Mindscape
Mindscape was the name of a series of video game developer and publisher companies from the early-1980s to the early-2010s.
History
The first iteration of Mindscape was founded in October 1983 in Northbrook, Illinois. Their games were primarily for PCs of the era, such as the Apple II and IBM PC, however they were later able to secure a valuable license to publish for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
In 1990, Mindscape was acquired by Novato, California-based company The Software Toolworks, best known for edutainment games like Chessmaster and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The "Mindscape" brand and their license to develop for Nintendo consoles was absorbed by Toolworks, allowing them to develop further lucrative titles such as Mario Is Missing!
In 1994, Toolworks was acquired by British conglomerate Pearson plc, who renamed the entirety of Toolworks to "Mindscape". During this time, Mindscape developed LEGO Island, however they also operated at a significant loss, reportedly losing £46 million in 1996 alone.[1]
Pearson was eager to sell Mindscape, and took advantage of the eventual success and profitability of LEGO Island to sell Mindscape to The Learning Company (who also acquired fellow Novato-based developer Broderbund, best known for the Myst and Carmen Sandiego series, around the same time).
Shortly afterwards, The Learning Company itself was acquired by Mattel, who, like the LEGO Group, was a traditional toy manufacturer threatened by the rapidly emerging video game market. However, the acquisition proved to be a disaster for Mattel, with many news outlets calling it one of the worst mergers of all time, leading Mattel to sell off the entire division to private equity firm The Gores Group.[2][3]
The Gores Group rapidly liquidated the intellectual property acquired from Mattel Interactive, selling most of the "entertainment" titles to Ubisoft and the "productivity" and "educational" titles to Riverdeep Interactive (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Subseqently, former French The Learning Company executive Jean-Pierre Nordman purchased TLC's international assets from Gores and repurposed the Mindscape brand for a new game development and publishing company based in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. Apart from the name and being in the video game industry, this company bears no similarity to any of the prior "Mindscape" iterations. This Mindscape iteration primarily released forgettable "shovelware" titles for the Nintendo Wii and was ultimately dissolved in 2011. Some regional branches of this iteration of Mindscape (such as the Netherlands and Australia, until October 2024) continue to operate solely as retail storefronts.
LEGO Island
LEGO Island was the first major video game based on the LEGO brand and toy lines, following a successful pitch made by Mindscape to LEGO's Danish executives.
The game was helmed by Wes Jenkins, then a member of Mindscape/Toolworks' art department who served as creative director; Paul Melmed, an child psychologist contracted by Mindscape who served as educational consultant; Scott Anderson, a writer and programmer who served as producer; and Dennis Goodrow, who served as lead programmer.
Despite the team reportedly working well together, relations with upper management were notoriously tumultuous. Management reportedly struggled to understand the then-new concept of 3D game development, while others in the company repeatedly attempted to remove Jenkins and/or Anderson, and take over the project for themselves.
According to Jenkins' later memoirs, part-way through development, Mindscape's CEO was replaced with a "hatchet-man" whose job was "taking apart companies and selling the remaining assets". Employees started getting indiscriminately fired, in some cases finding "pink slips" on their desks after returning to the office from a "company movie day".
Shortly before the release of LEGO Island, all of the employees working on it were fired, allegedly to avoid paying bonuses promised to employees based on the game's retail sales performance. Planned sequels to LEGO Island, known during development as LEGO Sea Challenge/Beneath the Phanta-sea and LEGO Adventurers, were cancelled. LEGO rescinded the licensing rights from Mindscape, and future LEGO Island titles were developed by British game developer Silicon Dreams Studio.