Electronic Arts, from the Beginning

Gamasutra has a fascinating and complete history of one of the most storied publishers in the games industry, Electronic Arts. Penned by Jeffrey Fleming with layout by Gamasutra's Frank Cifaldi, the article goes all the way back to the company's founding by Trip Hawkins (and its original well remembered three-shape logo). Originally a shop where individual designers were given enormous amounts of creative control--and even a credit on the front of the box!--the company published classics such as Archon, M.U.L.E., Wasteland, The Bard's Tale, and many others before migrating more towards fully owned studios and multiplatform development. Some of the milestones described are surprisingly similar to those encapsuled in publisher dilemmas and internet arguments that persist to this day, such as when Hawkins recalls the point at which EA decided to devote more resources to console rather than PC platforms. "It was very contentious because many employees and developers did not like consoles, or did not like action games," he said. "The goal was to stop making esoteric products for an elite customer base, and go make it in the big-time with mainstream gamers. Several employees were outraged and quit, but I convinced the team that if the public chose to buy consoles like the Genesis, then to satisfy our customers we had to make the best games possible on the platforms chosen by the public, not the ones our engineers wished they could afford." Following that push, the article describes how, having left behind its identity of individual designers realizing a creative vision through games, EA began to expand its fully owned development assets at a rapid rate. Throughout the early 1990s, the company acquired respected studios such as Origin Systems, Distinctive Software, Westwood Associates, Bullfrog Productions, and Maxis, adding numerous high-profile franchises (and designers) to its portfolio. As the decade came to a close, EA's decisions to support the Nintendo 64 only lightly and the Dreamcast not at all demonstrated how much market impact the company had mustered. Finally, the article delves into EA's more exhaustively multiplatform efforts of the past and current console generations, as well as its ventures into mobile and casual gaming and the gargantuan non-traditional success of The Sims.