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Games Entertainment

The History of Electronic Arts 65

Posted by Zonk from the 80s-action-game-dev dept.
Gamasutra is running an extensive article today on the long history of Electronic Arts. Starting all the way back with the days of Trip Hawkins, they move through the days of Madden, Nintendo, small studio purchases and, of course, the Sims. There's also an a whole series of images associated with the article, letting you look back and chuckle about the cover art of games from the past. The article concludes: "Art and commerce have always been uneasy bedfellows, and nowhere is that tension more evident than in the world of video games. Perhaps after looking at the history of Electronic Arts we may have some insight into that hot point of ignition where business and inspiration combine to create cutting edge games. As Trip Hawkins explained, 'Entrepreneurship is a creative art form. Like other creative people, we do it because we have to do it. We have no choice but to express ourselves in this way. But of course like all artists we are optimists, so we believe good things will come ... It is not about making money, it is about making a difference.'"
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The History of Electronic Arts More

The History of Electronic Arts

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  • Wow (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Samalie ( 1016193 ) on Friday February 16, 2007 @06:34PM (#18045372)
    It is not about making money, it is about making a difference.

    So says the company that charges me $60 a year so I can keep my Madden rosters up to date...and not much else.

    yeah, EA is a very successful company. But in terms of true originality? They've sucked for years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 )
      and makes there workers work 80+ hours and only pays them for 40

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by MDiehr ( 1065156 )
        I hate seeing this posted in every article about EA. It hasn't been true for at least a few months now, since the entry level Software Engineer positions were reclassified to be overtime-eligible instead of exempt.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Fulminata ( 999320 )
          I'd say that after years of abuse, they should have to show more than a "few months" of good behavior before people stop bringing it up.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ucklak ( 755284 )
          Hasn't it been years now?

          EA today isn't the EA of 5 years ago.

          Sony today isn't the Sony of 2 years ago.

          Micosoft today isn't the Microsoft of 5 years ago. Oh wait, yes they are.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by MDiehr ( 1065156 )
            It has, but the employee reclassification (at Tiburon, where I work) happened near the end of last year. So while the employee treatment may have changed much earlier, the overtime pay is a more recent thing.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Ucklak ( 755284 )
              I wasn't aware of that.

              My spouse is studying for a payroll class for CPP certification.
              Microsoft is a case study for something they did in 1996.

              IIRC, they classified foreign contract workers as full time employees to the feds and paid contractor wages. The end result was massive fines to Microsoft and they had to retroactivley offer stock options and benefits to those employees.
        • Yeah know when I read "there workers work 80+ hours and only pays them for 40" I see two problems.

          One that the employees aren't being paid for the time they work. This one they have been working on for a few months apparently. We see people on here defending it all the time, but there are just as many if not more people who say they are still just doing it under the radar.

          Then there is the second problem of making their employees work 80+ hours in the first place. This is a problem that I haven't seen EA ma

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You can't have it both ways. Either EA is overworking everyone to cram in new stuff or they're "just updating the rosters". I suspect the people making the latter claim haven't played Madden since the Genesis though.

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Friday February 16, 2007 @06:46PM (#18045508)
      > EA is a very successful company.
      Agreed. A very (financial) successful company, but there are MANY types of successes that corporate North America seems blind to, as you point out in your next point.

      Its not an accident that everyone complains about EA's "gut & dump" strategy -- how many independent studios have they totally gutted now?

      > But in terms of true originality? They've sucked for years.

      Completely agree. EA's probably the biggest player to blame for sequel-itis! Milk a franchise bone dry, while screwing as many suckers ^H^H^H customers as possible.

      I found it very interesting how in the beginning the _game designer_ was actually promoted with his name on the cover! We've come such a long ways downhill, where publishers don't realize its the game designer, and game dev studios that make great games, and only care about their own pathetic branding.

      Maybe one of these days the industry will grow up -- and put an end to these spiraling out of control dev costs.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

        I found it very interesting how in the beginning the _game designer_ was actually promoted with his name on the cover! We've come such a long ways downhill, where publishers don't realize its the game designer, and game dev studios that make great games

        No, what's happened is that the publishers have realized that the public doesn't care who the designer is. Which is actually a good thing - because the Will Wright and Sid Meir are virtually unique. It's a rare designer who has more than one or two great g

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by joystickgenie ( 913297 )
          How is that different the other industries? Most musicians only have 1 or two good albums in them as well that doesn't stop the music industry from saying who made the music. You don't buy sony/bmg Gfunk 2000, you buy Outcast -Stankonia. To a lesser extent the movie industry awards the people who make good movies behind the scenes as well. I guarantee you can name more directors then you can name game designers

          The game industry is just like the music and movie industry. They all have high washout rates; how

          • It's just not in publishers best interest to let the developers become known. Once people get their names known then they can't treat them like crap anymore. For fear of if the designer jumping ship the public will follow the name over the brand.

            Well, there's nothing stopping EA (or any other software house) from drafting the same kind of contract for a game designer than a musician.

            The other thing - as far as a music CD goes, you have a lot less people involved than a game (or a movie). A producer, and

          • > It's just not in publishers best interest to let the developers become known.

            Yeap, that's the _root_ of the problem! Publishers are a) afraid, and b) control freaks.
    • So says the company that charges me $60 a year so I can keep my Madden rosters up to date...and not much else.

      Sports fans are obsessed with details. The rosters. The stats. The rules. The stadiums. The uniforms. They are on their own terms a very demanding but also a very profitable market to serve.

  • That all the conference rooms in EA has glass walls because one of the managers got caught playing doctor with his secretary? (This was, of course, long before the Sims came around.)

  • Is this rumor true? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have heard that EA initially thought the Sims was going to be a big failure and tried to kill it six times during its development. Can anyone confirm?

    Ah, hard hat mack. The memories...

    • Maxis not EA (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From a recent article on Wright by John Seabrook:

      "When Wright took his idea to the Maxis board of directors, Jeff Braun says, "The board looked at The Sims and said, 'What is this? He wants to do an interactive doll house? The guy is out of his mind.' " Doll houses were for girls, and girls didn't play video games. Maxis gave little support or financing for the game. Electronic Arts, which bought Maxis in 1997, was more enthusiastic. (Wright received seventeen million dollars in E.A. stock for his share

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TwoBit ( 515585 )
        It is untrue that Maxis gave little support or financing for the game. It had as many developers on it as any game done at the time and was given much more time to be done than any other game by Maxis. The Sims was 90% done by the time EA bought Maxis, and EA wasn't terribly enthusiastic about it. The fact that EA moved The Sims to a back room at E3 that year ought to vouch for that. I don't blame anybody for being uncertain about The Sims; it's an unusual game.

        I know this because I was there; I wrote a dec

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Skater ( 41976 )
      Hard Hat Mack, Music Construction Set, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer... so many hours killed with those!

  • We see farther (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) * <bittercode@gmail> on Friday February 16, 2007 @06:42PM (#18045456) Homepage Journal
    I had the "We See Farther" poster up in my room when I was a teenager. I wonder if there are still copies of that around. I would write programs on my Vic-20 and dream about being a cool developer. What a flood of memories this article brings back.
    • I just looked it up, and it seems as if it should be "we see further." Anyone else got an opinion on this?
      • i'm not sure why they did it that way, and it's been so long, i had to double check that it was really farther. to me though, the real humor is that i thought it was really cool. of course i though parachute pants were pretty awesome at that time as well.
  • "But of course like all artists we are optimists, so we believe good things will come ... It is not about making money, it is about making a difference."

    Yes, that's why several pessimistic overworked artists sued EA - to make a difference.
  • The part of this article I found interesting was the rationale behind publishing for every platform, thereby keeping one company from coming too strongly to the fore and charging exorbinant license fees.

  • Trip Hawkins's Electronic Arts != 2007 EA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MiceHead ( 723398 ) * on Friday February 16, 2007 @06:57PM (#18045648) Homepage
    I always think of EA in its mid '80s form, back when their logo [gamasutra.com] was also their loading screen. (I could swear I read somewhere that the circle was a softball that got lodged in the typesetting, but maybe that's my imagination.) I suppose the point of the Gamasutra article is, in part, that during that period, EA put its designers out there, front and center [gamasutra.com], whereas nowadays, they're more an amalgam of smaller studios.

    One thing that always stuck with me was how, upon seeing the cover for Pinball Construction Set [wikipedia.org], everyone would assume that the game was called "Bill Budge." Even Sid Meier [wikipedia.org] didn't get that big a billing!
    ____________________________
    Indie Superstar [indiesuperstar.com] - Our video webcast about the latest indie games.
    Galaxy Rage [galaxyrage.com] - Our upcoming first-person rock opera. Hooray!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 )
      Because of that damn logo I'll always think of Electronic Arts as EOA. Doing crap like that confuses the hell out of an inquisitive 9 year old. And BTW, it wasn't your imagination. [wikipedia.org]

  • EOA was a good company... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dudeX ( 78272 ) on Friday February 16, 2007 @07:03PM (#18045712)
    before they became EA.

    In the 80's, Electronic Arts published or made good games like Populous, One on One, Wasteland (one of my favorites still) and other titles. Then they began to buy up companies like Origin Systems and other companies (Westwood, etc) and those companeis that got bought, began to decline. OSI for example, floundered with Ultima 8, and Ultima 9 turned out to be a big stinker. Westwood Studios turned out crap like Command and Conquer 2 under EA, and Generals was devoid of content.
    Their sports franchise while quite decent on consoles, was shitty on PCs, and their yearly refreshes didn't bring that many changes.

    Electronic Arts today is now comparable to Microsoft. They release potentially good games with a lot of bugs, and they have a stifling effect on competitors they buy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by __aajqwr7439 ( 239321 )
      good games like Populous, One on One, Wasteland...

      And Archon! Can't forget Archon...

      Tho looking back, the graphics aren't quite as awesome [vintagecomputing.com] as I remember...

      DN
      • Tho looking back, the graphics aren't quite as awesome as I remember...

        Perhaps you were thinking of [consoleclassix.com] the NES version? [consoleclassix.com] Or the C64 version? [wikimedia.org]

        Not great, but still better than the screenshot you found.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 )
        And Archon! Can't forget Archon...


        Starflight.... god I spent so many hours playing that game. And Sentinel Worlds - Future Magic. These were GOOD games. If only today's designers would take note.

              I agree that EA started to suck when they decided to start buying up the competition instead of looking for fresh content. And I will never forgive them for what they did to Kesmai.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by obarel ( 670863 )
        "Summon Elemental"

        Classic.

      • Starflight, my god yes. Looking for interplanetary mineral deposits.. Yep that was fun to me as a kid and I'm not even into NASA. I'm gonna fire that damn game up right now as a matter of fact. And what about Road Rash? Why did they have to kill that franchise? It was great all the way up to the 3D0/PC. Road Rash was an original EA title, no license there. And they fucked it up.
      • And M.U.L.E. And Yeager Flight Sim. And...

        Holy crap, they used to be such a great game company...

        Chris Mattern

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Perseid ( 660451 )
      MULE. Must not forget MULE. Back in those days that funky EOA logo almost guaranteed you a good game. Now it almost guarantees you a competent yet dull game. I mean, does anyone really care about Madden anymore or is buying it just a ritual some gamers go through every year?

  • franchise whore (Score:3, Funny)

    by Floritard ( 1058660 ) on Saturday February 17, 2007 @12:01AM (#18047814)
    Look for "The History of EA '08" following the success of this artical.
  • What the hell? How do they do a history and skip this?!?!
  • Hawkins should know better than to spin such a ridiculous platitude. The public isn't stupid. I sincerely doubt that he used that line when he was talking to venture capitalists to raise money for EA, 3DO, and Digital Chocolate.

    There's nothing intrinsically evil about making money; it all depends on how you make it. EA does it by being honest and ruthless, by taking advantage of every opportunity and every bit of leverage they can muster, and bargaining incredibly hard. A lot of naive early game developer

  • As far as I remember, MULE was my first intro to EA. And I've been waiting for a sequel for oh... about 25 years...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by EWAdams ( 953502 )
      They tried, but the work was ongoing about the time of Dan Bunten's gender reassignment, and the personal upheavals in her life at the time prevented it from being completed.

      Now that she's dead, I don't think we'll see another one.
    • "As far as I remember, MULE was my first intro to EA. And I've been waiting for a sequel for oh... about 25 years..." Which is actually pretty amazing considering this is EA we are talking about.
  • The sad thing is that EA is a company that started out with a commitment toward innovation in game design and games as an art form (Look at that initial lineup of games!) and has turned into a company whose continued existence is largely based on churning out annual sequels to sports titles. There was a time when the name of Electronic Arts on the package was a strong incentive for me to buy, whereas today it is a negative.
  • I note that the article repeats the conventional just-so-story blaming Atari for the crash of '83

    The stink lingering over the video game industry was so bad that it spread to personal computers as well.

    Is this even remotely plausible? Most of the people that I knew back then who played PC games would not have been caught dead playing a game on the Atari 2600, with its blocky graphics, so how could the failure of the 2600 have "spread" to them. Even the coin arcades suffered, and this was a time of great cr

  • Anyone see that one small mention of the game, Majestic failing? I remember that. In 2001, fall, there was a beta out for an EA based Battletech game. It was really fun, they had all the cool mechs in it, and the only annoying part in the game was how hit registration was handled. Anyways, Long story short at some point EA said, "Ok... our choices are This cool battletech game, or Majestic...uh...we're going for magestic." and closed the beta on one of the coolest mech games I've played. A month or so late
  • 1. Find a game people like 2. Make a new version of game every year with little to no change from previous year ... 3. Profit
  • I remember playing NHL 98 at a friends house back in the last millennium, and I remember it being pretty fun too but me not being very interested in hockey I never thought much of it after that. Or at least not until my friend and I once more sat down for a nights worth of competing on the ice a few years later, now with a new version of EA's NHL, soon after realizing we'd be better off in the 98 version instead. Which was really the end of my relationship with EA published games, I had liked wasteland, eve

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