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by harold goldberg as game break continues its look at the history of electronic arts through the eyes of founder trip hawkins, i talked with the thoughtful, loquacious personality about the one game that really made electronic arts a huge...
by harold goldberg
as game break continues its look at the history of electronic arts through the eyes of founder trip hawkins, i talked with the thoughtful, loquacious personality about the one game that really made electronic arts a huge deal: madden football. some of the story has been told before in a way that?s been more outlined than truly detailed. this time, hawkins tells everything about the way madden football, known inside ea as trip?s folly before it was released, was made. (note: read the interview carefully and you?ll really get to know john madden in a way you haven?t before.)
hg: can you tell me about your theory about making sports games?
th: electronic arts ended up controlling the value chain of sports games in the video game business. that brand value was built right under the noses of preexisting sports brands like cbs sports, espn, the nfl and the like. i think the only reason that things worked out the way they did is that i thought, we cannot expect these guys to be reasonable partners if i go to them when i?m weak and they?re strong. instead, i said, i don?t really need them. let?s just go and make some really good games, unbranded games like world tour golf.
hg: can you explain that more specifically? how did the making of the games begin, for example?
th: if you take madden as an example, my first idea there was to take a guy who had been the quarterback of the minnesota vikings, and he was then the coach of the cal football team. i approached him and said, i?ll pay you some money to be a consultant to give me some pointers on how to make this an authentic game. we got together and then he decided, i think i want my name on the game, i want a royalty and i want this and i want that. i said, if it?s going to go that way, then i?m going to pick the brand name that i want. i thought, i?ll just go to the front of the parade and i?ll take madden.
hg: madden as a personality was arguably a star on still rising, g celebrity, a huge deal, right?
th: at that time, madden was already an known announcer. john likes to do tv commercials and already had notoriety due to the miller lite ?tastes great, less filling? campaign. he even published some books expanding on that notoriety. he was known as a guy who was able to explain football to a larger m market. he had proven himself as a coach, but he had be a much gger celebrity because of the broadcasting career.
hg: was it difficult to get in the door?
th: approaching him was really easy believe it or not. we had a lot of credility due to the dr. j and larry rd game. so i went straight to his agent. we did have to haggle over the money a little t. when you?re an agent and you have a client, you might hold out for more of a cash advance. i knew where to set the bar, and i knew how to get what i , but obviously, i had to pay more cash upfront that i did with julius erving or larry byrd. with julius erving, i gave him the opportunity to buy stock in the company at a very cheap price, so he probably made more money on the stock than he did on the game.
hg: did you offer madden the same deal?
th: madden sometimes tells the story about how i offered to let him buy in to the initial public offering when ea went public, and he declined. (chuckles) every now and then, he?ll make fun of himself about that. so with madden i had to commit to a gger guarantee. but i was comfortable with that because i knew that i could make a g business out of football.
hg: not everything went according to plan. in fact, it almost seemed there was mutiny within electronic arts.
th: of course, the irony was that the product was way, way late?way late. i figured it was going to be a one to two year production cycle. and it was a four year production cycle. that was mainly because we were trying to do the real thing.
to be honest, it took so long that everyone in the company gave up on the project except for me. it became known around the company as trip?s folly. at one point, actually, the outside auditors came to the office and they said, hey, trip, i hate to be the bearer of bad news. but we?re instructing your company to completely expense and write off the cash advances that you?ve paid to madden. we deem them to be completely unrecoupable. (laughs) they thought we were never going to make any money because they had heard so many negative things from other employees about the complete hopelessness of trip?s folly.
hg: the delay was inherent because it was a complex game to make and you were making it for the first time?
th: that?s it. just to lead into that, after the deal was made with madden?s agent, we were supposed to spend time with john getting his input. i had produced the design doent: i played football and ied the plays and read a lot of books about football. so the design doent was pretty good and i just john to answer some questions and fill in some gaps. plus, we had to have real ratings for players based on their different skills.
hg: you had been thinking about this game since childhood. it was your dream.
th: what i was trying to do was bring the games that i loved as a kid like stratomatic into video games. i to have real players every year, organized on the right teams and playing the way they?re supposed to play just like stratomatic. i?m thinking madden has this insight. and i was actually expecting him to write our playbook.
hg: there?s a terrific story about how you met with madden on a train from denver to oakland.
th: so we agreed to meet. he was traveling on amtrak at the time because he didn?t like to fly and this was before he got the madden cruiser, that g bus. i flew into denver which was his departure point, and the train?s going all the way to oakland, so i figure we have two days on the train to sit around and talk about our design. i brought my producer and my developer with me.
one of the first questions i had for john had to do with the technical challenges we had with the machines at that time. i talked to him about doing skeleton, a form of football that?s seven on seven players where you take out the blockers, but you can run all the same plays. a lot of times, teams will run skeleton during practice. i said, it?s going to be a real challenge to animate 22 players on the screen, so let?s do skeleton with the first version. john immediately said, no way. we have to do the real thing. we said, ok, great, we want to do that, too.
hg: the word, maybe it?s a rumor, is that there were arguts, so say so loud that other people on the train could hear them.
th: occasionally, i heard john doing interviews, and he makes it sounds like we didn?t want to do the real thing. he?d say that he ordered us to do the real thing and that he threatened to cancel the contract if we didn?t do the real thing. it?s just not true at all. in fact, he sometimes acts like we didn?t have a deal until we committed to that. that?s also not true. but you know, things get lost in the sands of time. the reality is, we had that brief mot, which didn?t last for more than about seven seconds where i lobbed out the skeleton idea and he dismissed it. i agreed with him and we moved on. there really wasn?t any conflict about it. it was just one of a thousand decisions that had to get made on that train.
hg: so, it was easy working with john madden, a complete breeze?
th: here?s the thing about working with john. he he?s very, very smart and he has a commanding presence which enabled him to be a successful coach to convince a bunch of 300-pound human beings to do what you want them to do. you have to be g and strong and intimidating yourself or else you?re going to get steamrolled. what?s impressive about john is that when he appears on television, he has some up with a completely different persona. on tv, he plays a character that he made up.
hg: what exactly do you mean? so he?s not a sweet guy like that?
th: no. no. his natural personality is very, very smart, a little t of sarcasm, and he won?t hesitate to you out of the water if he disagrees with you. and the other thing about john in private is that about every third word is the ?f? word. i?m still amazed at this. if i would talk like that, i don?t know if i?d be able to go on the air and never say it. if you have any design disagreet with him, he?ll go, what the f is that? i told you so many f?in? times that guy is not behind the guard, he?s behind the tackle. what the f is going on here? and this is all over some harmless editing mistake where a guy in a formation was drawn slightly out of position.
hg: but you got beyond this, of course. making the game sounds like one of those ?the-devil-is-in-the-details things.
th: the problem was, it was really hard, i mean, really, really hard. when it finally was finished on the apple ii, the critics who reviewed it were amazed at what we managed to squeeze out of the apple ii. from there, we moved it over to the ibm pc. but when you think about those machines, they?re really not good two player machines. back in those days, you really didn?t have two joystick ports. most of those machines were set up in an office and there was no networking ality. but we the sports games to be head to head two player games and we eventually found that ality with gaming consoles. but madden was an immediate g hit, and we were able to use that same engine to make a hockey game that was a g hit as well.
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