Trip Hawkins: Founding Electronic Arts

Throughout this week, we're publishing an extended interview with Trip Hawkins, founder of EA, The 3DO Company and Digital Chocolate, and a former colleague of the late Steve Jobs at Apple. He's already shared the formative experiences that led him to a career in games, and discussed his time at Apple and relationship with its late talisman. Today, he recalls the setting up of Electronic Arts in 1982.

When did you leave Apple to start EA?
On January 1, 1982, after four years at Apple, I resigned. I went off and I met with Don Valentine [a famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist], and he offered me office space. Then Apple basically convinced me to stay on. I'd been there for four years, and been very well treated, worked very closely with the founders, and felt loyal and obligated to stay if they were trying to lure me to stay. But after a few months, I just couldn't do it, so I resigned again.

I'd been working on Electronic Arts for literally a decade up to that point. I'd already met with Valentine and had been offered office space. I then called him back and accepted the offer. I worked out of my home office for a few months, and I incorporated the company in May [as Amazin' Software]. The name of the company was later changed, but it's the same company.

What were your favorite computer games before you started EA?
On minicomputers in college, I loved the original adventure game, Colossal Cave, and my own games, including my football simulation of the 1973 Super Bowl. In the beginning of arcade games, I loved Pong like we all did, and I was also partial to Asteroids, Battlezone and Space Invaders. Among the earliest home computer video games, I loved Choplifter and Cartels And Cutthroats. I liked games that had a good storyline and fantasy while also having real simulation elements that made it relevant and immersive.

I worked out a couple of the really foundational principles for EA while working at Apple. One of which was, I had the understanding that, in the very early days, game developers were basically making a game for the Apple II with the Apple II.  I realised that, wow, that's not really the way it works in any other profession.  Professionals generally have more powerful tools than the equipment that the consumer has. And the Apple II is not really all that powerful.

At the time, we were already working with 16bit processors at Apple. They were not yet affordable for consumers. Around the same time, Sun got started, and they began selling 16‑bit development workstations. There was definitely an awareness that there should be a technology angle to provide better tools.

The other principle that I came into a very clear understanding about while at Apple was distribution. When I started at Apple, they had regional distributors and sold the computers to them, and each of those distributors sold them to retailers in their region.

After a while it became very unmanageable. Apple didn't really get a chance to influence and control what was happening at the retail point of sale where the brand connected with the public. So we went through a very painful transition where we basically terminated the distributors and started going direct to our dealer base, which by then was a couple of thousand retailers. It was very, very painful making that switch. The takeaway from that was that you should go direct from the very beginning to avoid the painful transition that Apple went through.

I had already started one company to make the board game, and I thought, "I don't really want to start my company until I feel like I have a really big idea to anchor it around that really gives it a distinctive personality and strategy."

Early print adverts for EA pictured its stable of software artists in the cool repose of rockstars

What was your big idea?
By 1980, there started to be software applications [for the Apple II] because, at Apple, we had released a floppy disk drive in 1979. Once the floppy drive came out, it was possible for developers to program something in assembly code or BASIC, store it on floppy disks, and then press copies of the floppy disks and sell them. SSI [Strategic Simulations, Inc], for example, was one of the first companies, in 1980, to release a game for the Apple II. Broderbund was another one.

Of course, as this was going on, I was kind of wistful about it, because my timetable had been to wait until 1982, and here were these guys already doing it. I had joined the board of SSI to enjoy the ride and get some experience and help them, but I was still trying to say, "What's my big idea?"

It came to me in the 1981 timeframe, when I was working with the really incredibly talented software developers that we had at Apple. I realised that they were extremely creative divas that were pretty much, personality wise, like rock and roll stars, and that they needed to be treated like artists and managed that way.

Then I realised, "Well, hey. I can create the first technology company, the first engineering company, the first software company, that really operates like an entertainment company, and copies all the principles of Hollywood."

My primary reference was the music industry because we had a lot of solo artists, basically - individual developers that did the whole thing. As soon as I got this core idea, I realised, "OK, what we can do is we can put the games inside something that feels like a record album. We can promote the name of the artist and have liner notes, and have a picture of the artist, and call them artists."

I realised we were going to have a department that functions like what the record industry calls Artists and Repertoire, that has producers in it. I introduced the term 'producer'. We were going to have directors that were going to help them from a technical standpoint. Then we're going to build tools that will basically give these guys the equivalent of a recording studio, to give them an advantage over a guy that just has a tape recorder and a guitar. It was really clear that it was going to be a distinctive and revolutionary way to promote developers, support them, and basically present games to the public as an art form.

Did Activision inspire you to treat designers like artists?  They were crediting their designers too.
Activision had employees making their games. What they did is they put the name and a little headshot of their employee developer on the box. They used a conventional box. What I did was use a record album format, and I had the artist's name on the front.  Not just on the back as a footnote, but the artist's name was on the front.  Then there was a whole lot of information about the artist in the packaging, as if it was a really cool rock and roll album.  Activision was the first to give credit, but I was definitely the first to promote them like artists.

It seems like you set out to raise the profile and respectability of the computer game as an entertainment medium.  Was that one of your goals?
Absolutely.  I always wanted to make games a mainstream form of entertainment and art that everyone on earth would enjoy and take seriously.  We're getting there.

Every day this week, we'll be telling more of the Trip Hawkins story. Check back tomorrow to learn how the choices of which "artists" and games to work with set Electronic Arts' on its distinctive path.