After having to replace a bassist (and brother) between their last two albums, the members of Chevelle were happy to have a drama-free interim leading up to their new "Sci-Fi Crimes."
If Céu had her way, everyone would be just a little bit lazier. The Brazilian singer/songwriter hails a life of leisure on her second studio album, "Vagarosa," released July 7 on Six Degrees Records. The album was inspired in part by her 10-month-old daughter, Rosa.
Thanks to tours with The Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, a new Gov't Mule album and tour and a planned solo album, Warren Haynes is having his busiest year ever -- and is enjoying it immensely.
After building an underground fan base with a string of popular mixtapes, the Washington, D.C., rapper Wale is primed to bring his offbeat charm to the mainstream.
On the heels of its 'Best Children's Album' Grammy win for "Here Come the 123's," They Might Be Giants is readying the release of another kid-centric set, "Here Comes Science." The album and animated DVD is due Sept. 1 on Amazon and iTunes and everywhere Sept. 22 on Disney Sound.
A pair of home town stadium concerts over the weekend gave Kid Rock and a couple of his support acts an opportunity to showcase new material for the 40,000 fans who attended each show.
Prince fans from across Europe converged on Montreux for two shows by the American musician whose rare appearance on the continent stretched well into Sunday morning. The 51-year-old star closed the two-week Swiss Montreux Jazz Festival with a mix of old hits including "Little Red Corvette," "Peach" and "Purple Rain" and fresh titles such as "Elixir" from his new album with singer Bria Valente.
It's a familiar narrative: wunderkind with a gift for music takes it seriously, and lands a major-label deal before he gets his driver's license. Usher, Chris Brown and Britney Spears all fit the formula. Now, Justin Bieber can add his name to the list.
For nearly a decade, the Eagles' "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" has been the recording industry's ultimate evergreen release, certified by the RIAA as the all-time best-selling album in the United States. But thanks to continued robust demand for Michael Jackson's catalog since his June 25 death, "Thriller" appears on the verge of matching "Their Greatest Hits," at least in the eyes of the industry trade group.
One of the top games on Kongregate these days is
Punk-o-matic which even includes a Flash animated, R-rated comic with penguins
called ?Dude!? (Seriously, the words in the game are punky and raw: you?ve been
warned). Basically, you can choose drum, bass and guitar sounds to make your
own punk rock tune, not just as the spittin? leader of the band, but as the
player of all three instruments. Save your tracks, share them or delete them:
it?s up to you. The main thing about Punk-O-Matic is its
who-cares-I?ll-do-what-I-want attitude. Yeh, it?s an app more than a game. But
I?ll bet you have more fun playing this than with, say, a badly made clone of
Diner Dash.
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, big 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 mass market. He had proven himself as a coach, but he had
become a much bigger 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 credibility due to the Dr. J and Larry Bird game. So I went
straight to his agent. We did have to haggle over the money a little bit. When
you?re an agent and you have a hot 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 wanted, 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 bigger guarantee. But I was comfortable with that
because I knew that I could make a big 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 document: I played football and studied the
plays and read a lot of books about football. So the design document was pretty
good and I just wanted 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 wanted 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 big 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
arguments, 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 moment, 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 big 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 bit of sarcasm, and he won?t hesitate to blow 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 disagreement 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 ability. But we wanted the sports games to be head
to head two player games and we eventually found that ability with gaming
consoles. But Madden was an immediate big hit, and we were able to use that
same engine to make a hockey game that was a big hit as well.
When Bully was released for the PlayStation 2, it became one
of my games of the year at the Village Voice. It was a staggeringly giant game
and I loved it not only because of the go-anywhere gameplay, but because of the
wit within the story. Yeh, there was fighting. But there were touching moments
full of the angst of childhood, private school style.
To make a literary analogy, it was more John Cheever than
John Updike. Here?s what I mean. Cheever could write about the upper middle
class and a lower middle class shlump like me (raised by a loving single mom
who was a waitress) could relate. Updike on the other hand always made me feel
aware of the difference in classes ? in a bad way. The kids in Bully are
well-off kids, but the way they react, the way they?re written to react and
communicate, makes me feel part of the story. These developers ain?t no Columbia University
snoots (apologies to my pals who went to Columbia
who don?t have sticks up their asses). Even though the school in Bully is a
private school, this like was me in a public school, too.
Bully:Scolarship Edition for the Wii is a video game time machine
that whisks me back to that trying experience of test-taking and girl-yearning
and bullyness of cruel cliques of my teenage years. Yes, there are new levels,
and that?s important. But what you get here is beyond virtual reality. It?s
visceral reality. Like Wii Boxing in Wii Sports, you (as Jimmy Hopkins) can
punch at your foes now, where as with the PS2, you simply pressed buttons. You
really have to box here: timing is important, and you just can?t flail or
you?ll lose. So this panty-stealing, fat girl-kissing, sling-shot-shooting, drunk-teacher-loving
misfit is more like you and me that he?s ever been.
Perfect World, the hot Chinese makers of MMOs, has started
its final beta test of Hot Dance Party, its casual MMO that might take the
world by storm when it?s released in the next month or so.
Says Perfect World?s press release, ?The online dancing
game's contemporary background, elaborate design, and fashion & style,
along with the introduction of new and innovative features, are expected to
provide online game players an experience that they have never had before.
"Hot Dance Party includes a number of new and unique
features. One is the Make-up System, which allows players to practice real-life
make-up skills to customize their online look. Additionally, the game's
creators recruited professional fashion designers to incorporate hip new style
to the game.
Me, I don?t care about any stinkin? makeup. But I know a
bunch of folks who do. Perfect World?s been successful in the past with Legend
of Martial Arts and Chi Bi, all of which are free to play. But you must buy
upgrades to pimp out your character: that?s how they make their money. For
those of you who like to dance casually and play dress up online, Hot Dance
Party could be a winner. And just look at those round eyes on the characters
below. Round eyes make you wanna play.
Kotaku just found a Japanese site which features screenshots
for Namco Bandai?s upcoming Mr. Driller Online for the Xbox Live Arcade. The
upshot? Mr. Driller is a thriller. Also released are screenshots of directions,
which look very easy to understand. That?s often been a problem with online
casual games for consoles: the instructions have sucked big time in everything
from Pinball FX for the Xbox 360 to PixelJunk Monsters for the PS3. Here, you not only get basic rules; you?ll
get to know all the power ups and treasure you can collect. So nothing will
stymie you as you drill to victory and collect air capsules so you won?t die of
suffocation. Great instructions, great game. Can?t wait.
Electronic Arts had Madden in the 1980s. And that game was
supremely successful. But the company was on a mission to become a worldwide
leader. In this portion of our multi-part interview with Trip Hawkins, the EA
founder is extremely candid about the oft-stressful goings on inside of the
company at the time. Sometimes, what was going on inside wasn?t pretty.
Sometimes, fisticuffs flew. And often, Hawkins played hardball, much to the
dismay of some of his staff. For example, Hawkins? deal with Sega about making
games for the Genesis could have blown up in his face. Worry was rampant
throughout EA at the time. Read on to see what happened during these turbulent
moments in video game history.
HG: I?m told there was the occasional wildness inside
Electronic Arts during the early days?
TH: We were all a little wild back then. When we were
working on Madden, Tony Hillerman was the producer of the game. And we had this
conference room where we would discuss the progress of the game. At one point,
Rich and Bing Gordon were in there and they got into some kind of argument. I
don?t even know what it was about. But Bing ended up throwing Rich into the
wall, doing kind of a hockey check. The two of them, by the way, were both
hockey players and as far as I know, they?re both still playing in hockey
leagues. So Bing checks Rich and it left this big indentation in the wall that
was about three feet high and about a foot and a half wide. It just caved the
whole wall in. And Bing wrote a note on it, commemorating the occasion. It?s
just a hilarious example of what it was like back in those days.
If you want to talk about the concept of a hostile work
environment, that?s what you talk about in today?s world. But in those days,
none of us was afraid to bang heads and fight for what we believed in.
Literally.
HG: Those times sound like heady times, a mix of growing
pains, ego, and being on top of the world. But then times changed for you in a
good way and a bad way.
TH: A lot of it had to do with the Sega Genesis. Talk about
corporate tension. Back around the 1987-1988 timeframe, our company was
becoming more of a global player but, frankly, not really firing on all
cylinders. The company wasn?t growing as fast or becoming as profitable as we
wanted it to be. I was very frustrated with some of the shortcomings of the
home computer platforms. Then, there was the lack of interest in the
manufacturers of those platforms to grow the market from the standpoint of entertainment.
HG: What kind of lack of interest?
TH: You could go talk to these guys and say, How about
putting two joysticks on the machine or how about having 16 colors or how about
having a sound chip, something that can make more noise than a beep? They
didn?t care. It just fell on deaf ears. Then, the 8-bit Nintendo had come on
the market and everyone was skeptical about it because of what happened to
Atari.
HG: But Nintendo changed things. It was a success here.
TH: It was a success. But even then, pretty much all the
U.S.-based software publishers for games did not want to support the Nintendo.
One new company was started specifically to focus on Nintendo and that was
Acclaim. Everyone else was saying, We don?t like the Nintendo; it?s not very powerful;
there?s no read-write data storage; there?s no mass storage; there?s not enough
memory to make a good game; that graphics aren?t powerful enough; the license
program is too restrictive. So Nintendo came to the U.S. and they launched with their own games and after, they brought over some other
games from Japan.
And there was Acclaim. And the fact that it succeeded became kind of a giant
sucking sound because the entertainment dollars that consumers had where going
to Japan.
And we didn?t have anything for Nintendo at EA. We were
feeling, we make these great games on the Commodore, Amiga and IBM PC, but not
enough of those machines have been sold.
HG: But there was something new coming that would change
things again.
TH: Right. In 1988 in the fall, Sega released the Genesis in
Japan.
It was called the Sega Mega Drive.
We bought one in Japan and
brought it back to the U.S.
We were very excited about it because it was a 16-bit machine using the MC68000
Motorola processor which we were very familiar with because it was in the Amiga
and the Mac, not to mention the Atari ST and all the arcade machines. We knew how to
make games for it extremely well. And here?s the Sega Genesis selling for $189
with a fabulous processor with good color graphics and with two joysticks. So
that was pretty cool. After having kind of missed the boat on Nintendo, I?m
thinking, even though Nintendo had 98 percent market share, Sega looks like
they?re going to be in the market two years ahead of (the next generation
machine from) Nintendo. I thought, this is such a great machine, maybe this
platform has a shot.
HG: That?s would have been a big turnabout for EA. Was it a
difficult decision to make?
TH: We had to make these judgment calls on hundreds of
platforms, and I was really the guy who made these choices, looking at all the
data and looking at all the pattern recognition necessary to decide whether
we?d support the platform or not and if so, when, and at what level of
resource. Over the years, I?d made good calls and bad calls. I?m kind of known
for betting heavily on the Commodore Amiga which nobody else was doing. I had a
little bit of a reputation because a lot of people in the industry thought that
was a bad bet. But even though Commodore didn?t do that well with the Amiga, we
did very well with it.
HG: How did everyone at EA react when you told them you
wanted to do games for the Genesis?
TH: I was being told that Nintendo would roll out their own
16-bit platform and stomp all over Sega. But I really wanted to bet on Sega. Not
only that, I didn?t want to go with Sega?s licensing program, either, which was
just as Draconian as Nintendo?s.
So I just said, OK. We?re going to reverse engineer it. And
we?re going to figure out how to make games without being in their licensing
program. This was kind of a career type of bet. It was a very dramatic year at
EA, and there was a lot of angst about the whole thing at not only the board
level, but at the management level as well. But I just drove everybody really
hard to make it happen. We successfully reverse engineered the machine. We were
able to start building games without a license.
HG: So how does Sega react?
TH: So we were poised to launch the products. Then, at the
11th hour, I was able to go back to Sega and just say, Hey, we?re
about to launch these, and we?re happy to go ahead without a license, and if
you want to sue, us we?ll defend out innocence. We don?t think we?ve violated
any laws. But we would frankly prefer to be business partners and give you
reasonable financial compensation for the use of your trademarks.
It was a very tense time. Initially, Sega just wanted to
huff and puff and blow our house down. Our board was worried. You worry about a
lot of things in a situation like that. You worry about having injunctions that
prevent you from shipping your product, about losing and being liable for
significant damages. You worry about them changing the platform so your games
don?t work anymore and you don?t know why. There?s just a lot of things you
worry about.
HG: So everyone?s kind of freaking out company-wide. Was it
worth the worry?
TH: I was able, fairly quickly, to get Sega to agree to a
very favorable license for us where we had a lot of independence to do whatever
the heck we wanted. And all we had to do was pay them two dollars a unit on
whatever we did. But I was pushing for
more. I wanted there to be this two million dollar cap. That was the most we?d
pay them.
HG: Serious hardball.
TH: That became a stalemate. It was one of only about two
occasions in my entire career where my entire management team disagreed with me
on a big decision. (The other one was about private offices, by the way. I was
not a fan of everyone having private offices.) But I kept telling the
management team that we would be better off taking the time to fight and to
demonstrate our resolve and push to see if they would cave in. It turned out
that they caved in a lot more quickly than I had expected. That agreement over the life of it brought the
average cost per unit down to about $.35 for EA. By contrast, years later,
other companies came in and they were paying a fee of about $8 to $10 per unit.
It was time. Making games for the Sega Genesis led Trip
Hawkins and his team to take Electronic Arts public in September of 1989. The
first releases of Sega Genesis games occurred in June of 1990. But how would the
burgeoning video game company do in the future? Would Hawkins? bet pay off?
Part of the reason Hawkins chose to take the company public
was because Sega might sue, despite its licensing deal with EA regarding
Genesis console games. So Hawkins wanted to have a healthy war chest in the
event the worst case scenario actually occurred. But EA was about set sail for
treasure of mammoth proportions. Yet there was danger in the high seas as well,
danger would lead to the end for Trip Hawkins as the chairman of the board of
Electronic Arts. The sign on the horizon didn?t read ?END,? however. It read
?3DO.?
HG: When 1990 came along, how much farther forward were you
thinking?
TH: When I made the deal with Sega, I pretty much knew I had
set the company up to have a spectacular four year run with tons of growth and
tons of profit improvement. So I immediately began to think, What?s the next
frontier beyond those four years?
HG: You were thinking big, very big.
TH: I?m thinking, The hardware providers are either
completely clueless about the entertainment needs of the market and they?re
uninterested in it. And I?m thinking, there are guys like Nintendo and Sega which
have these very Draconian licenses, and once Sega figures out what a good deal
I have, they?re going to want to punish me the next time around (with the next
generation console). And Nintendo?s going to catch on. All these guys are going
to conspire to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. I?m sitting
there thinking the company?s in great shape through the mid-90s. But what?s
going to happen after that? After taking a survey of the landscape, I concluded
there wasn?t enough going on in hardware, and I?m in a position where I can
instigate the transition of the market to the next generation of hardware, and
also, maybe promote that as a standard, and also promote a more enlightened
model about licensing relationships between software companies and hardware
companies. So that was the inspiration for 3DO. http://youtube.com/watch?v=G4TW_Zkm-NM
HG: I can see that it made some sense to think in those
terms. But ultimately, it was a something of a disaster.
TH: The short story is that it worked brilliantly out that
way. But it worked out that way for Sony. Sony came in a couple of years after
3DO with the PlayStation. Some of the Sony executives candidly admitted to me
that they had copied much of the 3DO licensing program. What Sony did is they
built a great machine. They did their homework and did the details effectively.
By coming in later, they were able to take advantage of dramatically lower
memory costs and component costs of the disk drive. So the 3DO player was
unfortunately a little bit ahead of its time and came out too early for the costs
to be as reasonable. Plus, I didn?t have a gigantic corporate partner who was
willing to put $2 billion dollars into the business the way Sony did.
HG: Would the influx of money really have made a difference?
TH: Oh, no question. Because we really did have a lead. But
we did recognize that when Sony showed up, their machine was going to trump our
machine. We were already working on an even better architecture. With the right
levels of support, that little arms race that you see going on today between
Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony ? that would have gone on for a while and we would
have been a surviving player. We would have had a share.
HG: So where did you trip up, so to speak?
TH: Where I miscalculated is I was thinking that OK, this
could work as a kind of separate company that?s set up like Dolby Labs and, in
fact, it?s a much more complicated thing to do that Dolby Labs. Something like
Dolby Labs of even Flash ? if it?s innocuous enough and cheap enough, then
everybody supports it and you can get your platform standard installed on a lot
of devices and machines.
HG: But launching a gaming console proved to be much more
difficult for you.
TH: You?ve got to convince everyone that you?re going to be
able to sell enough of a critical mass of machines for the economics to work
out for everybody. You really need that 900-pound gorilla company to take most
of the risk out of it so that everybody else can freely jump in. So 3DO was
more of a federation of little guys. It didn?t have a lot of strong financial
resources of its own. As soon as Sega, Nintendo and Sony said they were going
to bring out next generation machines, the developers who were all just
thrilled with us and happily supporting us, said they were also going to
support all those other guys.
The other guys all charged higher license fees than we did.
So the other companies could recharge their financial batteries, but we
couldn?t. 3DO ? It was noble. It was bold. And it was obviously too idealistic.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5VdDhwBR2_Q
HG: So as things began to fall apart, what was happening
inside of Electronic Arts?
TH: There was a lot of tension in the company. Essentially,
what I was doing was saying, Should EA move into the platform business? Great
companies from Apple to Nintendo have achieved some synergy by developed
content but also in platforms. But there was a lot of pressure from the board
to push it out as a separate, sister company. At the time, I thought, OK,
they?re just two companies. What I didn?t realize it was going to be a little
like me being put into a lifeboat the way Captain Bligh was.
HG: But unlike Mutiny on the Bounty, you weren?t able to
sail magically for 3,600 mile to reach the Dutch colony of Timor.
TH: When it became clear that EA was not 3DO?s first party
software, it became clear that 3DO had to make its own. EA had chosen
essentially to abandon the platform. But EA management started to get really
mad that 3DO was going to make its own games. So even though 3DO was only going to make software for the 3DO, some of
the executives at EA said, you?re going into competition with us; that?s not
fair. But I felt, what choice have you
given me? That was during the time period where I said, I can?t have one foot
in EA and one foot in 3DO.
EA was a little bit like a rebellious teenager but well on
its way to adulthood and 3DO was like an infant that was in open heart surgery.
I felt an obligation to 3DO and felt I had to go to attend to it. Then, legal
counsel said I shouldn?t stay on the EA board because it was a conflict of
interest. In July of 1994, I stepped off the EA board as chairman.
HG: Did you divest yourself of stock at that point?
TH: For a long time, I was the only person who never sold
any stock in any of these companies. Like with 3DO, I never sold a share. I put
a lot into it, and I lost every penny of it. With EA frequently when other
executives wanted to sell shares, I would buy them myself to keep them off the
market. When 3DO needed money, I started to sell more EA stock to put money into
3DO.
HG: Ultimately, 3DO just cost too much at $700. But as a
software maker, you had some success with High Heat Baseball and Army Men, both
franchises, and one of the first massively multiplayer role playing games,
Meridien 59.
TH: Yes, 3DO decided to sell the hardware business to become
a pure software company and did that for seven or eight years before hanging it
up.
HG: At the end, you paid about $400,000 for the rights to
some of the games and the Internet patent portfolio. All of that must have been
a quite a personal blow. But you still weren?t done. You still wanted to make
games.
TH: That?s when I started Digital Chocolate.
Hawkins? venture into
mobile gaming will be detailed tomorrow on Game Break
When 3DO bit the dust, Trip Hawkins took a little time to take
stock of where he wanted to go in the area of games. He didn?t wait long at all
to create Digital Chocolate, which has a new way of looking at and making cell
phone games. While cell phone games haven?t been embraced by users in the mass
way that has been predicted, Hawkins is trying to buck the trend and change
things by adding a distinct social element to his offerings. As usual, he?s
doing things his way.
HG: How did it become clear that the next big step for you
was in mobile games?
TH: In the summer of 2003, when it?s clear that 3DO is
selling off its assets, I bought the DNA [atents because they had to do with
social games. During that summer, I kind of had some time to come up for air
and try new things. Mobile caught my eye. As I looked at mobile, I realized the mobile phone was turning
into a social computer.
HG: Not to be general or pessimistic, but games on mobile
phones haven?t been all that.
TH: It obviously had platform constraints that forced the
gameplay design to either be like a retro classic arcade game or something far
more casual. Yet I started to see the potential to marry casual games with
social applications. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it was a
great premise.
HG: How do you mean?
TH: See, everybody used to live in a small village. And they
had a perfect social life. You know, you?d see the same intimate friends every
day. You?d spend the whole day with your family members. That model of human
existence had great social value. That evolved over time and no one?s really
all that conscious of that evolution.
HG: Hanging with friends is different now, though, with our
fast-paced lives.
TH: Right. Over the last 100 years, we?ve managed to
obliterate it somewhat unconsciously, the same way we?re causing global warming
somewhat unconsciously. This has been chronicled somewhat recently in books like
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. Before I read his work, I kind of felt it in my
bones. You see it in modern life, particularly in urban life: people don?t know
their neighbors. When they go out in public, they?re surrounded by strangers.
They spend too much time in their cars commuting by themselves or watching
television by themselves. You can see that people are not as socially nourished
as they need to be.
HG: So what does this have to do with mobile phone games?
TH: First of all, we?re an increasingly mobile society.
We?re now moving toward the time when there?ll be three billion people using
mobile phones. And every one of those mobile phones is now a computer that?s on
a network -- all these people have this amazing technology and people use it as
their mission-critical, go-to device. They?re getting more and more powerful
all the time just as the networks are.
If people do have these social needs, and if there are ways
to help social capital and social value in a casual way, then it?s a perfect
fit for the mobile phone. Why? It?s a platform you always have with you. So
take instant messaging. It was invented on the PC, but it makes more sense for
a mobile device because with your mobile device, you?re always there to get the
message. That?s not always the case with your PC.
HG: Everywhere you look these days, someone is coming up
with a new casual game. Sometimes I think there are too many clones of games.
But what?s clear is that casual is changing the very landscape of games.
TH: Over the last five years or so, we?ve seen this
revolution in casual games. This is another case where I?ve been ahead of my
time. While I?ve had some product failures, when I look at a game like
M.U.L.E., it?s still one of my all time favorites. It was an Atari 800 game
initially, a four-player game that we started building back in 1982. I have
these multiple cases where I was in market with a game that had social
capabilities and casual capabilities before the market for casual gamers was
really developed. So clearly it?s a passion of mine and it?s been a passion of
mine for quite a long time. So it?s been exciting to see the blossoming of
casual games on the Web and even on the iPhd, and we have the more recently
example of the Wii outselling the PlayStation 3.
HG: Why do you think the Wii hit so big so quickly?
TH: Take a look at the theory of Disruptive Products in a
book by Clayton Christensen called Innovator?s Dilemma. His central thesis is,
you have an established market in which there?s a primary performance requirement.
Something comes along that proves to be disruptive and the way it?s disruptive
is that it reaches an entirely different audience. It doesn?t care about the
normal performance requirement, and instead, it?s adopting this new product,
even though it?s underpowered. People adopt it for reasons of simplicity and
convenience.
This pattern repeats itself again and again, even as it
relates to the Wii. It?s less powerful
than the PlayStation 3, but it?s a more social machine. It?s equally true, I think, about mobile
phones and mobile phone games in particular. This is the first time in history
where, if you look at the hardware in the retail stores, where, if you look at
the six platforms that are selling at retail, they?re selling in the inverse
order of 3D graphics power. It starts with the Nintendo DS, because what?s
simpler and more portable than the DS? And the one that?s at the bottom is the
PS3.
HG: The change to casual has had its victims. And it?s had
traditional companies scrambling to get with the program.
TH: Ken Kutargi (the top executive from Sony) got fired. And
there?s been a CEO change at Electronic Arts where EA created a whole new
division called Casual Games. Companies like Activision missed the boat, so
they said, Oops, we?re going to do more products for the Nintendo Wii. So it?s
a big change toward social and casual.
HG: So you created Digital Chocolate to be a social games
provider within the mobile phone space.
TH: One of the things we?ve done that?s really big and
profound is the Café Series. The big idea there is doing something that fits
into the existing infrastructure of mobile. That means you can go to the
carrier deck that?s on your handset and find Café Solitaire, purchase it and
play. But what?s so special about it is that it has a whole lot of Web 2.0 going
on. One aspect of that is the themed community where you can create your own
café that brings the look and feel of something like Habbo Hotel to your phone.
It gives you not just a buddy list, but a themed environment
for your buddy list. Then, there are gameplay elements that you can share and
user generated content that you can share along with personalization and other
community features. Plus, there are the benefits of viral spread. On the Web,
you don?t alway have to do marketing in order to have the public discover a new
product. You have viral discovery and free trial. So you find out about, say,
YouTube, because one of your friends sent you a link. That hasn?t happened in
mobile. It?s a wide open frontier where new things can and should be tried. You
can?t just take existing games and shoehorn them onto a mobile phone. That?s
why I believe in this social aspect and the Café Series.
This is it, folks: the final Game Break blog item. During
the past few years, I've broken exclusive stories and given you exclusive
interviews with top Hollywood stars along with
top musicians. And VH1 has had unprecedented access to game developers to get
the inside scoop on the most innovative console games, along with casual games
and independent games.
My favorite interview, though, was with completely cool and
down-to-earth Rose McGowan who was starring in both Grindhouse films at the
time. Rose told you how her dog became jealous when she was playing the old
school game, House of the Dead 2 on the Sega Dreamcast. The dog became so
annoyed at the lack of attention that he peed on the system and fried it. It
all was a little sad since Rose never finished the game. But mainly, it was one
hilarious anecdote.
I?ve given my share of roses to top notch journalists and
game developers. And I?ve given my share of brickbats, too, with the Idiot of
the Week. No one was immune to idiocy, not game companies, game executives,
game analysts, game journalists and game publicists. It was never easy for me
to write Idiot. While Idiot always was a popular item at Game Break, I knew
that it had its effect, and that it angered and hurt those who received the
dubious award. Yet, it had to be done. Very few writers have the temerity to
call out the Idiots of our industry. So I popped a Prevacid and wrote away. I
still believe in the corny, old adage that the pen, er, the keyboard is
mightier then the sword.
If you?ve been a fan of Game Break, what do you do now? For
daily news with a bit of snark, there?s nothing like Kotaku. Brian Crecente,
Brian Ashcraft and the team there are changing the nature of gaming journalism.
They began with tons of fanboy-like news. But they?ve evolved into a site that
breaks news and does tough investigative journalism. Beyond Crecente, Noah
Robischon is near the top of the food chain at Gawker Media. If something ever
slips passed Crecente (which would be rare), Noah will be there to catch it.
You?re in good hands at Kotaku.
For longer pieces, gaming exclusives and in-depth
interviews, go to N?Gai Croal and the Level Up blog. Croal is a smart, agile,
cross-cultural writer who gets the best out of his interview subjects. He?s
been in the business as long as I have. With the power of Newsweek at his back,
he?s one of the few persons in the industry who refuses to take any crap. He?s
the one person in the industry that game companies go to regularly to break
news. You?re in good hands with Level Up.
On video and TV, you can?t go wrong with Geoff Keighley at
Game Trailers. Keighley has learned to make his interviews entertaining and
newsworthy, and that?s hard to do. When you watch Keighley, you?ll always glean
some fine nugget, whether it?s an anecdote or good, hard gaming news. In Canada, you can?t go wrong with
Electric Playground. Victor Lucas cares dearly about games. You can see how much he cares on the
segments that appear on G4?s web site. Also, look for Lucas? cohost, Donna Mei-Ling Park, as one of the up
and comers in TV gaming journalism. She?s got the energy and the smarts to rise
to the top fast.
Where else? For MMOs, check out Action Trip, a Serbian site
that will never let you down. For casual games, check out Jay Is Games: Jay
loves casual games with all his heart. For adventure games done the old school way,
try Just Adventure.
For some of the best game writing on the web, check out
Crispy Gamer, a no b.s. zone that?s still in its infancy, just a few months old.
Former GameSpy editor in chief John Keefer runs the site, and every freelance
writer of note is participating in creating a site that is sure to be written
about and talked about more and more in the coming months.
As for me, you can see my words on these Web sites: American
Movie Classics, Crispy Gamer and Radar. As for magazines, you can read articles
in New York magazine, Boys? Life and Radar. I plan to write some more travel articles for
the New York Times, too.
I want to give a shout out to legendary video game writer
turned novelist Steve Kent. Steve, whose words have graced this blog, is not
only a great writer. He?s a good, kind and giving friend who?s listened to me
gripe over the years about what bugs me about gaming writers. And he?s listened
to a lot of personal stuff as well. You couldn?t ask for a better pal then
Steve. If you haven?t already, check out his ?Clone? scifi fiction series along
with his seminal history of the video game industry, ?The Ultimate History of
Video Games.?
I want to thank the team at VH1 Games for letting me say
things my way for over two years. They even let me write from my house so I
rarely had to go to the big offices at in Times Square.
The team let me put on great contests like our Wii and PS3 giveaways. And they
didn?t shy away from Idiot of the Week, even when I chastised the top gaming
companies, probably top advertisers as well.
Finally, I want to thank you, the readers of Game Break.
Especially during contests, your comments were wise, humorous, touching and
even deep. I?ll definitely miss you guys. Thanks for stopping by.
So what to say now? I guess I?ll leave you by paraphrasing a
quote from the underappreciated actor Peter Lorre from Stephen D. Youngkin?s
biography, ?The Lost One. ?Video game journalism is a ridiculous
profession?unless it is part of your very soul.? Enjoy the Human Tetris video from YouTube that's below. And most of all, Game
on.
During the past few days, you've been privy to the
fascinating, decades-ling history of Trip Hawkins from the man himself. During
these interview sessions, I found that Hawkins, a pioneer and innovator since
the early days of gaming, is someone you just want to believe. Said one major
developer, ?If I was looking at a red building across the street, and Trip said
it was blue, he?d be able to make me believe it was blue.? Now, Hawkins is
excited about games and social experiences on mobile phones. He?s trying to
innovate once again with Digital Chocolate. But the question remains, Can
mobile gaming experiences be accepted by mass audiences around the world? Hawkins
thinks it can happen, and he?s putting his heart and soul into making that bet
happen each and every day.
HG: We?ve talked about how casual cell phone games can be
made more creative and compelling by adding social elements to the experience.
That?s fine. But when are mobile games going to take off?
TH: You know, that is a really interesting question. The
mobile market has evolved historically at a pace that conforms to what the
carriers are willing and able to do. I think that pace is accelerating now, and
there are other independent accelerators including things like WiFi, the Federal
auction for a broader spectrum band, and the iPhone. Those are catalysts that
will open up more opportunities for growth. But that?s the future.
HG: So what are you doing for us right now?
TH: What we?re trying to do with the Café series within the
existing mobile infrastructure is to bring those Web 2.0 features over to the
phones. We enable the viral spread by allowing the sending of SMS messages and
emails and allowing there to be free trials of games. We also allow for
cross-promoting of one game to another. We actually are starting to have some
very strong evidence that that works. As an illustration, one of the first operators
that launched was 3 in Italy.
They did an MMS marketing campaign. So the users got, via MMS, to see some
screenshots of Café. They were offered a link they could click to get a free
trial: 50 percent of them did so, which is a very high trial rate. Then, of
those who tried it, more than 50 percent bought it.
HG: That makes sense because one of the problems with mobile
phone games is that the games are utterly difficult to find on the phone.
TH: It?s a much better model than just waiting for the
public to show up at the carrier deck and deciding to purchase something after
reading one line of text. The idea of the carrier deck was, OK, we?re going to
put up all these ring tones and games on these listings for the handset. And
we?re just going to wait for the public to figure it out. Clearly, the public
is still waiting. The Café series is bringing a next generation of thinking to
the mobile phone, including that all-important viral spread and community
features. We continue to have major carriers feature the Café games and we?ll
have sweepstakes promotions as well.
HG: Is the new Nokia N-Gage platform important to that mix?
TH: They?re a little bit of a next generation story
themselves. We all know what happened the first time around with the N-Gage.
And there were many valuable lessons that were learned.
HG: What did you think of the original N-Gage, the infamous
taco-shaped phone?
TH: It had higher performance technology than the typical
mobile phone. But the problem was it was an expensive phone. When you look at
the price of it and you compare it at the time with other game systems in the
same price range, it was not a good enough game system, either. Then, of
course, there were usability issues, including the fact that the games were
really big. So they couldn?t be downloaded over the air. The typical N-Gage
game was 32 megabytes and the networks were all too slow at that time.
But they learned a lot, and put that knowledge to work on
the new platform with many mobile phones. If you look at where they are today,
they?re selling at a clip of 50 million smart phones a year. And that number
keeps going up. Smart phones and smart phone capability as a function of Moore?s Law will continue
to shrink into a feature phone form factor which will make them less bulky and
cheaper. So you?ll find more of the public willing to carry one around. With
the new N-Gage and the iPhone as well, there?s a certain sex appeal that helps
to educate the market. So more people start figuring out that it?s there and
say, I want to do that, too. Hopefully, that will occur with games on the
N-Gage as well.
HG: Are they really thinking about games in the right way
this time?
TH: They?re thinking of the phones as a software platform.
And they?ll continue to work this into their handset roadmap, so you?ll get to
a point where most of the handset will have the capabilities to include great
games. More and more customers will be moving up the food chain to get to that
level of performance.
HG: Do you think enhanced graphics are important to mobile
gamers?
TH: Certain genres need more graphics than others. What
we?ve learned about the casual gamer is that simplicity and convenience are
more important than the graphics. One example of that is, if you?re running
something in your browser, it may not be as powerful as if you downloaded a
big, C++ coded file and installed it. But a lot of people don?t want to go
through the hassle of an installation. So clearly, if you have this larger and
different audience of people that are looking for casual and social
entertainment, they?re not as focused on whether they have the immersive
graphics of Madden Football, Grand Theft Auto, Second Life or World of
Warcraft.
HG: It seems as though there will always be a nasty divide
between hardcore and casual gamers.
TH: Without any disrespect to those major brands and the
audiences they can attract, they are tiny audiences compared to the mass
audiences who want something more casual. So you have all these women playing
casual games and chatting, making the experience almost the modern equivalent
of a sewing bee. It?s like guys doing fantasy sports on the Web. It?s far
bigger than Madden, and it?s simpler, more accessible and more social. That?s
been our direction from the beginning. The Café series is sort of the first,
full-grown expression of that, and the fact that Nokia is on board is great.
HG: The Café series is happening right now. What are you
doing beyond that?
TH: From there, we?re moving to more directly social
services like AvaPeeps. You can make your own avatar, go on dates with other
avatars and then have others get stories about what happened. So you can build
the social life of your avatar. So it?s like a Tomagotchi. We think that could
be the next big thing.
JLS, the British boy band who were runners-up to Alexandra Burke in the fifth series of talent series "The X Factor" last December, scored a No. 1 U.K. single yesterday (19) with their first release, "Beat Again" (Epic/Sony Music Entertainment). "The Essential Michael Jackson," also on Epic, got a third week atop the album chart.
The Beastie Boys' Adam "MCA" Yauch has been diagnosed with cancer and will undergo surgery, he announced in a video posting on the group's website this morning. The band has canceled its summer tour plans and delayed the release of its forthcoming album, "Hot Sauce Committee Part 1," in order to allow time for his recovery.
John Fogerty's "The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again," a new collection of Fogerty recordings of some of his favorite classic songs, is set for release Sept. 1 on Fortune Son/Verve Forecast. The album, recorded under the guise of the mythical group of his 1972 solo debut, includes guest spots from Bruce Springsteen and members of the Eagles, and features covers of songs by John Prine, Buck Owens and John Denver, among others, as well as Fogerty's own "Change in the Weather."
Sony Corp.'s movie studio has bid $50 million to acquire the worldwide distribution rights to a film based on rehearsal footage for Michael Jackson's "This Is It" comeback concert series, according to a person familiar with the bid.
Alt-rock acts Florence & The Machine and Kasabian have emerged as the bookmakers' favorites for the 2009 Barclaycard Mercury Prize, the U.K.'s album of the year award.
Jackson Browne is hopeful that the protection of music copyrights will be bolstered by the settlement of his lawsuit against U.S. Sen. John McCain and the Republican Party over unauthorized use of one of his songs in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.
Norwegian rock duo Kings Of Convenience will break a five-year silence this fall with its third studio album, "Declaration of Dependence," due Oct. 20 from Virgin.
Sources have confirmed to Billboard that a deal between the Michael Jackson Estate, AEG Live and Sony for a theatrical release of the Michael Jackson rehearsal footage from the ill-fated This Is It concerts could close today.
On the heels of its 'Best Children's Album' Grammy win for "Here Come the 123's," They Might Be Giants is readying the release of another kid-centric set, "Here Comes Science." The album and animated DVD is due Sept. 1 on Amazon and iTunes and everywhere Sept. 22 on Disney Sound.
A pair of home town stadium concerts over the weekend gave Kid Rock and a couple of his support acts an opportunity to showcase new material for the 40,000 fans who attended each show.
Prince fans from across Europe converged on Montreux for two shows by the American musician whose rare appearance on the continent stretched well into Sunday morning. The 51-year-old star closed the two-week Swiss Montreux Jazz Festival with a mix of old hits including "Little Red Corvette," "Peach" and "Purple Rain" and fresh titles such as "Elixir" from his new album with singer Bria Valente.
It's a familiar narrative: wunderkind with a gift for music takes it seriously, and lands a major-label deal before he gets his driver's license. Usher, Chris Brown and Britney Spears all fit the formula. Now, Justin Bieber can add his name to the list.
For nearly a decade, the Eagles' "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" has been the recording industry's ultimate evergreen release, certified by the RIAA as the all-time best-selling album in the United States. But thanks to continued robust demand for Michael Jackson's catalog since his June 25 death, "Thriller" appears on the verge of matching "Their Greatest Hits," at least in the eyes of the industry trade group.
JLS, the British boy band who were runners-up to Alexandra Burke in the fifth series of talent series "The X Factor" last December, scored a No. 1 U.K. single yesterday (19) with their first release, "Beat Again" (Epic/Sony Music Entertainment). "The Essential Michael Jackson," also on Epic, got a third week atop the album chart.
The Beastie Boys' Adam "MCA" Yauch has been diagnosed with cancer and will undergo surgery, he announced in a video posting on the group's website this morning. The band has canceled its summer tour plans and delayed the release of its forthcoming album, "Hot Sauce Committee Part 1," in order to allow time for his recovery.
John Fogerty's "The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again," a new collection of Fogerty recordings of some of his favorite classic songs, is set for release Sept. 1 on Fortune Son/Verve Forecast. The album, recorded under the guise of the mythical group of his 1972 solo debut, includes guest spots from Bruce Springsteen and members of the Eagles, and features covers of songs by John Prine, Buck Owens and John Denver, among others, as well as Fogerty's own "Change in the Weather."
