WEBVTT - The Tragedy of 3DO 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.920 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.120 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:23.400 and I love all things tech and Back in three 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.600 a new video game console created by the founder of 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:32.560 Electronic Arts launched, and just three years later that console 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.440 would be discontinued and essentially taken off the market. It 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:39.559 was a massive failure. The company that made the console 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:44.280 would stick around a little longer, ultimately closing up shop 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.279 in two thousand three. This is the story of the 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:52.760 three d O Company and the console that wasn't meant 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.120 to be. Now, for this episode, We're going to focus 0:00:56.160 --> 0:01:00.840 a lot early on at some prehistoric and Eastern terms 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:04.160 of three d OH information, because I think it's helpful 0:01:04.160 --> 0:01:07.800 to get an understanding of the man who championed the 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:10.320 idea of the three d O to kind of see 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.360 where he was coming from, what his thought process was. 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:17.120 If I just focused on the console or even the 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:21.880 company all by itself, it would be kind of unusual, strange. 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.960 You wouldn't understand why anyone would make these decisions. So 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.920 it's helpful to have the background. Also, I just think 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.880 it's kind of an an interesting story with lots of 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:38.360 ups and downs. And that story begins with William M. Hawkins, 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.840 the third a k a. Trip Hawkins. He was born 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.920 in nineteen fifty four. He grew up in California, and 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:51.360 his mother, Dr. Helen Hawkins, was a producer and host 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:54.760 at a California public broadcast station. She was also a 0:01:54.800 --> 0:02:01.000 prominent feminist and a publications director, very much a influential woman. 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:05.200 And his father, William Hawkins Jr. Had earned a degree 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.680 in physics before becoming a sales and marketing executive for 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:13.079 various companies in California, primarily those in the tech sector. 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.960 In the late fifties and then into the sixties. Trips 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:20.400 father would take a job with a company called Spectral 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:26.000 Dynamics Corporation, which employed another person who will be an 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:30.160 important figure early on for the young Trip, that being 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:34.320 a man named Lane Hawk. But we'll get back to him. So, 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.679 as a kid, Trip loved games, not just playing them, 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:42.359 but kind of learning how they worked right, What were 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:46.280 the mechanics behind the games? What was the theory behind 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.600 the games? What led to making a game a fun 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:54.639 playing experience? You know, it's not easy to develop an 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:59.080 actual game that is rewarding that balances everything out, and 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:03.200 he was really interested in that model, and when in 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.959 high school, he would attempt to make his own version 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:09.839 of various types of games, like he would take inspiration 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:12.600 from games that existed that he enjoyed and try to 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.880 make his own. He was particularly interested in games that 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:21.880 simulated sports. He himself loved sports, and so these games 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:24.400 kind of gave him an outlet to kind of imagine 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.239 himself being part of, like a top class athletic team. 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.760 According to later interviews, Hawkins enjoyed board games but saw 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.120 that many of his friends preferred to spend their spare 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.360 time watching stuff on television, and during a visit to 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:44.840 the home of his father's coworker that the aforementioned Lane Hawk, 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:49.280 he saw something that would spark his imagination for a 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:53.440 future industry. So Lane was fascinated with games as well, 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:57.320 just like young Trip Hawkins. And he was also really 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.400 into computer systems, which at the time were not a 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.120 consumer product. This is the early seventies. This was even 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:08.400 before there were hobbyist kits to purchase. Lane had spent 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.960 a lot of money, like more than five grand, which 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:15.080 in the nineteen seventies, wasn't even more princely some than 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.560 we would think of today, And five thousand dollars is 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:19.560 a lot of money, but he spent that to buy 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.880 what today would be an incredibly primitive mini computer. But 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:26.400 at the time it was well, it was kind of 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:28.800 showing its age at the time, but it was at 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:30.640 one point state of the art. It was called the 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.320 PDP eight. Now, when this computer first debuted in the 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.760 nineteen sixties, when it really was, you know, cutting edge 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:42.000 type of technology, it costs a whopping eighteen thousand, five 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:47.320 hundred dollars, but this was well beyond the heyday of 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.640 the PDP eight. And it was also a really big computer. 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.359 It was like the size of like a cabinet, like 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:57.120 a wardrobe, or a small refrigerator. It was a twelve 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.840 bit machine, meaning it could handle a range of in 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.400 jurors from zero to four thousand ninety five, or you 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.560 could do from negative two thousand forty eight to two 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.120 thousand forty seven. Zero would be taking up that pesky 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.440 spot in the middle. And programming for the machine was, 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:18.719 from what I understand anyway, not intuitive. It was not 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.760 an easy thing to program for. But Lane wanted something 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.159 that he could kind of work on in his spare 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.080 time to putter around with. It was almost like a 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.400 project car for someone who's a gear head. For Lane, 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.240 it was a PDP eight and he hooked up this 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:38.160 computer to a teletype printer. There was no display, There 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:41.279 was no monitor for the PDP eight, so you couldn't, 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:43.040 you know, look at a screen and see what you 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.440 were working on. And instead you used a teletype printer 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.280 and the printer would print out the information that you 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:52.200 were working on. With the computer, you would read it, 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:54.279 you would make changes, it would print on a new page. 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:58.080 It's a pretty painstaking process. Well, Lane created a game 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:03.080 he called MoU Oo, as in what cows say, at 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.920 least in the United States, and the game was pretty simple. 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.400 The game would generate a four digit number and it 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.640 would keep that number secret. So the game has a 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.599 four digit number and it was your job as the 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:18.200 player to figure out what that four digit number was, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:20.960 and you would submit your own guests. You would put 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.520 in a four digit number and the computer would tell 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.640 you how many digits, if any, you got right, and 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:29.039 whether or not any of those digits were in the 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:33.640 right place. So let's say that the secret number the 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.760 computer comes up with is eight to nine five, and 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:42.160 my guess is one five nine three. The system would 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:44.880 tell me I got one correct digit in the right 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.120 location because I got the nine correct and it's in 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.320 the right spot. And I got a second digit correct, 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.000 but it's not in the right spot. My five is 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.839 in the wrong position of that four digit number. So 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.280 it's similar to a board game that would come out 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.960 a little later called Mastermind. That one uses colors, not numbers, 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.839 but it's a similar idea. Now, move did this using 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.280 moves and cows. A cow would indicate that you had 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:14.680 the right digit, but it was in the wrong place. 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.760 A move would indicate that you had a right digit, 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.320 but and it was in the right place. But you 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:22.440 wouldn't be told which one was which right. You wouldn't 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.120 be told which of the digits was the correct one. 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:27.480 You would just know, Oh, I've got, you know, two 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:31.640 moves and a cow, and then my fourth digit is wrong. 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.280 So I've got to start changing this out and narrowing 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.800 down what that four digit number could possibly be. And 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:41.320 I assume you had to do it in a certain 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:45.360 number of turns, But none of my research found anything 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.840 about that. But for our story, The important part is 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.200 when Trip Hawkins saw Lanes set up, something must have 0:07:52.240 --> 0:07:55.640 switched on in Trip's brain. He saw the potential for 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.880 computers to bring together the world's of television and bore 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.040 to games. He imagined a world where one day people 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:07.120 could play games on computers with displays, and that's what 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.400 he wanted to do. He wanted to make games for computers. 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.400 There was no real way to do that at that time. 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:17.040 There was no way for the average consumer to even 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.680 get hold of a computer at that stage, but Hawkins 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.040 was certain this was where things were going to go, 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.720 and Lane Hawk would go on to develop some early 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:31.200 arcade games, but that's a story for another time. According 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:35.280 to Trip Hawkins himself, around nineteen seventy five, he laid 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.080 out a long term plan that would lead towards the 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.800 founding of a computer game company by the year nineteen 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:45.080 eighty two, but he had a lot of challenges to 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:49.760 overcome to actually make that happen. Now. He applied and 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:53.439 was accepted at Harvard and he was a student there 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.080 in the early nineteen seventies, and he wanted to work 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:58.760 in an industry that just didn't exist yet, and that 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.480 also meant he face a love challenges when it came 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:03.800 to his studies. It's not like there were degrees and 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:06.200 what he wanted to do, because the thing he wanted 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.960 to do wasn't a thing yet. So he started to 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.440 kind of put together his studies in a piecemeal fashion, 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.480 you know, taking classes and computer science and programming and 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:21.360 related topics. And at the end of his stay at 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:25.760 Harvard he hadn't just earned a degree, he had essentially 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:31.040 invented a degree in applied game theory and design. Hawkins 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:35.240 then went on to pursue postgraduate work at Stanford, where 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:39.800 he earned an NBA in nineteen seventy eight. By this time, 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:44.040 technology was slowly starting to build the foundation that Hawkins 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.720 would need to pursue his dream of creating a video 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:51.079 game company. UH the twenty hundred he debuted the year 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:53.680 before he got his m b A, and that took 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:56.520 a leading position in the new field of home video 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.760 game consoles. That same year, in nineteen seventy seven, Apple 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:03.440 would unveil the Apple two computer, which was the first 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.400 personal computer from Apple that took aim beyond the relatively 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:11.360 small harp hobbyist market. The original Apple computer was a 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:15.360 kit you might even see pictures of old Apple one 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:21.400 computers in wooden cabinets. That's the original Apple. But the 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:26.120 Apple two was the first real consumer personal computer, and 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.680 it was still too soon for Hawkins to really pursue 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.920 his plans to make a video game company. In addition, 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.760 while in college, Hawkins had made, marketed, and sold his 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.199 own board game after taking a loan from his father. 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.960 His father loaned him the princely some of five thousand dollars, 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.960 which again that's a lot of money. And people liked 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:51.839 the game that Hawkins made, but there weren't enough people 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.720 who actually bought it to make it a success. It 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:58.160 was a failure. And that failure, I think convinced Hawkins 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.200 that he really needed to be methought iCal and patient 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:04.319 before launching his business. It would be a bad idea 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.600 to rush into things. He had already seen what you know, 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.280 a misstep could do. It could be a very expensive mistake. 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:15.760 So Hawkins would conduct the first complete study of the 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:21.240 personal computer market in nine and that's back when it 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:22.960 was a very young field. There were a lot of 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:27.360 different computers out there, the Apples, the trs a D 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:30.720 or trash a D computer, the you know, the Tandy, 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:34.680 the Commodore sixty four. Those were coming out around this time, 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:37.880 some of them a little later, and he started to 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:40.920 get a feel for where things were headed and how 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:42.880 he might best be able to take part in a 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:47.880 technological revolution. While in school, he attended a computer fair 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:50.960 and he actually saw the Apple two debut in person. 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:54.319 He was at that computer fair and he decided that 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.800 he would apply to work for a computer company upon graduating, 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:01.880 and he did. He applied to a lot of different places, 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.800 and the one that gave him an offer that he 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.839 accepted was Apple. The company was happy to bring him 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:12.760 on board. He was the first MBA in the company, 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.880 which he joking Lee said, is always a scary thing. 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.720 You never want to be the first NBA in a company. 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.559 But he joined when there were somewhere between twenty five 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.640 and fifty people working there. Sources don't fully agree on this, 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:28.959 which is often the case when I researched stuff in 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:32.360 computer history, though Hawkins himself has said there were about 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:37.360 fifty employees. However, twenty five of them were primarily responsible 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:41.440 for physically assembling the computers, so maybe really the sources 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:43.679 kind of agree. It's just that some of the sources 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.160 ignore the assembly line workers and only focus on the 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:50.320 you know, the Apple management and officers. That seems a 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.240 bit elitist to me, but maybe that's what's going on anyway. 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:56.000 This was right as the Apple two started to get 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:00.760 some traction. As one of the earliest successful personal computers 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:04.600 that was available on the market. At Apple, Hawkins would 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.600 gain a lot of real world experience while taking on 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.000 an increasing amount of responsibility. He helped guide Apple's efforts 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:16.320 to getting computers into workplaces, and he encouraged the development 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.440 of various productivity applications like spreadsheet programs. Hawkins has said, 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.520 quote I didn't invent the spreadsheet, but I did bring 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:27.080 the first spreadsheet apps into Apple end quote. This would 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.240 allow Apple to compete in markets where previously IBM was 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:34.040 really the king of the castle. Four years after joining 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.559 Apple Trip, Hawkins was the director of Strategy and Marketing, Which, 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:40.760 you know, that's a heck of an achievement to go 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.679 to a director level position within four years, even if 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:46.439 you and you know, take into account the fact that 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.560 the office staff had really only numbered twenty five employees 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.480 when he joined the company and Apple had just held 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:56.679 its initial public offering, and that ended up making Hawkins 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:01.679 a pretty healthy amount of cash. But this means that 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.760 we were just getting up to two. And if you 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.600 remember what I said a little earlier in this episode, 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:11.600 that was the year that Hawkins had predicted way back 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:15.560 in n that he would launch a computer game company, 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:18.680 or at least that's what his plan had called for, 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:23.040 and other computer game companies were already getting off the 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:26.560 ground around this time. At home video game consoles like 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:32.520 the AD had spawned numerous game development companies. Hawkins made 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:35.760 his move to follow through on his plan that his 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:39.880 younger self had created, and he left Apple to found 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.520 his computer game company, now Trip. Hawkins says that at 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:47.240 the time, he thought video game developers were, on the 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:53.120 whole not treated so well. They were frequently treated like 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:57.720 cheap contract labor on a game by game basis, and 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:01.040 Hawkins aimed to create a company that turned that on 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:04.680 its head. And that was the birth of Electronic Arts 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.840 better known today as e A. And it was back 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:12.560 in two. When we come back, we'll give a super 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.880 high level overview of hawkins vision of e A and 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:21.040 how that would lead him to found another company, the 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:32.200 three D O Company. But first let's take a quick break. Today. 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.400 The name E A has I guess it's fair to 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.200 say a little bit of baggage along with it. The 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.920 company has a reputation for doing some stuff that rubs 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.240 gamers the wrong way, the big one being that it 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:48.520 has a history of scooping up smaller video game developers 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:54.120 and then kind of sapping the intellectual property those video 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.680 game developers had created and just draining it dry and 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.280 having the developers anguish a bit before shutting them down. 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.280 U e A has done this to companies like Origin, 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:10.720 which made The Wing Commander and Ultimate Series, Maxis Pandemic 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:14.760 Bull Rug Studios. The list is long. In two thousand 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.240 and twelve, e A even made headlines for a really 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:22.480 not super awesome reason. It was voted the worst company 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:28.000 in the entire United States. But back in two it 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:32.680 was a very different company. Hawkins said that he funded 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.160 e A out of his own pocket for the first 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.600 six months, and at the very beginning he was the 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.640 only employee and he was working out of his home 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.440 until he was able to secure some office space in California, 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.640 and then he started to hire on employees, and it 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.560 was only in October, months after he had started. He 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.000 got started in the spring of nineteen eighty two. So 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:57.480 the fall of nine two he got together with his 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:01.520 twelve employees. This is starting sound a little biblical, and 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:06.240 together they brainstormed up the name of the company Electronic Arts. 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.680 And Hawkins had really wanted to stress that games can 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.399 be a form of art and that video game developers 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.640 are artists and they should be recognized as such, and 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:22.040 Electronic Arts was born. E a's early identities centered around 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.919 compensating and crediting game developers above and beyond what the 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.600 competition offered. You know, like most video games at the time, 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.640 you had no idea who worked on that game. If 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:37.040 you found out, it was only because some industry magazine 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.000 wrote up an article about the person. Chances are you 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.080 just knew which titles went with which companies, if you 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.600 were even paying that close attention. Hawkins wanted to change that. 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.720 He wanted to say, no, you will start to recognize 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:54.680 the work of specific video game developers and the ones 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.280 that make the stuff you like, you'll know to keep 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.639 getting their stuff. That was the idea, and the company 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:04.040 launched early titles like Mule m u l E. It 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.359 was a combat simulation game, and Our Con, which was 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.480 one of my favorite early computer games. It was a 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.560 chess like game in which players would control pieces that 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:19.600 represented different sort of magical and mythological creatures and characters, 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:22.359 and you were trying to take control of a board 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:27.919 by controlling the space occupied by your opponent. So you 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:31.720 can move a piece into an opponent's square, and that 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:36.920 would initiate an arcade style dual where you would try 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:41.399 to beat the other player or your computer opponent in 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.879 a little arcade style game, a little shootout, and different 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:47.359 pieces had different abilities. Some of them were super fast 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.760 but not very powerful. Some shot very powerful beams but 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:53.720 moved slowly, and so on. Anyway, I'm getting off track, 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.000 but it was a great game. It's again one of 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.119 my favorites. Any ar Con fans out there give it 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.760 a shout out. The as Man that was one of 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:06.960 my favorite early computer games. Hawkins, however, his favorite games 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.680 were still sports titles. One early e A sports game 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:14.680 was Dr J and Larry Bird Go One on One, which, 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:16.960 if you're not you know, up on the sports ball, 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:20.320 it's a basketball game. Uh you know. Dr J and 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:25.560 Larry Bird both famous basketball players, amazing basketball players, and 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:28.880 Hawkins himself designed the game, or at least was very 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.840 heavily involved in the design of the game, and he 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.080 also brought both of the basketball stars into the design 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.200 phase and the marketing of the title, and that gave 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.959 it some prestige in the market to actually, you know, 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.520 attach real world athletes to this video game title. And 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:48.919 if you know your video game history, you also know 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:52.399 that this early period of e A coincided with a 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:59.040 catastrophic market event around the home video game market began 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:03.239 to wobble, and by it was in the shambles. And 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.399 I've done full episodes about the video game crash of 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:10.200 eight three, but the short version is that there were 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:14.040 a confluence of problems from a flood of bad games 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.399 by fly by Night developers. There were a series of 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.760 terrible business decisions at multiple companies. There was the overproduction 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:26.720 of titles that meant that the once lucrative industry imploded. 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:32.200 Then there are other elements to like licensing popular games 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:37.800 or or entertainment franchises that ended up being a cost 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.520 that you could never recoup that kind of thing. There 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:43.440 are a lot of really bad decisions and entire companies 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.920 disappeared within a year, and video games in general we're 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:50.160 seen as a failure so much so that retailers didn't 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:53.399 want to carry video games or video game consoles. And 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:57.600 it was only by kind of pivoting toward computers that 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:01.800 companies related to the video game space could stay afloat. 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:05.320 And you know, e A had primarily been developing titles 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:08.560 for computers, but it wasn't immune to this problem either. 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:12.080 The company shifted a little bit in its initial strategy. 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.160 You know again that was originally to promote games by 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:19.080 associating those games with the designers who made them. But 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.400 now e A was focusing more on promoting specific game 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:27.000 titles and making franchises out of them, rather than saying, oh, 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.720 this is a game by so and so. The company 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.879 focused exclusively on developing games for various computer platforms like 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.920 the Apple computers you know, IBM PCs, the Commodore sixty four, 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:42.119 and others at that time. Then Nintendo came along and 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:46.600 managed to do what most analysts thought was impossible. Nintendo 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:50.119 was able to bring consoles back from the dead. The 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:53.520 Nintendo Entertainment System here in the United States, also know 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:58.439 as the Famicom, became a Grand slam home run of 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:00.919 a hit. I thought I would use an analogy that 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:04.480 Trip Hawkins himself would probably appreciate, but it would take 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.520 many years for e A to start to develop games 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:11.919 for console systems in earnest because Hawkins was one he 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.600 was wary of consoles after the Crash of three and two. 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:17.359 He was pretty sure the PC was going to be 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.560 the future of gaming. When Sega launched the Sega Genesis 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:25.120 a k a. The Mega Drive in nineteen eighty nine, 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:27.800 at least in North America, it launched in different parts 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:31.120 of the world at different times. It launched in Japan earlier, 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.439 for example, but trip Hawkins would relent a bit and 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:39.000 negotiated a favorable but not perfect deal with Sega for 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:42.440 the e E for e A tow to publish games 0:22:42.760 --> 0:22:45.720 on Sega's console, and at that point e A would 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:49.360 also develop a few games for the Nintendo Entertainment System 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.240 and got a little bit out of that niche market 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.040 of just developing computer games. Now we get to a 0:22:55.080 --> 0:22:57.080 point where we start to see where the three D 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:01.640 O company idea starts to creep into hawkins mind. Now 0:23:01.680 --> 0:23:03.960 to understand why Hawkins would try to get into the 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:08.199 console market after he had kind of grown wary of 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.119 it after the Crash of three, you have to know 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:15.840 a bit about the relationship between video game developers and 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.800 the companies that actually manufacture the hardware that those games 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.800 run on, the main the console manufacturers. In other words, 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:27.160 Sega in particular was kind of a thorn in the 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:31.800 industry side, particularly for Trip Hawkins. Sega would insist on 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:36.080 steep royalties. Now that meant that game publishers would have 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:39.440 to pay a certain amount of money per game sold 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:43.440 back to Sega in order to have the games run 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:46.600 on Sega machines. So let's say that you, as a consumer, 0:23:46.720 --> 0:23:49.119 are going out to buy an e A game for 0:23:49.119 --> 0:23:52.440 the Sega Genesis. Who is getting paid, Well, it turns 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:55.520 out a lot of people are getting paid. First, there's 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:57.880 the brick and mortar store where you bought your game, 0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:00.800 because again this is back in the late eighties, there's 0:24:00.920 --> 0:24:05.040 not really any other opportunity. But those merchants in turn 0:24:05.200 --> 0:24:08.720 had to spend money to get the stock to sell 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:12.920 in the first place. So they would buy their copies 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:15.199 of the games that they sell to consumers like you 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:18.760 from e A or from a video game distributor. But 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:22.720 let's not get too complicated. E A in turn would 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:26.040 have to share a portion of each of those sales 0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:32.120 two retailers back with Sega. Sega demanded high royalties, so 0:24:32.240 --> 0:24:35.040