review riddled with factual errors the reviewer had evidently spent only a few minutes with the game.

On the other hand, the educators and environmentalists were pleased with the game. It was far and away the most thorough and accurate simulation of environmental problems available. It surpassed a number of purely academic simulations. The reviews from these people were uniformly positive.

I look back on the design with pride. Were I to do it all over today, I would make few fundamental changes. I'd add more variables to the simulation, and I'd certainly jazz up the cosmetics. I'd also like to augment the information presenting the overall state of the world to the user, and perhaps add links to websites with more information. But none of these possible improvements alter the design's core architecture.