Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love all things tech, and it is time
Speaker 1: for a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published
Speaker 1: on May two thousand thirteen. It is part one of
Speaker 1: a two parter and it is called The Electronic Arts Story.
Speaker 1: This is clearly one that I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: do an update for a lot has happened in seven years,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot more to say about e A.
Speaker 1: But we have to have a start somewhere, right, So
Speaker 1: let's go back and listen to the Electronic Arts Story,
Speaker 1: Part one. This particular story is pretty interesting. We're specifically
Speaker 1: talking about Electronic Arts or e A, which a lot
Speaker 1: of people view these days as some sort of megalomaniacal
Speaker 1: corporation on dominating the entire video game industry. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's uh yeah, well, I mean, well we'll get into
Speaker 1: it later on, but but it but it is one
Speaker 1: 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: this UH company that was bent on on having a
Speaker 1: stranglehold on the video game industry. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that that's what he has now or that's goal, that's
Speaker 1: what's goal is, but that's what that's the popular perception
Speaker 1: that is. Well, you know, to be fair, it does
Speaker 1: as twenty five million registered players and is operating out
Speaker 1: of seventy five countries, so it's not doing too shadows company.
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 EA 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 evolution of e A right, right, and
Speaker 1: he had started kind of designing stuff. He was a
Speaker 1: big D and D player from I understand, and and
Speaker 1: was really interested in how all of the math and
Speaker 1: statistics worked. But noticed that a lot of his friends
Speaker 1: were not interested in doing that at all, and so
Speaker 1: 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 time,
Speaker 1: he was starting to get interested in computers. Now in
Speaker 1: the early seventies, this is predating the personal computer. If
Speaker 1: you were interested in computers, it's because you had a
Speaker 1: job that there were computers at your job, or maybe
Speaker 1: you were attending university and they were computers there right
Speaker 1: right in in seventy when he had his first interaction
Speaker 1: ever with a prototype a micro computer. This was over
Speaker 1: at 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 not exactly a
Speaker 1: fully interactive gaming experience. It's more like, if I put
Speaker 1: in every player's stats and then set this to go
Speaker 1: and have it play out as if it were a game,
Speaker 1: what would the results be? And he tested it by
Speaker 1: running a simulation of what was going to be at
Speaker 1: that time, the nineteen seventy four Super Bowl game, and
Speaker 1: it turned out that his his game ended up predicting
Speaker 1: the final score fairly closely. In his game, it said
Speaker 1: that 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 strategy and applied game theory. That's an interesting major
Speaker 1: right there, especially fore right, so 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 nineteen 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 still was still you know, kind of
Speaker 1: in the hobbyist air, rah, but 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 at 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 some of the stuff, some of
Speaker 1: the stuff he says, he says, well, after the time rights,
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 any he needed to feel really old. Right now,
Speaker 1: thank you, La, You're welcome. Um, he he incorporated Electronic
Speaker 1: Arts and And this was not going to This was
Speaker 1: not the original name that he had thought of for
Speaker 1: the company. No, No, he actually originally wanted to call
Speaker 1: it Amazing Software, but that just didn't seem to really click.
Speaker 1: He got a bunch of people together to try and
Speaker 1: uh brainstorm and idea. He had actually used two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of his own money to fund this early part
Speaker 1: of the company, UH, and he they started thinking about
Speaker 1: other possible names. One of the names they came up
Speaker 1: with was soft Art, but the head of another company
Speaker 1: that was called Software Software Arts asked him if he
Speaker 1: would reconsider naming his company that just to avoid any confusion,
Speaker 1: and he agreed to do that. Had another brainstorming session
Speaker 1: and that came up with Electronic Arts. Along with a
Speaker 1: team of other folks and marketing people as well an
Speaker 1: outside marketing company, and Electronic Arts was born. They would
Speaker 1: actually receive by the end of nine two two million
Speaker 1: dollars in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, and Sequoia Capital
Speaker 1: even gave them some office space to work out of
Speaker 1: before they had any sort of physical headquarters, right right,
Speaker 1: very originally, I think he worked out of his own
Speaker 1: home when he was hiring his first couple of people,
Speaker 1: and UH, all of these people that he was hiring
Speaker 1: at the time, and the naming of the company kind
Speaker 1: of came about because he really wanted, um, he really
Speaker 1: believed that computer games are an art form and wanted
Speaker 1: UM wanted the game company to operate kind of like
Speaker 1: a music label. UM. And this is really evident in
Speaker 1: some of their early marketing campaigns and attempts. You know,
Speaker 1: they would get these game developers together and pose them
Speaker 1: like rock stars have, have rock music photographers come in
Speaker 1: and do these gorgeous photographs of them and and really
Speaker 1: concentrate on the software artist. Yeah, even the art they
Speaker 1: would use in their the games they sold, which in
Speaker 1: those days, games didn't come in boxes yet. They were
Speaker 1: in usually plastic bags, and you had some art that
Speaker 1: would be included. But it it looked pretty look like
Speaker 1: a lot of Yeah, it look like a lot of
Speaker 1: these games came out of someone's garage. And here's here's
Speaker 1: a fun fact. A lot of them did. UM but
Speaker 1: uh e A. They took an approach where they really
Speaker 1: put a lot of graphic design work into the art
Speaker 1: that was included with the games. And there were several
Speaker 1: sources I read that likened the the art on the
Speaker 1: games to album you would see on what we used
Speaker 1: to you know, buy music on, which were these giant
Speaker 1: vinyl albums. I actually kids are doing that again now,
Speaker 1: but bund there was a while where I would say
Speaker 1: vinyl album and I just get that blank stare um.
Speaker 1: Those days appeared to have disappeared again for at least
Speaker 1: a while, but I'll see that keeps up. They actually
Speaker 1: moved to the headquarters in San Mateo, California, and they
Speaker 1: were there for quite a few years. Ultimately they ended
Speaker 1: up moving again. But and also you know, e A
Speaker 1: expanded greatly, But we'll get into all of that. So
Speaker 1: they're early early efforts were concentrated on a few titles, uh,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to produce all of their games internally.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be a publisher, a developer, and a distributor.
Speaker 1: So these are all different parts of 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 if you're talking
Speaker 1: about an independent developer and a publisher, the publisher will
Speaker 1: give an advance to the developer, and that advance is
Speaker 1: against any future royalties that the game sells until you
Speaker 1: pay off that advance, and then you usually have some
Speaker 1: sort of royalty sharing program where the publisher gets a
Speaker 1: certain amount of the money from sales and the developer
Speaker 1: gets another you know, a percentage of those sales as well,
Speaker 1: but the advance has to be paid off first because
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: operators who then sell them to the public. So e
Speaker 1: A was all three of these things right. And at
Speaker 1: the time, Hawkins has said that he had done a
Speaker 1: lot of market research and that a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: five of his competitors were doing the same thing um
Speaker 1: which which seems like an awfully large number, although at
Speaker 1: the time we were just on the verge of a
Speaker 1: little bit of a market crash a little bit, a
Speaker 1: little bit as a little bit is understating it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but but but during this boom there were there
Speaker 1: was a lot going on um and And also the
Speaker 1: concept reminds me a lot of Apple's Apple is a
Speaker 1: really terrific example of vertical integration and um and from
Speaker 1: his time at Apple, I feel like probably that's one
Speaker 1: of the places where he picked up this concept. We'll
Speaker 1: be back to talk more about e A in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but first let's take a quick break. The
Speaker 1: first six titles from e A included games called Hard
Speaker 1: Hat mac which was kind of like a Mario clone.
Speaker 1: Um it's or Donkey Kong clone. I really should say
Speaker 1: not Mario, but a Donkey Kong clone. It was a
Speaker 1: platforming game a side not even a side scralling. It
Speaker 1: was you know, it's kind of like Donkey Kong. Then
Speaker 1: you had the pinball construction set. There was a game
Speaker 1: called which you don't let you build pinball systems. Then
Speaker 1: you had arcn which was kind of a weird fantasy
Speaker 1: strategy game that was part chess, part action game. The
Speaker 1: idea being that you have two sides. Uh. Two sides
Speaker 1: have different pieces that are kind of like chess pieces.
Speaker 1: The different pieces have different abilities, and you try to
Speaker 1: take over your opponent's territory. Whenever one of your pieces
Speaker 1: comes in contact with an opponent's piece, you then have
Speaker 1: a little arcade like battle between the two. Right and
Speaker 1: depending upon what your pieces, you might be able to
Speaker 1: really whoop up on your opponent because you're faster or
Speaker 1: your shots do a lot more damage. Uh and and
Speaker 1: so it was all about strategy, like I want to
Speaker 1: make sure this piece goes up against my that piece
Speaker 1: my opponent has, so I can I can win the game.
Speaker 1: You can kind of tell that I played the heck
Speaker 1: out of this game. By the way, I also owned
Speaker 1: the Pinball Construction set and I owned hard Hat Mac.
Speaker 1: Then there was a Mule, which was another strategy game.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who enjoyed this really like things
Speaker 1: like a war gaming where you would have the big
Speaker 1: table with all the hexagons, we move the pieces around.
Speaker 1: Mule was kind of the computer version of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really built for four players, which at the
Speaker 1: time was was kind of unheard of. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: never got into it because my brain does not work
Speaker 1: that way. I can I can do well enough in
Speaker 1: our con because even if my strategy skills aren't that great,
Speaker 1: my 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. Uh,
Speaker 1: you should do it without reading the instructions, just to
Speaker 1: see if you can figure out what the heck is
Speaker 1: going on. Um. And I mean I read a description
Speaker 1: of this, and I'm not sure I would be able
Speaker 1: to figure it out. But maybe it's more intuitive than
Speaker 1: the descriptions would give you. Uh that then the description
Speaker 1: seemed to indicate. And then the last of the six
Speaker 1: titles that they launched with when the company was first
Speaker 1: offering up games was Murder on These zinder Kneuf, which
Speaker 1: 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. So but I
Speaker 1: had most of these games because they came out for
Speaker 1: the Apple too, and we had an Apple too. And
Speaker 1: actually what happened was a local school had purchased a
Speaker 1: bunch of games and then they gave them to me
Speaker 1: to test and tell them which ones were educational and
Speaker 1: which ones were not really educational. So I did, and
Speaker 1: then I returned all the games and they said, all right,
Speaker 1: 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 yeah, so there was
Speaker 1: that was the initial launching title, but there were some
Speaker 1: other ones that came out shortly thereafter. There was The
Speaker 1: Last Gladiator, which is a game I also owned. Um
Speaker 1: that that one didn't come in the batch. I won
Speaker 1: that one as a as a part of a lip
Speaker 1: syncing contest. What pray tell, were you lip sinking? Me
Speaker 1: and my dad did a lip sinking routine to raise
Speaker 1: Stevens the Pirates song, which is all about a pirate
Speaker 1: who wants to sing and dance and wear bright shiny pants.
Speaker 1: Well that's that's a that's awesome. Yeah. We won first place,
Speaker 1: which was a fifty dollar gift certificate to a local
Speaker 1: comics store. And I don't read comic books, so I
Speaker 1: bought all their computer games instead, and one of them
Speaker 1: was The Last Gladiator, And that was a game where
Speaker 1: you play as a little gladiator and all these different
Speaker 1: monsters come out and based upon whatever weapon you have
Speaker 1: at your disposal, you have uh you know, decent chances
Speaker 1: against them. It gets more and more difficult as the
Speaker 1: game goes on. You know, it's kind of a typical
Speaker 1: Arcady experience. Um. They also had they launched a game
Speaker 1: that would end up being sort of the genesis of
Speaker 1: e A sports. Dr J and Larry Bird Go one
Speaker 1: on one. I'm told this is from a sport called
Speaker 1: basketball and so on. That's one with the orange round thing. Correct, Uh,
Speaker 1: I want to say yes, yeah, this this was one
Speaker 1: of the earliest. Uh well, it was the earliest sports
Speaker 1: game from e A and Hawkins really struck on a
Speaker 1: brilliant idea. He had decided to try and approach people
Speaker 1: who were famous in various sports and to license their
Speaker 1: their names to get that media tie in. Yeah right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get a promotional tie in from famous famous athletes,
Speaker 1: I mean Dr J and Larry Bird or especially at
Speaker 1: the world famous and and which is interesting because the
Speaker 1: world famous since they were playing an American sport that
Speaker 1: was almost exclusively played in America. Um. They ended up
Speaker 1: that they ended up paying off big time and 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 distributor sports 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 truck. 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 disc 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 conference 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
Speaker 1: make waves. Yeah, and keep in mind this is all
Speaker 1: in the first year that they're actually offering games. You know,
Speaker 1: they had been a company for a while, but of course,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as they became a company, it
Speaker 1: didn't mean that they had games to offer everybody them. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also had established these ideas that you know, every
Speaker 1: single person who worked on the game was going to
Speaker 1: be credited. If you were the creator of a game,
Speaker 1: your name was front and center on the game's screens.
Speaker 1: It would let you know that this was a game
Speaker 1: developed by so and so. And that was a response
Speaker 1: to a lot of the the activity they were seeing
Speaker 1: on the console market, particularly with Atari. Uh, and that
Speaker 1: there were people who were essentially anonymous game developers who
Speaker 1: had put in hours and hours and hours of time
Speaker 1: to create video games, but there was no sign of
Speaker 1: credit for them on on the actual video games. It
Speaker 1: was just you know, is this is you ex title
Speaker 1: from X company? Sure. Yeah. The word that I've seen
Speaker 1: tossed around in a lot of articles about it is
Speaker 1: is surfs that these people were being treated like surfs
Speaker 1: and and Hawkins was was saying that you know, some
Speaker 1: of these kids that he had met out at Apple
Speaker 1: were were and I quote legitimate divas, and and that
Speaker 1: they deserved better than that. Yeah, and they Let's make
Speaker 1: it clear, e A was not the only company doing this.
Speaker 1: There were other companies that split off from Atari, for example,
Speaker 1: that were founded by developers who wanted to have more
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.
Speaker 1: Now UH in 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 developers. Yeah, this was this was the year that
Speaker 1: the that the video game market really crashed or was
Speaker 1: really feeling all of the effects of the crash. Um.
Speaker 1: And this was due to a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of things, but um, but but mostly you know, Atari
Speaker 1: had been kind of sort of driving the market into
Speaker 1: the ground for a minute. Yeah, yeah, the market was
Speaker 1: completely flooded with games, and and not good games necessarily.
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, that had bad art,
Speaker 1: that were poorly constructed, that were impossible to play. Um.
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, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, yeah, it was it was not
Speaker 1: sustainable at the time without 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 it. Even though a lot of its games
Speaker 1: were being made for specters. I was saying p seas
Speaker 1: but really at this time we weren't really calling the
Speaker 1: PCs yet, but yeah, they were being made for computers.
Speaker 1: It still was affected because uh, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of consumers got jaded on the concept of games in
Speaker 1: the first place. That was, however, the year that they
Speaker 1: published a game called The Seven Cities of Gold, which
Speaker 1: I also owned. Uh yeah, I was. I was known
Speaker 1: for being a terrible, terrible columnists colonialist. I guess I
Speaker 1: should say I would go in and wreak havoc on
Speaker 1: the various Mayan and az tech cultures and plunder them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've heard that it was a very educational game, edutainment
Speaker 1: edutainment toll. Yeah. I want to say that I bought
Speaker 1: that one, and that one was not part of the package,
Speaker 1: because if it were part of the package. Then obviously
Speaker 1: I fipped about it being educational. Um. And then e
Speaker 1: A began to switch its strategy at this point, when
Speaker 1: the video game market had crashed, and instead of marketing
Speaker 1: games as being from specific creators the way they had
Speaker 1: been where they had made these developers rock stars, uh,
Speaker 1: they were instead going to look at creating actual brands
Speaker 1: and genres. So instead of saying from the mind of
Speaker 1: so and so, they said, why don't we find a
Speaker 1: game that really resonates with people and then just continue
Speaker 1: to create games within that brand title or more even
Speaker 1: just within that type of gameplay. Uh. This would actually
Speaker 1: end up being something that people would criticize e A
Speaker 1: four years later to the point where they well, they've
Speaker 1: they've taken it to something of an extreme, but we'll
Speaker 1: get into that. Yeah, Like yes, and they also decided
Speaker 1: to start making games for lots of different platforms. So
Speaker 1: besides the Apple two, they started looking at the Macintosh,
Speaker 1: which was brand new in uh, the Amiga, the Commodore
Speaker 1: sixty four IBM compatibles, which were just starting to take
Speaker 1: off right around then. Uh, the Atari eight hundred, and
Speaker 1: the Attari st We've got a bit more to say
Speaker 1: about electronic arts. But first, let's take another quick break.
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: e A starts releasing a bunch of games, including some
Speaker 1: 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 song
Speaker 1: and everyone's starting to feel kind of chill and they
Speaker 1: 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 Guy's 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. Well. The other
Speaker 1: the alternative title for the Bard's Tale was Tales of
Speaker 1: the Unknown Volume one when it was a fantasy RBG
Speaker 1: and you. There was something really creative about the Bard's
Speaker 1: Tale series, which was that you could import players from
Speaker 1: other games all right on certain platforms app Apple two
Speaker 1: is one of them. Yeah, um yeah, you can. You
Speaker 1: can pull in things from from Ultima, which was from
Speaker 1: Origin Systems that was not part of Electronic Arts at
Speaker 1: that time, or from the aforementioned Wizardry, which was from Curtech,
Speaker 1: also not part of e A. So these are games
Speaker 1: made by other companies and allowed interoperability in the sense
Speaker 1: that you could pull like if you had play this
Speaker 1: other game and you had these characters that you had
Speaker 1: developed some sort of emotional attachment to and you had
Speaker 1: really invested in this game, you could then pull those
Speaker 1: characters into The Bard's Tale and use them again in
Speaker 1: a totally different game, which was kind of an awesome idea.
Speaker 1: I will say that from my own personal experience from
Speaker 1: playing Wizardry and then pulling characters in from Wizardry into
Speaker 1: The Bard's Tale. They ended up being a tad overpowered,
Speaker 1: like to the point where the whole first section of
Speaker 1: the game was pointless to play because you just would
Speaker 1: you know blast, Yeah, essentially like if I were to
Speaker 1: encounter a moth and you were to give me a sledgehammer. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know. That's kind of the way it felt. But
Speaker 1: it was still a really cool game mechanic. Now. In
Speaker 1: six and in they would release sequels to the Bard's Tales.
Speaker 1: You get bards Tale two and Bard's Tale three. I
Speaker 1: remember Bard's Tale three in particular, that was the one
Speaker 1: I played the most. And into thousand four we saw
Speaker 1: the release of The Bard's Tale. But this is a
Speaker 1: game that was not released by e A, nor was
Speaker 1: it connected directly to the Bard's Tale games. But it
Speaker 1: was created by someone who had worked on the first two.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, that one of the people who helped
Speaker 1: develop the maps in the first two Bards Tale games
Speaker 1: was the developer behind The Bard's Tale the two thousand
Speaker 1: four games. So I remember being excited when that game
Speaker 1: came out because I thought, oh, they're relaunching this this
Speaker 1: franchise that I loved as a kid. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: more just the name. I was still a fantasy RPG,
Speaker 1: and you played a character who was very snarky thief.
Speaker 1: Bard character voiced by Carrie El was. Oh man, well
Speaker 1: that sounds that sounds worth playing just for just for that.
Speaker 1: It was. It was entertaining first five minutes. You had
Speaker 1: a narrator and you had Carrie Ell was this character,
Speaker 1: and they would bicker as you played. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of fun. But it again didn't relate back to
Speaker 1: the Bard's Tale Games of My youth, So I was tricked.
Speaker 1: They're tricks. E UH was also an e A released
Speaker 1: their first productivity application, which was called Deluxe Paint. It's
Speaker 1: a program for the Commodore Amiga, which was known as
Speaker 1: a machine that was particularly powerful when it came to
Speaker 1: graphics and sound. When you compared it against the other computers,
Speaker 1: the Amiga blew them away. As far as that well,
Speaker 1: I mean I had a friend who had Amiga, and
Speaker 1: I remember just being completely flabbergasted that a computer could
Speaker 1: do what his Amiga could do as far as graphics
Speaker 1: and sound. We're concerned because when you compared it to
Speaker 1: my Apple two or my two eighties six, it just
Speaker 1: it outperformed him hands down in that So it was
Speaker 1: a great game platform. But this was a painting platform
Speaker 1: or a painting application, I should say, And it was
Speaker 1: based off of an in house art development tool that
Speaker 1: that e A had been using that they called Prism.
Speaker 1: So they essentially took this in health 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 mentioned 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. But but in this case,
Speaker 1: we're we're just kind of skimming through some of the
Speaker 1: big ones and not hitting every single one. Son was
Speaker 1: when e A set up a European division to market
Speaker 1: PC games. Now, at this point it was just to
Speaker 1: kind of be a marketing firm, not a development house,
Speaker 1: but uh, they saw a lot of opportunity to expand
Speaker 1: into Europe. The problem with Europe was that it was
Speaker 1: being very it was very slow to adopt consoles. It
Speaker 1: was this is true later on when we started getting
Speaker 1: into the advanced consoles, to the ones like are the
Speaker 1: current generation PlayStation forward Europe. It's not that Europe was
Speaker 1: not interested in it's just it was slower to adopt
Speaker 1: it than other markets. So e A was trying to
Speaker 1: really invest in what they saw as being a huge opportunity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so that's that was the beginning of that. And
Speaker 1: in A released waste Land, which was a post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: role playing game that's pretty you know, innovative. There were
Speaker 1: some other post apocalyptic RPG type stuff that was out
Speaker 1: for computers. Some of them were just text based games,
Speaker 1: not even graphics games. But but yeah, wait, Wasteland is
Speaker 1: one that that I I still we are still not
Speaker 1: in the era of me playing video games that are
Speaker 1: not um maybe super Mario Brothers. But but but I
Speaker 1: but I A lot of my friends speak with speak
Speaker 1: of it with a lot of nostalgia. See. The reason
Speaker 1: why I know so many of these e A titles
Speaker 1: is because I followed the same kind of pathway that
Speaker 1: e A did, and that I abandoned consoles shortly after
Speaker 1: the Atari era and moved on to PCs because I
Speaker 1: saw it as being a platform that would allow for
Speaker 1: more sophisticated types of games. And that's something that Hawkins
Speaker 1: and self headset as well. It's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why e A in its early days focused on computers
Speaker 1: not on consoles. There were other reasons as well, like
Speaker 1: if you want to build a console or a game
Speaker 1: for a console, it gets pretty expensive from a production standpoint,
Speaker 1: because you have to manufacture the cartridges, you have to
Speaker 1: build the ROMs directly onto chips, you have to build
Speaker 1: the cases, all this kind of stuff. Um, and so
Speaker 1: there were higher costs associated with producing a video game
Speaker 1: cartridge than a computer disk. So, uh, they had their
Speaker 1: own reasons for really focusing on computers versus consoles. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the console market didn't really recover until until the ny
Speaker 1: S came out, Tony, Yeah, yeah, right around the round
Speaker 1: eighty eight, that's when e A started to reevaluate this
Speaker 1: position of focusing on PC only instead of or computers only,
Speaker 1: since PC we tend to think of as anything that
Speaker 1: runs DOS or Windows. But anyway, at that that time,
Speaker 1: that's when e A was starting to really look at
Speaker 1: the NES and say, well, maybe there's a reason to
Speaker 1: get into this now. Entering into any kind of agreement
Speaker 1: with Nintendo was something that Hawkins was a bit reluctant
Speaker 1: to do because Nintendo had very strict licensing agreements and
Speaker 1: standards that you had to meet. Because Nintendo did not
Speaker 1: want another video game crash. They absolutely they're being very
Speaker 1: careful about what they published exactly. They did not want
Speaker 1: the market flooded with bad games. Not to say that
Speaker 1: 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 any S IS they loved
Speaker 1: that game. I did not have an any S so
Speaker 1: I was largely ignorant of it. I was still playing
Speaker 1: the computer games at that time. UH. And instead of
Speaker 1: just publishing the game directly and distributing it, they actually
Speaker 1: licensed it out to Konami. UH. And then Hawkins said
Speaker 1: that the console market was still just unproven, that that
Speaker 1: the crash from before was so devastating that you could
Speaker 1: not be certain it wouldn't happen again, and also again
Speaker 1: said that consoles were kind of underpowered when you compared
Speaker 1: them to computers. UM. Now. They would later really revisit this,
Speaker 1: especially once the Sega Genesis came out UH and and
Speaker 1: their their tune changes dramatically, but at that time they
Speaker 1: were really saying computers are really that's that's our main focus.
Speaker 1: Consoles or something we might do as a side project. Sure,
Speaker 1: so they released a game that became one of the
Speaker 1: most important franchises in the company's history, and I am
Speaker 1: of was talking about John Madden Football. UH. Hawkins has
Speaker 1: a lot of There are a lot of interviews with
Speaker 1: Hawkins where he talks about his fond memories of developing
Speaker 1: that game, about bringing John Madden into the experience and
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, we would show him how we
Speaker 1: were doing things, and then he would spend the next
Speaker 1: twenty minutes yelling at us about how we got it wrong.
Speaker 1: And but it was always in an effort to make
Speaker 1: sure the game was as good as it possibly could be.
Speaker 1: So while Madden's approach was what some people might call
Speaker 1: aggressive and meant that they were working on making a
Speaker 1: really good football game, or at least that was there.
Speaker 1: That was the goal, and it did become one of
Speaker 1: the most successful franchises his history. Yeah, as their twenty
Speaker 1: four games out and it's sold million units. Now we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about some controversy with Madden Football, but that
Speaker 1: really plays in a few years down the line. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nine, they began to develop games for the Sega
Speaker 1: Genesis console, and this is when they started to really
Speaker 1: rethink that approach and say, all right, maybe consoles are
Speaker 1: actually important enough for us to consider it being a
Speaker 1: main line of business, not just some little side business
Speaker 1: where we can make a little extra money. There might
Speaker 1: be some serious cash in this business. Hawkins has said
Speaker 1: that that this deal that he made with with Sega
Speaker 1: was kind of a crowning moment and has has said
Speaker 1: that he had been um kind of stealthily reverse engineering
Speaker 1: the sixty bit Seco Genesis for a couple of years
Speaker 1: and that when Sega found out about this, um, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's it could have gone one of two ways.
Speaker 1: Either Sega could have sued him a whole lot, or
Speaker 1: they could have created this this kind of awesome contract
Speaker 1: for for creating games, and and it went. Hawkins has
Speaker 1: said that, yes, that this is one of his big
Speaker 1: wins in life. He essentially said that that he negotiated
Speaker 1: an incredibly favorable deal for Electronic Arts. This was something
Speaker 1: he could not do in Nintendo because Nintendo held so
Speaker 1: much of the power in that relationship. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to big business, guys, you know whoever
Speaker 1: holds the power that that becomes an important part of
Speaker 1: of any deal. And it was certainly something that Hawkins
Speaker 1: was very concerned about. Even if you think back to
Speaker 1: the days of him saying, you know, I want this
Speaker 1: company to be about video games and art, you can
Speaker 1: tell there's still a cutthroat businessman lurking underneath that artist
Speaker 1: exterior there and um, and so yeah, this was a
Speaker 1: great example of that. And uh, in the fall of nine,
Speaker 1: that's when Electronic Arts held its initial public offering, the
Speaker 1: I p oh, That's when it became a publicly traded company.
Speaker 1: And uh, Hawkins decided, in order to really justify going
Speaker 1: public and to to get investors excited and invested in
Speaker 1: the company and to really increase the value of the company,
Speaker 1: to initiate a policy where every single month he expected
Speaker 1: there to be three new games entering into the development process,
Speaker 1: not not completed, but entered into So you know that
Speaker 1: that would mean that as time goes on, you have
Speaker 1: more and more overlapping games until some come out for
Speaker 1: publication while others are entering the development process. It Uh,
Speaker 1: it's set a pretty tough standard. But and also they
Speaker 1: were handling games from other developers at this point too,
Speaker 1: so that this didn't even include those games right right,
Speaker 1: And the company at the time it's worth about sixty million,
Speaker 1: yeah and uh, and of course the the value of
Speaker 1: the company now is in the billions. But will again
Speaker 1: address that when we get further up into the timeline.
Speaker 1: And in ninety one, that is a momentous year for
Speaker 1: both Hawkins and for e A. That's when Trip Hawkins
Speaker 1: decided to leave e A. He had felt that he
Speaker 1: had accomplished all he wanted with the company and that
Speaker 1: it was time for him to move on to something
Speaker 1: new and challenging. And that new and challenging thing ended
Speaker 1: up being three d O, which was you know, the
Speaker 1: whole idea was he was going to create a video
Speaker 1: game console that would lead the market. It would be
Speaker 1: the most powerful, uh console, and it actually it was
Speaker 1: predictive of the consoles that we see today. It was
Speaker 1: meant to be sort of an entertainment center, not just
Speaker 1: a video game console, but it was really expensive. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also the games that first came out for the
Speaker 1: three D O didn't get a lot of critical acclaim
Speaker 1: and a lot of them relied heavily on full motion video.
Speaker 1: That was when full motion video was just becoming possible
Speaker 1: in the computer and console worlds. So people were using
Speaker 1: it a lot, to the point where it became a gimmick.
Speaker 1: You know, you thought that, oh, this game is good
Speaker 1: because as full motion video in it. Then and you know,
Speaker 1: full motion video, like any other tool, is just a tool.
Speaker 1: It's just a tool. Yeah, if you're if you're using
Speaker 1: three D for example, these days, it's just just a gimmick.
Speaker 1: It's just a gimmick. Yeah, exactly, so, and that was
Speaker 1: the that was the ultimate problem with three D O,
Speaker 1: which spoiler alert, did not take off. It actually it. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back at e A, Larry Probst steps in. He becomes
Speaker 1: the CEO of e A, uh and uh. Nintendo that
Speaker 1: same year ninety one launched the Super Nintendo Entertainment System,
Speaker 1: the S and E s or Ness, if you insist
Speaker 1: on pronouncing it that way. And then e A began
Speaker 1: to develop games both for the Genesis and for Nintendo
Speaker 1: and in an effort to really kind of hit as
Speaker 1: many fans as possible. They also said they prefer there
Speaker 1: to be lots of different consoles competing in the market
Speaker 1: because that means there's not one dominant player that can
Speaker 1: use the leverage against them. You know, when there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different players out there, then e A
Speaker 1: has the advantage, which has been an important part of
Speaker 1: the company's Yeah, it's it's really clever business business standpoint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's another one of those things that some people get
Speaker 1: a little I think people want games to be fun
Speaker 1: and they don't want to think about the business end
Speaker 1: of it because the business end is not necessarily fun.
Speaker 1: It can be pretty pretty, pretty grand. Yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that that was that was starting to take off right
Speaker 1: in ninety one, and that was when e A made
Speaker 1: its first real acquisition, which was Distinctive Software, So they
Speaker 1: bought an outside development studio. The idea was to kind
Speaker 1: of they saw talent out there that they wanted to get,
Speaker 1: and instead of trying to hire the talent away, they thought, well,
Speaker 1: we're a larger company. Now, we're publicly traded, we're highly valued.
Speaker 1: Let's use this opportunity to purchase this other company and
Speaker 1: make it part of what we do. And Distinctive Software
Speaker 1: was the company that had created the test Drive series
Speaker 1: for Accolade, which of course was a competing company to
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts. And so this same division ended up creating
Speaker 1: a new line of games for Electronic Arts called Need
Speaker 1: for Speed. You know, you may have played those games. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then eventually Distinctive Studios was renamed e A Canada
Speaker 1: and it's it's because it was located at an British
Speaker 1: Columbia that's correct, over in Vancouver. And uh. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was also the year that the e A established a
Speaker 1: Sports as a division. Yeah, so now we finally have
Speaker 1: an actual formal division within Electronic Arts that is overseeing
Speaker 1: the development of sports titles. And a lot of big
Speaker 1: sports titles came out of that division, Madden Football, FIFA
Speaker 1: games that were related to hockey to basketball, um, and
Speaker 1: of course that will become more important as well. That
Speaker 1: wraps up a classic episode the Electronic Arts Story Part one.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to find out what happens in part two,
Speaker 1: even though it happened more than seven years ago now,
Speaker 1: But we're gonna go and check that out next week.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for topics I should cover
Speaker 1: on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle at both of those is tech Stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I heart Rate Deo production. For more
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