Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with Textile from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bock Obama, and we
Speaker 1: thought we'd take another one of our looks at a
Speaker 1: big company that's in the world of tech and uh
Speaker 1: and you know, it's been a while since we've done
Speaker 1: one of these, And we also thought we talked about
Speaker 1: a company that's involved in video games. It's one that
Speaker 1: has a long history in video games and a controversial
Speaker 1: one at times. This also has been something that numerous
Speaker 1: listeners have requested over the years. If you do not
Speaker 1: like video games, you have our permission to just, you know,
Speaker 1: listen to an old episode. Wait, but we promised that
Speaker 1: we're going to try to make it interesting, even for
Speaker 1: those of you who don't care that much. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of impact that this has on the
Speaker 1: entire industry. And it's really this particular story is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: We're specifically talking about Electronic Arts or e A, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people view these days as some sort
Speaker 1: of megalomaniacal corporation bent on dominating the entire video game industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, yeah, well, I mean we'll we'll get
Speaker 1: into it later on, but but it but it is
Speaker 1: one worst company in America twice, two years in a row,
Speaker 1: two years in a row. Yeah yeah. But but to
Speaker 1: start off, you know, it's it didn't start off as
Speaker 1: as this uh company that was bent on on having
Speaker 1: a stranglehold on the video game industry. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that that's what he has now or that's goal,
Speaker 1: that's what's goal is, but that's what that's the popular
Speaker 1: perception that is. Well, you know, to be fair, it
Speaker 1: does as twenty five million registered players and is operating
Speaker 1: out of seventy five countries, so it's not doing to shadowy.
Speaker 1: But but it had had interesting beginnings. Now to really
Speaker 1: understand how A started, you actually have to go way
Speaker 1: back before e A was a thing. Uh. And my
Speaker 1: first date that I wrote down was in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three because that's when William M. Trip Hawkins the Third
Speaker 1: was born. Now, this guy is going to be the
Speaker 1: founder of e A when we get up to that point,
Speaker 1: but um, he was. It was his idea to start
Speaker 1: up a video game company, and uh, and you know
Speaker 1: the way he came about this was as he was
Speaker 1: growing up and going to school, he started to get
Speaker 1: really interested in uh, computers in general and games as well.
Speaker 1: In fact, in nineteen seventy he designed a board game.
Speaker 1: It was a football board game called ACU stat Pro Football. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He borrowed five thousand dollars from his father to get
Speaker 1: this off the ground. And it was a complete commercial failure. Right.
Speaker 1: It was his first entrepreneurial attempt and it and it failed,
Speaker 1: which often we can learn a lot more from our
Speaker 1: failures than our successes. But it teaches us a couple
Speaker 1: of things about Hawkins that he's interested in games, and
Speaker 1: he's interested in football in particular, which becomes extremely evident.
Speaker 1: And during the the evolution of e A right, right,
Speaker 1: and he had started kind of designing stuff. He was
Speaker 1: a big D and D player from what I understand
Speaker 1: and um and was really interested in how all of
Speaker 1: the math and statistics worked. But noticed that a lot
Speaker 1: of his friends were not interested in doing that at all,
Speaker 1: and so he was kind of thinking like, hey, what if. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was looking at at different ways of creating sets
Speaker 1: of rules and statistics and and also at the same
Speaker 1: time he was starting to get interested in computers. Now
Speaker 1: in the early seventies. This is predating the personal computer.
Speaker 1: If you were interested in computers, it's because you had
Speaker 1: a job at Uh, there were computers at your job,
Speaker 1: or maybe you were attending university and they were computers
Speaker 1: there right right in in seventy when he had his
Speaker 1: first interaction ever with a prototype micro computer, this was
Speaker 1: over a friend's house and uh, and that kind of
Speaker 1: set him up for a couple of years later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, he has access to a d
Speaker 1: E C PDP eleven mini computer and he creates a
Speaker 1: program written in the Basic programming language that was designed
Speaker 1: to run simulations of football games, so exactly a fully
Speaker 1: interactive gaming experience. More like, if I put in every
Speaker 1: player's stats and then set this to go and have
Speaker 1: it play out as if it were a game, what
Speaker 1: would the results be? And he tested it by running
Speaker 1: a simulation of what was going to be at that time,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy four Super Bowl game, and it turned
Speaker 1: out that his his game ended up predicting the final
Speaker 1: score fairly closely. Uh. In his game, it said that
Speaker 1: the Dolphins would win over Minnesota twenty three to six,
Speaker 1: and the real score was actually twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: So at least in that sense, the statistics seemed to
Speaker 1: hold true. Now, of course, we all know that in reality,
Speaker 1: from a day to day basis, statistics can give you
Speaker 1: an indication of how things might go, but there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that's how they will go, right, Yeah, So so
Speaker 1: Luck could have certainly been involved in that one, but
Speaker 1: you know not. Nonetheless, he was a student at Harvard
Speaker 1: at the time. He graduated with a self designed major
Speaker 1: in a strategy and applied game theory. That's an interesting
Speaker 1: major right there. Especially fore right, he says that he
Speaker 1: spent a couple of years convincing Harvard to to let
Speaker 1: him get that degree because that was what he wanted.
Speaker 1: And I would go on to get an MBA from Stanford. Yep.
Speaker 1: And when he graduated in ninet with that NBA, he
Speaker 1: went to work for a little company called Apple, and
Speaker 1: at that time it really was a little company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had just just about fifty employees at the time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty employees. He had joined early on. This is, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, right at the very onset of the personal
Speaker 1: computer era. The Apple two was the first computer from
Speaker 1: Apple to really hit it off in the market. The
Speaker 1: first Apple was mostly adopted by people who were hobbyists
Speaker 1: or really had a fascination with computers, but it was
Speaker 1: not a commercial success. What didn't run away with the market,
Speaker 1: Apple two was a totally different story. That was the
Speaker 1: one that a larger niche began to get interested in
Speaker 1: personal computers. It's still was still, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: in the hobbyist era, but uh, it was a looser
Speaker 1: definition of hobbyists at that point, not just people who
Speaker 1: were obsessed with computers. And I mean that in the
Speaker 1: nicest way. I come from a family that's part of
Speaker 1: this niche. So yeah, Hawkins has said that in seven
Speaker 1: he saw an Apple two at a computer fair and
Speaker 1: realized that this was kind of you know, he had
Speaker 1: been churning around this this concept of of games and
Speaker 1: computers and programming for a couple of years and decided
Speaker 1: that Apple was, yes, the way to go. He's not
Speaker 1: the only one either. There were a lot of early
Speaker 1: game developers who were looking at personal computers as the
Speaker 1: platform of choice, and many of them, uh showed an
Speaker 1: early preference for the Apple to Richard Garriott of Origin
Speaker 1: also had that same fascination. So Hawkins works for Apple.
Speaker 1: By two, he was the director of strategy and marketing
Speaker 1: at Apple Computers. So from yeah, that those humble beginnings,
Speaker 1: and of course by then Apple was doing very very
Speaker 1: well and had already had its initial public offering, which
Speaker 1: netted Hawkins quite a bit of money. And so he
Speaker 1: made a big, risky decision. He decided that his fascination
Speaker 1: of games and computers needed to really be indulged, and
Speaker 1: so he left Apple Computer. Well, he supposedly had had
Speaker 1: decided almost a decade prior that in two would be
Speaker 1: the year for him to start a business, to start
Speaker 1: a computer business, and that that that would be the
Speaker 1: year that that the home computing market had caught up
Speaker 1: to his desire to plan it. Now, now, I both
Speaker 1: of us honestly don't know whether or not that's truly
Speaker 1: what he thought. That's some of the stuff. Some of
Speaker 1: the stuff he says, he says, well after the time, right,
Speaker 1: it could be retcond is all I'm saying. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he definitely did do that. I'm just I have
Speaker 1: a little bit of skepticism either either way. On two
Speaker 1: fun fact, the day before I was born, Um, in
Speaker 1: case anyone needed to feel really old right now, thank
Speaker 1: you you're welcome. Um. He he incorporated Electronic Arts, and
Speaker 1: and this was not going This was not the original
Speaker 1: name that he had thought of for the company. No, no,
Speaker 1: he actually originally wanted to call it Amazing Software, but
Speaker 1: that just didn't seem to really click. He got a
Speaker 1: bunch of people together to try and uh brainstorm and idea.
Speaker 1: He had actually used two thousand dollars of his own
Speaker 1: money to fund this early part of the company, UH
Speaker 1: and he they started thinking about other possible names. One
Speaker 1: of the names they came up with was soft Art,
Speaker 1: but the head of another company that was called Software
Speaker 1: Software Arts asked him if he would reconsider naming his
Speaker 1: company that just to avoid any confusion, and he agreed
Speaker 1: to do that. Had another brainstorming session and that came
Speaker 1: up with Electronic Arts. Along with a team of other
Speaker 1: folks and marketing people as well an outside marketing company,
Speaker 1: and Electronic Arts was born. They would actually receive by
Speaker 1: the end of nineteen eight two two million dollars in
Speaker 1: venture capital from Sequoia Capital, and Sequoia Capital even gave
Speaker 1: them some office space to work out of before they
Speaker 1: had any sort of physical headquarters right right. Very Originally,
Speaker 1: I think he worked out of his own home when
Speaker 1: he was hiring his first couple of people, and uh,
Speaker 1: all of these people that he was hiring at the time,
Speaker 1: and and the naming of the company kind of came
Speaker 1: about because he really wanted UM. He really believed that
Speaker 1: computer games are an art form and wanted UM wanted
Speaker 1: the game company to operate kind of like a music
Speaker 1: label UM. And this is really evident in some of
Speaker 1: their early marketing campaigns and attempts. You know, they would
Speaker 1: get these game developers together and pose them like rock
Speaker 1: stars have, have rock music photographers come in and do
Speaker 1: these gorgeous photographs of them and and really concentrate on
Speaker 1: the software artist. Yeah, even the art they would use
Speaker 1: in their the games they sold, which in those days
Speaker 1: games didn't come in boxes yet. They were in usually
Speaker 1: plastic bags, and you had some r that would be included.
Speaker 1: But it it looked pretty looked like a lot of Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looked like a lot of these games came out
Speaker 1: of someone's garage. And here's here's a fun fact. A
Speaker 1: lot of them did. UM. But uh e A. They
Speaker 1: took an approach where they really put a lot of
Speaker 1: graphic design work into the art that was included with
Speaker 1: the games, and there were several sources I read that
Speaker 1: likened the the art on the games too. Album you
Speaker 1: would see on what we used to you know, buy
Speaker 1: music on, which were these giant vinyl albums. I actually
Speaker 1: kids are doing that again now. But there was a
Speaker 1: while where I would say vinyl album and I just
Speaker 1: get that blank stare um. Those days appeared to have
Speaker 1: disappeared again for at least a while, but I'll see
Speaker 1: that keeps up. Uh. They actually moved to the headquarters
Speaker 1: in San Mateo, California, and they were there for quite
Speaker 1: a few years. Ultimately they ended up moving again. But
Speaker 1: and also you know, e A expanded greatly, But we'll
Speaker 1: get into all of at So they're early early efforts
Speaker 1: were concentrated on a few titles, uh, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to produce all of their games. Internally, they wanted to
Speaker 1: be a publisher, a developer, and a distributor. So these
Speaker 1: are all different parts of the the video game industry.
Speaker 1: And you can have a company that's just one of
Speaker 1: these things, or you can have a company that does
Speaker 1: multiple roles here, but to break it down, essentially, you
Speaker 1: have publishers that these are the companies that fund the
Speaker 1: development of video games. Now, they might have a development
Speaker 1: team within the publisher, or they may pay an independent
Speaker 1: developer to create a game. But they are the ones
Speaker 1: who say, here's some money, we believe in the project
Speaker 1: that you have pitched, why don't you go ahead and
Speaker 1: build that game. Then you give us the game, and
Speaker 1: we will make sure the game gets to distributors who
Speaker 1: will then make sure the game gets two stores. And
Speaker 1: then the way it generally works, if it if you're
Speaker 1: talking about a dependent developer and a publisher, the publisher
Speaker 1: will give an advance to the developer, and that advance
Speaker 1: is against any future royalties that the game sells until
Speaker 1: you pay off that advance, and then you usually have
Speaker 1: some sort of royalty sharing program where the publisher gets
Speaker 1: a certain amount of the money from sales and the
Speaker 1: developer gets another, you know, a percentage of those sales
Speaker 1: as well, But the advance has to be paid off first,
Speaker 1: because that's the initial investment the publisher makes to the developer.
Speaker 1: Developers are of course, those are the people who developed
Speaker 1: the games, are the ones who actually build the games.
Speaker 1: So again, it can be an independent company, it could
Speaker 1: be part of a publisher, it could be part of
Speaker 1: a distributor. Uh. Either are all different types of models
Speaker 1: out there, but these are the people actually building the code,
Speaker 1: making the art, writing the games. That's that's yeah. Then
Speaker 1: you've got the distributors. Now, these are the people who
Speaker 1: are responsible for delivering finished games from publishers and delivering
Speaker 1: them to retail establishments and other outlets, so they sell gain.
Speaker 1: The publishers sell their games to distributors, and then the
Speaker 1: distributors take those games and sell them to the retail operators,
Speaker 1: who then sell them to the public. So U e. A.
Speaker 1: Was all three of these things right. And at the time,
Speaker 1: Hawkins has said that he had done a lot of
Speaker 1: market research and that a hundred and thirty five of
Speaker 1: his competitors were doing the same thing um, which which
Speaker 1: seems like an awfully large number, although at the time
Speaker 1: we were just on the verge of a little bit
Speaker 1: of a market crash A little bit. A little bit
Speaker 1: is a little bit is understating it. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: but but during this boom, there were there was a
Speaker 1: lot going on. Um and uh. And also the concept
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of Apple's Apple is a really
Speaker 1: terrific example of vertical integration and um and from his
Speaker 1: time at Apple, I feel like probably that's one of
Speaker 1: the places where he picked up this concept. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and those early titles that first came out. The first
Speaker 1: six titles from e A included games called Hard Hat Mac,
Speaker 1: which was kind of like Mario Clone. Um It's or
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong Clone. I really should say not Mario, but
Speaker 1: a Donkey Kong clone. It was a platforming game a
Speaker 1: side not even a side s calling it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like Donkey Kong. Then you had the
Speaker 1: pinball construction set. There was a game called which you
Speaker 1: Don't let you build pinball systems. Then you had arcn
Speaker 1: which was kind of a weird fantasy strategy game that
Speaker 1: was part chess, part action game. The idea being that
Speaker 1: you have two sides. Uh. Two sides have different pieces
Speaker 1: that are kind of like chess pieces. Uh. The different
Speaker 1: pieces have different abilities, and you try to take over
Speaker 1: your opponent's territory. Whenever one of your pieces comes in
Speaker 1: contact with an opponent's piece, you then have a little
Speaker 1: arcade like battle between the two right, and depending upon
Speaker 1: what your pieces, you might be able to really whoop
Speaker 1: up on your opponent because you're faster, or your shots
Speaker 1: do a lot more damage. Uh and and so it
Speaker 1: was all about strategy, like I want to make sure
Speaker 1: this piece goes up against my that piece my opponent has,
Speaker 1: so I can I can win the game. You can
Speaker 1: kind of tell that I played the heck out of
Speaker 1: this game by the way. I also owned the Pinball
Speaker 1: Construction set and I owned hard hat Mac. Then there
Speaker 1: was a Mule, which was another strategy game. A lot
Speaker 1: of people who enjoyed this really like things like a
Speaker 1: war gaming where you would have the big table with
Speaker 1: all the hexagons and you move the pieces around. Mule
Speaker 1: was kind of the computer version of that. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was really built for four players, which at the time
Speaker 1: was was kind of unheard of. Yeah, and I never
Speaker 1: got into it because my brain does not work that way.
Speaker 1: I can. I can do well enough in our con
Speaker 1: because even if my strategy skills aren't that great, my
Speaker 1: twitch skills were good enough to help me get by,
Speaker 1: but Mule not so much. Then there was Worms, which
Speaker 1: was kind of a high concept game where you would
Speaker 1: train these what they called worms, these these these lines
Speaker 1: of light to behave in a certain way in order
Speaker 1: to progress in the game. And it's very difficult to explain.
Speaker 1: And I've always seen people who say, if you want
Speaker 1: to play the game, if you want to try it out,
Speaker 1: find a copy of it and give it a whirl.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can find stuff like this on the internet.
Speaker 1: Uh you should do it without reading the instructions, just
Speaker 1: to see if you can figure out what the heck
Speaker 1: is going on. Um And I mean I read a
Speaker 1: description of this, and I'm not sure I would be
Speaker 1: able to figure it out. But maybe it's more intuitive
Speaker 1: than the descriptions would give you. Uh that, then the
Speaker 1: descriptions seemed to indicate. And then the last of the
Speaker 1: six titles that they launched with when they the company
Speaker 1: was first offering up games was Murder on These zinder Kneuf,
Speaker 1: which I know nothing about. I did not own that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I should put in that I have played zero
Speaker 1: of these games. Well, they you know, right around when
Speaker 1: you were one, so I'm not surprised, uh so. But
Speaker 1: I I had most of these games because they came
Speaker 1: out for the Apple too, and we had an Apple too.
Speaker 1: And actually what happened was a local school had purchased
Speaker 1: a bunch of games and then they gave them to
Speaker 1: me to test and tell them which ones were educational
Speaker 1: and which ones were not really educational. So I did,
Speaker 1: and then I returned all the games and they said,
Speaker 1: all right, you can keep all the ones that aren't educational. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so as a kid, I was like ching and um
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I ended up with a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of early games. That's also how I ended
Speaker 1: up learning about the Ultimate series because Ultimate two was
Speaker 1: one of those games. But uh uh, yeah, so there
Speaker 1: was That was the initial launching title, but there were
Speaker 1: some other ones that came out shortly thereafter. There was
Speaker 1: the Last gladi Eator, which is a game I also owned. Um,
Speaker 1: so that one didn't come in the batch. I wanted
Speaker 1: that one as a as a part of a lip
Speaker 1: sinking contest. Yeah, well, what pray tell? Were you lip sinking?
Speaker 1: Me and my dad did a lip sinking routine to
Speaker 1: raise stevens the Pirates song, which is all about a
Speaker 1: pirate who wants to sing and dance and wear bright
Speaker 1: shiny pants. Well that's that's a that's awesome. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: won first place, which was a fifty dollar gift certificate
Speaker 1: to a local comics store. And I don't read comic books,
Speaker 1: so I bought all their computer games instead, and one
Speaker 1: of them was The Last Gladiator, And that was a
Speaker 1: game where you play as a little gladiator and all
Speaker 1: these different monsters come out and based upon whatever weapon
Speaker 1: you have at your disposal, you have uh you know,
Speaker 1: decent chances against them. It gets more and more difficult
Speaker 1: as the game goes on. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a typical Arcady experience. Um. They also had they launched
Speaker 1: a game that would end up being sort of the
Speaker 1: genesis of e A sports. Dr J and Larry Bird
Speaker 1: Go one on one. I'm told this is from a
Speaker 1: sport called basketball and so one that's one with the
Speaker 1: orange round thing. Correct. Uh I want to say yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this was one of the earliest Uh well, it
Speaker 1: was the earliest sports game from e A and Hawkins
Speaker 1: really struck on a brilliant idea. He had decided to
Speaker 1: try and approach people who were famous in various sports
Speaker 1: and to license their their names. Yeah right, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: get a promotional tie in from famous famous athletes, I
Speaker 1: mean Dr J and Larry Bird or especially at the
Speaker 1: world famous and and which is interesting because the world
Speaker 1: famous since they were playing an American sport that was
Speaker 1: almost exclusively played in America. UM, they ended up that
Speaker 1: they ended up paying off big time. Ended up being
Speaker 1: a strategy that e A still to this day employees.
Speaker 1: They also established a new policy which was to in
Speaker 1: order to keep more of the profits that it would
Speaker 1: get from its uh from the sales, it was going
Speaker 1: to reduce the discount it gave software distributors for its games,
Speaker 1: meaning that UH they were essentially selling their games at
Speaker 1: a higher cost. Two stores saying all right, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we're no longer going to sell this game to you
Speaker 1: at ten dollars a copy. We're gonna sell it to
Speaker 1: you for thirty dollars a copy. And UH, and you
Speaker 1: know it's your trump. Uh, it's your problem to figure
Speaker 1: out how to sell this. So if you're if you
Speaker 1: usually sell your games at forty dollars, now you're paying
Speaker 1: thirty bucks to sell it for forty, your profit margin
Speaker 1: has shrunk. As a software district, a software retail store. UM,
Speaker 1: you know, do you continue trying to do that? Do
Speaker 1: you hike your prices up and hope that people are
Speaker 1: willing to pay it? Uh. E A's point was that, hey,
Speaker 1: we're starting to make a name for ourselves. People know
Speaker 1: our product and they like it. So if if they
Speaker 1: like it and this is the only way they can
Speaker 1: get it, then you're gonna have to play ball with us.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of the first example of e
Speaker 1: A really throwing its weight around. Yeah. This was also
Speaker 1: the year that it made its Conferdence debut at the
Speaker 1: Consumer Electronics Show, and so, yeah, they were really really
Speaker 1: getting out there in the public and starting to make ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and keep in mind this is all in the first
Speaker 1: year that they're actually offering games. You know, they had
Speaker 1: been a company for a while, but of course, you know,
Speaker 1: as soon as they became a company, it didn't mean
Speaker 1: that they had games to offer everybody them. Uh. They
Speaker 1: also had established these ideas that you know, every single
Speaker 1: person who worked on the game was going to be credited.
Speaker 1: If you were the creator of a game, your name
Speaker 1: was front and center on the game's uh screens. It
Speaker 1: would let you know that this was a game developed
Speaker 1: by so and so. And that was a response to
Speaker 1: a lot of the the activity they were seeing on
Speaker 1: the console market, particularly with Atari UH, and that there
Speaker 1: were people who were essentially anonymous game developers who had
Speaker 1: put in hours and hours and hours of time to
Speaker 1: create video games, but there was no sign of credit
Speaker 1: for them on on the actual video games. It was
Speaker 1: just you know, is this is you know ex title
Speaker 1: from X company? Sure. Yeah. The word that I've seen
Speaker 1: Tasta owned and a lot of articles about it is
Speaker 1: is surfs. That these people are being treated like surfs.
Speaker 1: Andran and Hawkins was saying that you know, some of
Speaker 1: these kids that he had met out at Apple were
Speaker 1: were and I quote legitimate divas and and that they
Speaker 1: deserved better than that. Yeah, and they Let's make it clear.
Speaker 1: E A was not the only company doing this. There
Speaker 1: were other companies that split off from Atari, for example,
Speaker 1: that were founded by developers who wanted to have more uh,
Speaker 1: more control and more credit for the work that they
Speaker 1: were doing. So e A is one example of that,
Speaker 1: but it's by no means the only example of that now.
Speaker 1: UH In n four, Larry Probst joined the company as
Speaker 1: the vice president of sales, and he will become really
Speaker 1: important to e A. He was already important at that point,
Speaker 1: but becomes even more so over the years. UH and
Speaker 1: e A begins to distribute games from other companies, not
Speaker 1: just their own companies. So now they're becoming a distributor
Speaker 1: for other UH publishers, and one of the first ones
Speaker 1: was Lucasfilm Games. There was also s s I and Interplay.
Speaker 1: They all used Electronic Arts as a distributor. So now
Speaker 1: they're bringing in money not only from the games that
Speaker 1: they are developing in their their own house, but also
Speaker 1: from other developers. Yeah. This was this was the year
Speaker 1: that the that the video game market really crashed or
Speaker 1: was really feeling all of the effects of the crash.
Speaker 1: Um And this was due to a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but um but but mostly you know,
Speaker 1: Atari had been kind of sort of driving the market
Speaker 1: into the ground for a minute. Yeah, Yeah, the market
Speaker 1: was completely flooded with games, and and not good games necessarily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some there's some great titles that were among
Speaker 1: the ones that came out that year, but there were
Speaker 1: Atari had essentially lowered the bar so far for anyone
Speaker 1: to submit games to the console that it was flooded
Speaker 1: with games that were just rushed the bad art that
Speaker 1: we're poorly constructed, that were impossible to play. Um and
Speaker 1: and this made people stop wanting to buy games because
Speaker 1: they were just not fun. Right. And also there were
Speaker 1: so many consoles on the market, you know, it had
Speaker 1: kind of boomed, and and these things cost four to
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars in today's in today's concept of the dollar,
Speaker 1: and so you know, yeah, it was it was not
Speaker 1: sustainable at the time with the quality of games that
Speaker 1: were coming out. And there was such an early boom
Speaker 1: that it was just a rush, right, and then the
Speaker 1: rush was followed by a bubble bursting, which we see
Speaker 1: all the time, not just in technology but in all
Speaker 1: kinds of markets. And uh and so you know, as
Speaker 1: of a game company, Electronic Arts had a tough year
Speaker 1: ahead of it because you know that was it was
Speaker 1: affected to even though a lot of its games were
Speaker 1: being made for computers. I was saying PCs, but really
Speaker 1: at this time we weren't really calling the PCs yet,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they were being made for computers, it still
Speaker 1: was effect did because uh, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: consumers got jaded on the concept of games in the
Speaker 1: first place. That was, however, the year that they published
Speaker 1: a game called The Seven Cities of Gold, which I
Speaker 1: also owned. Uh yeah, I was. I was known for
Speaker 1: being a terrible, terrible colonists colonialist. I guess I should
Speaker 1: say I would go in and reek havoc on the
Speaker 1: various Mayan and Aztec cultures and plunder them. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard that it was a very educational game, edutainment, edutainment. All. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to say that I bought that one and
Speaker 1: that one was not part of the package, because if
Speaker 1: it were part of the package, and then obviously I
Speaker 1: fipped about it being educational. Um. And then e A
Speaker 1: began to switch its strategy at this point when the
Speaker 1: video game market had crashed, and instead of marketing games
Speaker 1: as being from specific creators the way they had been
Speaker 1: where they had made these developers rock stars, Uh, they
Speaker 1: were instead going to look at creating actual brands and genres.
Speaker 1: So instead of saying from the mind of so and so,
Speaker 1: they said, why don't we find a game that really
Speaker 1: resonates with people and then just continue to create games
Speaker 1: within that brand or or even just within that type
Speaker 1: of gameplay. Uh. This would actually end up being something
Speaker 1: that people would criticize the A four years later to
Speaker 1: the point where they well, they've they've taken it to
Speaker 1: something of an extreme, but we'll get into that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like yes, and they also decided to start making games
Speaker 1: for lots of different platforms. So besides the Apple two,
Speaker 1: they started looking at the Macintosh, which was brand new
Speaker 1: in uh, the Amiga, the Commodore sixty four IBM compatibles,
Speaker 1: which were just starting to take off right around then. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Atari eight hundred, and the Atari st So that's
Speaker 1: kind of where we are post video game crash, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to cover. But before we get
Speaker 1: into the second half of part one of the e
Speaker 1: A story, let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back, and let's go back into what's
Speaker 1: going on with the e A. So comes round and
Speaker 1: h e A starts releasing a bunch of games, including
Speaker 1: some that were really famous in the fantasy gaming genre. Uh,
Speaker 1: the big one being The Bard's Tale, which I also owned.
Speaker 1: I did, I did not? I think, Well, it was
Speaker 1: very Dungeons and Dragons ish. You would control a party
Speaker 1: of players. You would you would generate characters and then
Speaker 1: put them together in a party, and uh, this was
Speaker 1: kind of standard for a lot of other video games
Speaker 1: at the time. Wizardry was very similar in this respect,
Speaker 1: where you would have certain number of fighters, a certain
Speaker 1: number of magic users, maybe a thief or even a
Speaker 1: bard who could affect the way the party performed by
Speaker 1: playing different songs. That was one of the big innovative
Speaker 1: gameplay elements of The Bard's Tale. So you know, play
Speaker 1: a little song and then everyone gets gets all amped
Speaker 1: up and they fight better, or you play another their
Speaker 1: song and everyone's starting to feel kind of chill and
Speaker 1: they start healing and faster. That's terrific, useful Bards, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: as opposed to and uh, there's this guy guys singing again.
Speaker 1: We can't get them to shut up. We've broken four
Speaker 1: loots and he doesn't get the hint. Uh. Well. The
Speaker 1: other the alternative title for the Bard's Tale was Tales
Speaker 1: of the Unknown Volume one, when it was a fantasy
Speaker 1: RBG and you there was something really creative about the
Speaker 1: Bard's Tale series, which was that you could import players
Speaker 1: from other games all right on certain platforms app Apple
Speaker 1: two is one of them. Yeah, um yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You could pull in things from from Ultima, which was
Speaker 1: from Origin Systems that was not part of Electronic Arts
Speaker 1: at that time, or from the aforementioned Wizardry, which was
Speaker 1: from Surtech, also not part of e A. So these
Speaker 1: are games made by other companies and allowed interoperability in
Speaker 1: the sense that you could pull like if you had
Speaker 1: played this other game and you had these characters that
Speaker 1: you had developed some sort of emotional attachment to and
Speaker 1: you had really invested in this game, you could then
Speaker 1: pull those characters into The Bard's Tale and use them
Speaker 1: again in a totally different game, which was kind of
Speaker 1: an awesome idea. I will say that from my own
Speaker 1: personal experience from playing Wizardry and then pulling characters in
Speaker 1: from Wizardry into The Bard's Tale, they ended up being
Speaker 1: a tad overpowered, like to the point where the whole
Speaker 1: first section of the game was pointless to play because
Speaker 1: you just would you know, yeah, essentially like if I
Speaker 1: were to encounter a moth and you were to give
Speaker 1: me a sledgehammer. Uh, you know. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: way it felt. But it was still a really cool
Speaker 1: game mechanic. Now in six and in they would release
Speaker 1: sequels to the Bard's Tales. You get bards Tale two
Speaker 1: and Bard's Tale three. I remember Bard's Tale three in particular,
Speaker 1: that was the one I played the most. And in
Speaker 1: two thousand four we saw the release of The Bard's Tale.
Speaker 1: But this is a game that was not released by
Speaker 1: e A nor was it connected directly to the Bard's
Speaker 1: Tale games, but it was created by someone who had
Speaker 1: worked on the first two. That's right, Yeah, that one
Speaker 1: of the people who helped develop the maps in the
Speaker 1: first two bards Tale games was the developer behind the
Speaker 1: Bard's Tale the two thousand four games. So I remember
Speaker 1: being excited when that game came out because I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: they're relaunching this, this franchise that I loved as a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was more just the name. I was still a
Speaker 1: fantasy RPG and you played a character who was very
Speaker 1: snarky thief. Bard character voiced by Carrie El was. Oh, man,
Speaker 1: well that sounds that sounds worth playing just for just
Speaker 1: for that. It was. It was entertaining. You had first
Speaker 1: five minutes, you had a narrator, and you had Carrie
Speaker 1: Ell was this character, and they would bicker as you played.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of fun. But it again didn't
Speaker 1: relate back to the Bard's Tale games of my youth.
Speaker 1: So I was tricked. They're Tricksy was also an e
Speaker 1: A released their first productivity application, which was called Deluxe Paint.
Speaker 1: It's a program for the Commodore Amiga, which was known
Speaker 1: as a machine that was particularly powerful when it came
Speaker 1: to graphics and sound. When you compared it against the
Speaker 1: other computers, the Amiga blew them away. As far as
Speaker 1: that well, I mean I had a friend who had Amiga,
Speaker 1: and I remember just being completely flabbricased that a computer
Speaker 1: could do what his Amiga could do as far as
Speaker 1: graphics and sound. We're concerned because when you compared it
Speaker 1: to my Apple two or my two eighties six, it
Speaker 1: just it outperformed him hands down in that. So it
Speaker 1: was a great game platform. But this was a painting
Speaker 1: platform or a painting application, I should say, And it
Speaker 1: was based off of an in house art development tool
Speaker 1: that that e A had been using that they called Prism.
Speaker 1: So they essentially took this in house tool and then
Speaker 1: packaged it and changed it a bit for consumers. So hey, kids,
Speaker 1: kids would be into this too. Yeah, like, you know,
Speaker 1: we're using this to develop games, but I think people
Speaker 1: would really be interested in using this for themselves. So
Speaker 1: I'm sure they tweaked it so that would make sense
Speaker 1: to a consumer. But hopefully yeah, or not just release
Speaker 1: it the way it was, Because you know, things, things
Speaker 1: make you have different kinds of tools for people who
Speaker 1: are professionals in an industry and people who are just
Speaker 1: interested in it. Yeah, but yeah, that was an interesting
Speaker 1: departure from just creating games. Um, I don't have anything,
Speaker 1: and I should say I didn't say this at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, but we're not going to cover
Speaker 1: every release e A ever made, because first of all,
Speaker 1: that would take us about five hours, I think, just
Speaker 1: to list every game, And second of all, that would
Speaker 1: that would be a really boring podcast. That would be
Speaker 1: that would be like like, yeah, even for our threshold,
Speaker 1: that would be boring. So we don't want to I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. I'm just kidding. But no, I I agree entirely.
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna mention some of the big ones, obviously,
Speaker 1: especially the ones that ended up being disruptive to e
Speaker 1: A or to the industry. Re but um, but in
Speaker 1: this case, we're we're just kind of skimming through some
Speaker 1: of the big ones and not hitting every single one.
Speaker 1: Son was when e A set up a European division
Speaker 1: to market PC games. Now, at this point it was
Speaker 1: just to kind of be a marketing firm, not a
Speaker 1: development house, but uh, they saw a lot of opportunity
Speaker 1: to expand into Europe. Uh. The problem with Europe was
Speaker 1: that it was being very it was very slow to
Speaker 1: adopt consoles. It was this is true later on when
Speaker 1: we started getting into the advanced consoles, to the ones
Speaker 1: like are the current generation, Yeah, PlayStation forward Europe. It's
Speaker 1: not that Europe was not interested in it's just it
Speaker 1: was slower to adopt it than other markets. So e
Speaker 1: A was trying to really invest in what they saw
Speaker 1: as being a huge area for opportunity. So so that's
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of that. And in a released
Speaker 1: waste Land, which was a post apocalyptic role playing game
Speaker 1: that's pretty you know, innovative. There were some other post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic RPG type stuff that was out for computers. Some
Speaker 1: of them were just text based games, not even graphics games.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, wait, Wasteland is one that that I
Speaker 1: still we are still not in the era of me
Speaker 1: playing video games that are not um, maybe super Mario Brothers.
Speaker 1: But but but but I but I A lot of
Speaker 1: my friends speak with speak of it with a lot
Speaker 1: of nostalgia. See. The reason why I know so many
Speaker 1: of these e A titles is because I followed the
Speaker 1: same kind of pathway that e A did, and that
Speaker 1: I abandoned consoles shortly after the Atari era and moved
Speaker 1: on to PCs because I saw it as being a
Speaker 1: platform that would allow for more sophisticated types of games.
Speaker 1: And that's something that Hawkins himself had said as well.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why e A in its
Speaker 1: early days focused on comput uters not on consoles. There
Speaker 1: were other reasons as well, like, if you want to
Speaker 1: build a console or a game for a console, it
Speaker 1: gets pretty expensive from a production standpoint, because you have
Speaker 1: to manufacture the cartridges, you have to build the ROMs
Speaker 1: directly onto chips, you have to build the cases, all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. Um, and so there were higher
Speaker 1: costs associated with producing a video game cartridge than a
Speaker 1: computer disk. So, uh, they had their own reasons for
Speaker 1: really focusing on computers versus consoles. Also, yeah, the console
Speaker 1: market didn't really recover until until the n S came
Speaker 1: out Tonyeah, yeah, right around the round eighty eight, that's
Speaker 1: when e A started to reevaluate this position of focusing
Speaker 1: on PC only instead of or computers only, since PC
Speaker 1: we tend to think of as anything that runs DOS
Speaker 1: or Windows. But anyway, at that that time, that's when
Speaker 1: e A was starting to really look at the n
Speaker 1: e S and say, well, maybe there's a reason to
Speaker 1: get into this. Uh. Now, entering into any kind of
Speaker 1: agreement with Nintendo was something that Hawkins was a bit
Speaker 1: reluctant to do because Nintendo had very strict licensing agreements
Speaker 1: and standards that you had to meet because Nintendo did
Speaker 1: not want another video game crash. They absolutely they're being
Speaker 1: very careful about what they published exactly. They did not
Speaker 1: want the market flooded with bad games. Not to say
Speaker 1: that every game that came out for the NES was amazing,
Speaker 1: but they were trying to keep as much of a
Speaker 1: control on that as possible. And you know, that's something
Speaker 1: that publishers are or or game developers might view as
Speaker 1: being a barrier. You know, they might go through the
Speaker 1: trouble of developing a game only to hit a roadblock
Speaker 1: with the licensing problem, and then you've got all this
Speaker 1: time and energy and money that was spent on something
Speaker 1: that you can't actually sell. So there was a big
Speaker 1: issue there. But they did decide to start developing games
Speaker 1: for the NES, and the first one was Skate or Die,
Speaker 1: which my friends who had an e S is they
Speaker 1: loved that game. I did not have in ne S,
Speaker 1: so I was largely ignorant of it. I was still
Speaker 1: playing the computer games at that time. UH and UH.
Speaker 1: Instead of just publishing the game directly and distributing it,
Speaker 1: they actually licensed it out to Konami. UH and then
Speaker 1: Hawkins said that the console market was still just unproven,
Speaker 1: that that the crash from before was so devastating that
Speaker 1: you could not be certain it wouldn't happen again, and
Speaker 1: also again said that consoles were kind of underpowered when
Speaker 1: you compared them to computers. UM. Now they would later
Speaker 1: really revisit this, especially once the Sega Genesis came out,
Speaker 1: UH and and their their tune changes dramatically, but at
Speaker 1: that time they were really saying, computers are really that's
Speaker 1: that's our main focus, consoles or something we might do
Speaker 1: as a side project. So they released a game that
Speaker 1: became one of the most important franchises in the company's history.
Speaker 1: And I am, of course talking about John Madden Football
Speaker 1: UH Hawkins has a lot of There are a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews with Hawkins where he talks about his fond
Speaker 1: memories of developing that game, about bringing John Madden into
Speaker 1: the experience, and saying that you know, we would show
Speaker 1: him how we were doing things, and then he would
Speaker 1: spend the next twenty minutes yelling at us about how
Speaker 1: we got it wrong. And but it was always in
Speaker 1: an effort to make sure the game was as good
Speaker 1: as it possibly could be. So while Madden's approach was
Speaker 1: what some people might call aggressive and meant that they
Speaker 1: were working on making a really good football game, or
Speaker 1: at least that was there. That was the goal, and
Speaker 1: it did become one of the most successful franchises in
Speaker 1: his history. Yeah, as their twenty four games out and
Speaker 1: it's sold million units. Now we'll talk more about some
Speaker 1: controversy with Madden Football, but that really plays in a
Speaker 1: few years down the line. Uh in Night nine, they
Speaker 1: began to develop games for the Sega Genesis console, and
Speaker 1: this is when they started to really rethink that approach
Speaker 1: and say, all right, maybe consoles are actually important enough
Speaker 1: for us to consider it being a main line of business,
Speaker 1: not just some little side business where we can make
Speaker 1: a little extra money. There might be some serious cash
Speaker 1: in this business. Hawkins has said that that this deal
Speaker 1: that he made with with Sega was kind of a
Speaker 1: crowning moment and has has said that he had been
Speaker 1: um kind of stealthily reverse engineering the sixty pit Pecho
Speaker 1: Genesis for a couple of years, and that when Sega
Speaker 1: found out about this, um, you know, it's it's it
Speaker 1: could have gone one of two ways. Either Sega could
Speaker 1: have sued him a whole lot, or they could have
Speaker 1: created this this kind of awesome contract for for creating
Speaker 1: games and and it went. Hawkins has said that, yes,
Speaker 1: that this is one of his big wins in life.
Speaker 1: He essentially said that that he negotiated an incredibly favorable
Speaker 1: deal for electronic arts. This was something he could not
Speaker 1: do in Nintendo because Nintendo held so much of the
Speaker 1: power in that relationship. And uh, you know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to big business guys, you know whoever holds the
Speaker 1: power that that becomes an importan and part of any deal.
Speaker 1: And it was certainly something that Hawkins was very concerned about.
Speaker 1: Even if you think back to the days of him saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I want this company to be about video
Speaker 1: games and art, you can tell there's still a cutthroat
Speaker 1: businessman lurking underneath that artist exterior there and um, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, this was a great example of that. And uh,
Speaker 1: in the Fall of nine, that's when Electronic Arts held
Speaker 1: its initial public offering, the I p OH, that's when
Speaker 1: it became a publicly traded company. And uh, Hawkins decided,
Speaker 1: in order to really justify going public and to to
Speaker 1: get investors excited and invested in the company, and to
Speaker 1: really increase the value of the company, to initiate a
Speaker 1: policy where every single month he expected there to be
Speaker 1: three new games entering into the development process, not not completed,
Speaker 1: but so you know that that would mean that as
Speaker 1: time goes on, you have more and more overlapping games
Speaker 1: until some come out for publication. Others are entering the
Speaker 1: development process. It Uh, it's set a pretty tough standard.
Speaker 1: But and also they were handling games from other developers
Speaker 1: at this point too, so that this didn't even include
Speaker 1: those games, right right. The company at the time it's
Speaker 1: worth about sixty million. Yeah, and uh, and of course
Speaker 1: the the value of the company now is in the billions.
Speaker 1: But will again address that when we get further up
Speaker 1: into the timeline. And in ninety one, that is a
Speaker 1: momentous year for both Hawkins and for e A. That's
Speaker 1: when Trip Hawkins decided to leave e A. He had
Speaker 1: felt that he had accomplished all he wanted with the
Speaker 1: company and that it was time for him to move
Speaker 1: on to something new and challenging. And that new and
Speaker 1: challenging thing ended up being three D O, which was
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea was he was going to
Speaker 1: create a video game console that would lead the market.
Speaker 1: It would be the most powerful, uh console, and it
Speaker 1: actually it was predictive of the consoles that we see today.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be sort of an entertainment center,
Speaker 1: not just a video game console. But it was really expensive,
Speaker 1: uh At. Also, the games that first came out for
Speaker 1: the three D O didn't get a lot of critical
Speaker 1: acclaim and a lot of them relied heavily on full
Speaker 1: motion video. That was when full motion video was just
Speaker 1: becoming possible in the computer and console worlds, so people
Speaker 1: were using it a lot, to the point where it
Speaker 1: became a gimmick. You know, you thought that, oh, this
Speaker 1: scheme is good because as full motion video in it then,
Speaker 1: and you know, full motion video, like any other tool,
Speaker 1: is just a tool. It's just a tool. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're using three D for example, these days,
Speaker 1: it's just just a gimmick. It's just a gimmick. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so and that was the that was the ultimate problem
Speaker 1: with three d O which spoiler alert, did not take off.
Speaker 1: It actually it. Yeah. Meanwhile, back at e A, Larry
Speaker 1: Probst steps in. He becomes the CEO of e A,
Speaker 1: UH and uh. Nintendo that same year and nine one
Speaker 1: launched the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the S and E
Speaker 1: s or ness if you insist on pronouncing it that way,
Speaker 1: And then e A began to develop games both for
Speaker 1: the Genesis and for Nintendo and in an effort to
Speaker 1: really kind of hit as many fans as possible. They
Speaker 1: also said they prefer there to be lots of different
Speaker 1: consoles competing in the market because that means there's not
Speaker 1: one dominant player that can use the leverage against them.
Speaker 1: You know, when there are a lot of different players
Speaker 1: out there, then e A has the advantage, which has
Speaker 1: been an important part of the company's it's really clever
Speaker 1: business business standpoint. Yeah, it's another one of those things
Speaker 1: that some people get a little I think people want
Speaker 1: games to be fun and they don't want to think
Speaker 1: about the business end of it because the business end
Speaker 1: is not necessarily fun. It can be pretty pretty pretty
Speaker 1: grand m Yeah, but anyway, that that was that was
Speaker 1: starting to take off right in ninety one, and um
Speaker 1: that was when e A made its first real acquisition,
Speaker 1: which was Distinctive Software. So they bought an outside development studio.
Speaker 1: The idea was to kind of they saw talent out
Speaker 1: there that they wanted to get, and instead of trying
Speaker 1: to hire the talent away, they thought, well, we're a
Speaker 1: larger company. Now, we're publicly traded, we're highly valued. Let's
Speaker 1: use this opportunity to purchase this other company and make
Speaker 1: it part of what we do. And Distinctive Software was
Speaker 1: the company that had created the test Drive series for Accolade,
Speaker 1: which of course was a competing company to Electronic Arts.
Speaker 1: And so this same division ended up creating a new
Speaker 1: line of games for Electronic Arts called Need for Speed.
Speaker 1: You may have played those games. Uh. And then eventually
Speaker 1: Distinctive Studios was renamed e A Canada and it's it's
Speaker 1: because it was located at in a British Columbia that's correct,
Speaker 1: over in Vancouver. And uh yeah, that was also the
Speaker 1: year that the e A established a sports as a division. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now we finally have an actual formal division within
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts that is overseeing the development of sports titles,
Speaker 1: and a lot of big sports titles came out of
Speaker 1: that division, Madden Football, FIFA games that were related to hockey,
Speaker 1: to basketball, um, and of course that will become more
Speaker 1: important as well, But for now, I think one is
Speaker 1: a good time for us to leave off. That was
Speaker 1: that big year, you know, Hawkins leaving and Probes taking over,
Speaker 1: and we can pick up again in n in part
Speaker 1: two of our story of e A. So, guys, if
Speaker 1: you have a suggestion for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a company we should cover, or a particular
Speaker 1: type of technology, or just a concept that you think
Speaker 1: we need to really explore, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: send us email our addresses tech Stuff at Discovery dot
Speaker 1: com or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: Are handled there as tech Stuff H. S. W and
Speaker 1: Lauren and I will talk to you again about as
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