Electronic Arts
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| Electronic Arts, Inc
<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align:center; padding:16px 0 16px 0;">Image:Ealogo.svg</td></tr> | |
| Type | Public (NASDAQ: ERTS) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1982 |
| Headquarters | Image:Flag of the United States.svg Redwood City, California, USA
<tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Key people</th><td>Trip Hawkins, Founder |
- "EA" redirects here. For Electronic Arts' sports label, see EA Sports. For other uses, see EA (disambiguation).
Electronic Arts (EA) (NASDAQ: ERTS) is an American developer, marketer, publisher, and distributor of computer and video games. Established in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for their games. EA was just a publisher for its first few years and exclusively published for home computers, but began developing games in-house in the late 1980s and started supporting consoles in the early 1990s. Also in the 1990s, EA began to expand by acquiring several successful developers and, as of the early 2000s, EA has become the world's largest third-party publisher, with a net revenue of US$3.129 billion on its fiscal year March 31, 2005. <ref>SEC EDGAR Filing Information</ref> Currently, the company's most successful products are sports games published under their EA Sports label, games based on popular movie licenses and games from long-running franchises like Need for Speed, Medal of Honor and The Sims. The company has also been the subject of criticism, most notably for its business tactics, employment policy and lack of innovation in its titles.
Contents |
[edit] History
Image:Electronic Arts historical logo.svg In February 1982, Trip Hawkins arranged a meeting with Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital to discuss financing his new venture, Amazin' Software. Valentine encouraged Hawkins to leave Apple Computer, in which Hawkins served as Director of Product Marketing, and allowed Hawkins use of Sequoia Capital's spare office space to start the company. On May 28, 1982, Trip Hawkins incorporated and established the company with a personal investment of an estimated US$200,000. Seven months later in December 1982, Hawkins secured US$2 million of venture capital from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, and Sevin Rosen Funds.
For more than seven years, Hawkins had refined his Electronic Arts business plan. With aid from his first employee (whom he worked in marketing with at Apple), Rich Melmon, the original plan was written, mostly by Hawkins, on an Apple II in Sequoia Capital's office in August 1982. During that time, Hawkins also employed two of his former staff from Apple, Dave Evans and Pat Marriott, as producers. The business plan was again refined in September and reissued on October 8, 1982.
Between September and November, employee headcount rose to 11, including Tim Mott, Bing Gordon, David Maynard, and Steve Hayes. Having outgrown the office space provided by Sequoia Capital, the company relocated to a San Mateo office that overlooked the San Francisco Airport landing path. Headcount rose rapidly in 1983, including Don Daglow, Richard Hilleman, Stewart Bonn, David Gardner, and Nancy Fong.
[edit] Sales strategy
Hawkins was determined to sell directly to retailers, which no computer software companies were yet doing. Combined with the fact that Hawkins was pioneering new game brands, this made sales growth more challenging. Retailers wanted to buy known brands from existing distribution partners. Despite this, revenue was $5 million in the first year and $11 million the next. Current CEO Larry Probst arrived as VP of Sales in late 1984 and helped the company sustain growth into $18 million in its third full year. Teaming with the existing sales staff that included Nancy Smith, David Klein, and David Gardner, Probst built the largest sales force of any American game publisher. This policy of dealing directly with retailers gave EA higher margins and better market awareness, key advantages the company would leverage to leapfrog its early competitors.
[edit] Name change
Some of the early employees of the company disliked the Amazin' Software name that Hawkins had originally chosen when he incorporated the company. While at Apple, Hawkins had enjoyed company offsite meetings at Pajaro Dunes and organized such a planning offsite for EA in October 1982. After a long business day at the offsite, the dozen employees and advisors who were present agreed that they would stay up that night and see if they could agree unanimously on a new name for the company.
Hawkins had developed the ideas of treating software as an art form and calling the developers, "software artists." Hence, the latest version of the business plan had suggested the name "SoftArt". However, Hawkins and Melmon knew the founders of Software Arts, the creators of VisiCalc, and thought their permission should be obtained. But Dan Bricklin did not want the name used because it sounded too similar to their own. However, the name concept was liked by all the attendees. Hawkins had also recently read a best-selling book about the film studio, United Artists, and liked the reputation that company had created. Early advisors Andy Berlin, Jeff Goodby, and Jeff Silverstein (who would soon form their own ad agency) were also fans of that approach, and the discussion was led by Hawkins and Berlin. Hawkins said everyone had a vote but they would lose it if they went to sleep.
Hawkins liked the word, "electronic" and various employees had considered the phrases, "Electronic Artists" and "Electronic Arts." Other candidates included Gordon's suggestion of "Blue Light", a reference from the movie "Tron".
When Gordon and others pushed for "Electronic Artists", in tribute to the film company United Artists, Steve Hayes opposed, saying, "We're not the artists, they are..." meaning that the developers whose games EA would publish were the artists. This statement from Hayes immediately tilted sentiment towards Electronic Arts and the name was unanimously endorsed.
According to the 1982 business plan, EA's original business goals were to grow to a billion dollar company in about 6 years. Another goal was to "make software that makes a personal computer worth owning." At the time, Electronic Arts was the 136th game publisher in the U.S., but went on to be the first to reach the billion-dollar goal, taking 12 years to do so.
[edit] Sharing credit
A novel approach to giving credit to its developers was one of EA's trademarks in its early days. EA was the first video game publisher to treat its developers like rock stars in an industry where developers were more prone to be treated like nameless factory workers. This characterization was even further reinforced with EA's packaging of most of their games in the "album cover" format of the late 1980s and 1990s. This format was pioneered by EA because Hawkins thought that a record album style would both save costs and convey an artistic feeling. EA routinely referred to their developers as "artists" and gave them photo credits in their games and numerous full-page magazine ads. EA also shared lavish profits with their developers, which added to their industry appeal. Because of this novel treatment, EA was able to easily attract the best developers.
In May 1983 EA shipped:
- Hard Hat Mack for the Atari 800 and Apple II
- Archon for the Atari 800
- Pinball Construction Set for the Atari 800 and Apple II
- Worms? for the Atari 800
- M.U.L.E. for the Atari 800
Three of these five—Archon, Pinball Construction Set, and M.U.L.E.—are still considered cornerstone products in the history of video games. Worms? is unrelated to the Worms series of turn-based artillery games; it is a computer toy in which the user trains worms—represented as lines—to move in patterns on a network of nodes.
[edit] Trip exits
After a very successful run on home computers, Electronic Arts later branched out and produced console games as well. Eventually Trip Hawkins moved on to found the now defunct 3DO company. In 2003 he founded a new mobile phone software company, Digital Chocolate, that also began life in the Sequoia offices and had Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins as its lead investors.
In 2004, EA made a multimillion dollar donation to fund the development of game production curriculum at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division. In addition to the funds, EA staff members have been active teaching and lecturing at the school.
[edit] EA under Probst
EA is now headquartered in Redwood City, California. Its current CEO is Larry Probst.
Probst considers himself a man of principle and has refused to follow the M-rated example set by Take Two Interactive, whose violent Grand Theft Auto franchise became the dominant brand in many key demographics from 2000 through 2003. As a result, Probst has been heavily criticized by Wall Street analysts, who believe that because of this policy, EA's stock price is lower than it should be (though it has maintained a general upward trend in recent years). In late March 2005, Electronic Arts issued its first ever mid-quarter profit warning blaming hardware shortages and lower than expected fourth quarter sales.
Recently, Probst has changed his stance on M rated games, and now EA has several titles that compete in the M rated, adult game market.
On February 1, 2006, Electronic Arts announced that it would cut worldwide staff by 5 percent. <ref>Electronic Arts cuts staff by 5 percent from GameSpot</ref>
On June 20 2006 EA purchased Mythic Entertainment, currently working on Warhammer Online.
[edit] Criticism
EA is often criticized for buying smaller development studios primarily for their intellectual property assets, and then making the developers produce run-of-the-mill games on these same franchises. For example, Origin-produced Ultima VIII: Pagan and Ultima IX: Ascension were developed quickly under EA's ownership, and these two are considered by many as not up to the standard of the rest of the series, being aimed at lowest common denominator audience. Productions from EA owned studios as of late have generally not been known for their originality.[citation needed]
EA is also criticized for shutting down its acquired studios after a poorly performing game. Many see EA's control and direction as being primarily responsible for the game's failure rather than the studio. Magic Carpet 2 was rushed to completion over the objections of designer Peter Molyneux and it shipped during the holiday season with several major bugs. Studios such as Origin, Westwood Studios, and Bullfrog had previously produced games attracting a significant fanbase, and when they were closed down many top designers and programmers refused to stay with EA and formed rival studios. EA has also received harsh fire from labour groups for their dismissals of large groups of employees during the closure of a studio (see below). Such was the case with the game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.
EA is also notorious for the practice of rushing out products, setting extremely short deadlines and emphasizing good graphics to compensate for the lack of gameplay aspects originally intended by many developers, not implemented due to lack of time.
After releasing many semi-finished products, the lack of support is notable in many games, assured by the fact that EA declared openly that they would no longer support relatively new but still buggy titles, like Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Need for Speed: Underground and some of the latest Command and Conquer games.
Electronic Arts announced it would not support the Sega Dreamcast unless it sold 1 million units. When this happened within a record 90 days, EA went back on their word and declined to support the Dreamcast in favour of Sony's PlayStation 2.
EA has also been criticized for other aggressive business methods like the acquisition of 19.9 percent of shares of their competitor Ubisoft in what was called a "hostile act" by Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot.<ref>Ubisoft CEO Speaks on Takeover - TotalGaming.net news, 22 September, 2005</ref>
[edit] Employment policy
Electronic Arts has from time to time been criticized for its employment policy of requiring employees to work extraordinarily long hours—up to 80 hours per week—as a general rule and not just at "crunch" times leading up to the scheduled releases of products. "The current mandatory hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.—seven days a week—with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behaviour (at 6:30 p.m.)"<ref>The original ea_spouse blog entry at LiveJournal</ref>. The company has since settled a class action lawsuit brought by game artists to compensate for "unpaid overtime" EA management demanded of its employees<ref>"Employees readying class-action lawsuit against EA" from GameSpot</ref>. The class was awarded $15.6 million. As a result, many of the lower-level artists are now working at an hourly rate. A similar suit brought by programmers was settled for $14.9 million. <ref>"Programmers Win EA Overtime Settlement, EA_Spouse Revealed" from Gamasutra</ref>
[edit] Exclusive licenses
Some think Electronic Arts' sports licenses are threatening the game market. After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN, much as with Take Two Interactive's exclusive licensing deal with baseball's Major League. Contrary to what is often believed, however, the NFL was the initiator of the exclusive license transfer. The ESPN deal gives EA exclusive first rights to all ESPN content for sports simulation games. On April 11 2005, EA announced a similar, 6-year licensing deal with the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) for exclusive rights to college football content. Critics believe that the reduced competition is likely to result in fewer improvements for subsequent versions than would otherwise occur.
Electronic Arts was also subject to much criticism after releasing the title NASCAR SimRacing, an anticipated auto racing simulation. Upon its release, it was found to be extremely buggy, with numerous software issues requiring a patch. After substantial delay, a patch was released, but it did not resolve issues in multiplayer that essentially prevented competitive online racing. There is no indication that EA plans to release further fixes, as the last patch was released over 6 months ago. This was particularly aggravating to players because EA held the exclusive license to all NASCAR games, and the lack of competition gave EA little incentive to update the game, however some of the members in the sim community are beta testers for EA and painted their own cars and put them up for download as updates to the game to reflect the current Nascar Nextel Cup season.
Electronic Arts also has the license to the Lord of The Rings series and has thus been slow in responding to criticism of both of their RTS games in the series (Battle for Middle Earth I/II), including little to no multiplayer support, which proves to be bugged.
[edit] Online strategy
Many EA Sports games for the PC and PS2 are only supported by EA's servers for one year, forcing gamers to buy the next increment in the series (at full price) to continue playing online afterwards.
EA was criticized for refusing to publish for the highly-touted Xbox Live online service, which is run through Microsoft's own servers and which charges a yearly flat fee, regardless of the number of titles. EA would not be able to retain use of its own servers for Xbox games and thus could not charge a monthly fee for every game as they could on the PS2. Unlike the PC and PS2 versions, EA would not have been able to discontinue support for last year's title on Live, reducing potential sales of their current title. EA capitulated in 2004 and started publishing for Xbox Live, under the condition that Microsoft dropped their sports range.
Despite having finally released games for Xbox Live, for which there is no charge to play specific games, EA releases them all on the condition that Microsoft allow the games connect to the EA servers in order to play them online. EA online games for the Xbox generally suffer from more glitches and delays. Many users in Europe have complained about the performance of EA's servers, particularly on the game Burnout 3, questioning the logic of providing a central service only to decentralize servers for certain titles.
In August 2006, EA shut down the servers supporting many games they had released in 2005, effectively disabling those games' multiplayer support. This move was an attempt to force users to upgrade to the latest iterations of their games. <ref>'No more online gaming for you!' says EA from Joytstiq.com</ref>
The Battlefield 2 online demo was roundly condemned by the gaming community since EA instituted a 10-15 minute time play time limit (unheard of at the time) and shut down servers who ran mods on the demo version. EA in general has discouraged fan-made patches and mods, and they have shut down popular fan-made game modifications, resulting in criticism that they could transform the gaming industry into one that is hostile towards fan modifications.
EA later came under criticism by the Battlefield 2 community after the release of the add-on pack, Special Forces. It contains new unlockable weapons which can then be used in the original BF2 game. These weapons are only available to players who have played Special Forces, generally meaning that players have to buy the Special Forces add-on to access them. Some sections of the community viewed this as EA charging players to gain an advantage in Battlefield 2. It has also been criticized for its general failure to properly test and patch the game to a stable version, as well as making changes to gameplay when most gamers simply want stability and fixing of existing bugs and exploits.
EA was in hot water over the alleged use of tracking cookies and scanning surfing habits via Battlefield 2142. EA later released an explanatory note detailing exactly what was tracked, revealing that data was only collected ingame and was utilized in the targeting of ingame ads. IGA Worldwide CEO Justin Townsend was also interviewed by Gamasutra about the controversy <ref>IGA's Townsend On BF2142 In-Game Ads, Gamasutra, October 17, 2006</ref>.
[edit] MMOG strategy
EA is infamous for the number of Massively multiplayer online games that it has published and either canceled before launch or shutdown shortly after release.
Cancellations:
- Ultima World Online: Origin
- Ultima X: Odyssey
- Privateer Online/Wing Commander Online
- BattleTech 3025
- Harry Potter Online/Hogwarts Online
Shutdowns:
Two MMOG published by Electronic Arts are still operating today:
- The Sims Online: had 105,000 users at peak<ref name="mmogchart">MMOGChart.com</ref>
- Ultima Online: had 250,000 subscribers at peak worldwide, with about 70,000 of those in Japan.<ref name="mmogchart"/> It was developed by Origin Systems but the studio was disbanded by Electronic Arts
On June 20 2006, EA purchased Mythic Entertainment, currently developing Warhammer Online.
[edit] Notable games published
Some of the most notable and popular games of video game history have been published by EA, and many of these are listed below. Though EA published these titles, they did not always develop them; some were developed by independent game development studios. EA developed their first game in 1987.
- Pinball Construction Set (1982) by Bill Budge
- Archon (1983) by Free Fall Associates
- M.U.L.E. (1983), by Dani Bunten and Ozark Softscape
- One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird (1983) by Eric Hammond
- Music Construction Set (1984) by Will Harvey
- Archon II: Adept (1984) by Free Fall Associates
- The Seven Cities of Gold (1984), by Dani Bunten and Ozark Softscape
- The Bard's Tale (1985), by Interplay Productions
- Mail Order Monsters (1985) by Paul Reiche III, Evan Robinson and Nicky Robinson
- Racing Destruction Set (1985) by Rick Koenig
- Starflight (1986), by Binary Systems
- Heart of Africa (1987), by Dani Bunten and Ozark Softscape
- Skate or Die! (1987), EA's first internally-developed title
- Populous (1989), by Bullfrog which EA acquired in 1995
- Strike Series (1992 - 1998) a war games series in which you fly a helicopter.
- Need for Speed series (1994–current) first one was made by EA in collaboration with Road & Track.
- Ultima Online (1997), by Origin Systems
- Command & Conquer series (titles from 1999–current), by Westwood Studios (earlier titles released by Virgin Interactive)
- SimCity series (titles from 1999–current), by Maxis (earlier titles released by other publishers)
- Medal of Honor series (1999–current)
- The Sims series (2000–current)
- Clive Barker's Undying (2001) by DreamWorks Interactive
- Battlefield series (2002–current)
- See also: List of Electronic Arts games
[edit] Brand architecture
The brand architecture of Electronic Arts consists of the following brands:
- EA (all non-sports titles) — The simple EA brand replaced EA Games in 2005
- EA Sports (realistic sports simulations)
- EA Sports BIG (extreme sports titles)
- Maxis (Life simulation titles) — Produces games with the "Sims" title (such as SimCity and The Sims)
- Pogo.com (online games site, with numerous EA brand tie-ins)
- Square Enix - Currently owns the NTSC-U region distribution rights to the Final Fantasy series.
EA also operates the games channel on AOL.
[edit] Studios
[edit] Current studios
- Criterion in Guildford, U.K.
- Digital Illusions CE in Stockholm, Sweden, London
- EA Black Box in Vancouver, British Columbia
- EA Canada in Burnaby, British Columbia
- EA China in Shanghai, China
- EA Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California
- EA Chicago in Chicago, Illinois
- EA Mobile
- EA Montréal
- EA Mythic in Fairfax, Virginia
- EA Japan in Tokyo, Japan
- EA Korea in Seoul, Korea
- EA Redwood Shores in Redwood City, California
- EA Singapore
- EA UK in Chertsey, U.K.
- Maxis in Emeryville, California
- EA Phenomic in Ingelheim, Germany
- EA Tiburon in Maitland, Florida
- EA Salt Lake in Bountiful, Utah (Formerly Headgate Studios)
[edit] Former studios
- Original HQ in San Mateo, California – moved to Redwood City in 1998
- Origin Systems in Austin, Texas – acquired in 1992, closed in 2004
- Bullfrog Productions in Surrey, England – acquired in 1995, effectively closed in 2001
- EA Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland – established in 1996 as part of Origin, closed in 2000
- EA Seattle in Seattle, Washington – formerly Manley & Associates, acquired in 1996, closed in 2002
- Maxis in Walnut Creek, California – acquired in 1997, closed in 2004 (moved to Redwood City location)
- Westwood Studios in Las Vegas, Nevada – acquired in 1998, closed in 2003
- EA Pacific (known for a time as Westwood Pacific) in Irvine, California – formerly part of Virgin Interactive, acquired with Westwood in 1998, closed in 2003
- Kesmai (known also as GameStorm); acquired in 1999, closed in 2001.
- DICE Canada (created BF2: Special Forces expansion, and all BF2 patches). Acquired DICE fully October 2nd, 2006; closed DICE Canada studio hours later.
[edit] Slogans
- "We see farther." - Founding tag line
- "EA Sports, it's in the game." - a shortened version of their original slogan "EA Sports, if it's in the game it's in the game."
- "EA Games, challenge everything."
- "EA Sports. BIG."
- "EA University: Knowledge Changes Everything"
[edit] See also
[edit] References
<references/>
[edit] External links
- Electronic Arts' official website
- Electronic Arts' free online games Pogo.com
- Maxis' official web site (Ended Oct. 18, 2006)
- Tiburon's official web site
- EA Canada's official web site
- "Player 4 Stage 4: But is it Arts?" a history of the early Electronic Arts
- "IGN: Electronic Arts IGN.com's list of every EA Game published.
- Electronic Arts profile on MobyGames
[edit] Articles
- Original "EA_spouse" blog on workers of EA
- Aftermath of "EA_spouse" blog
- "Game makers see workplace changes" from News.com
- Article on interning at EA on ITworld.com
- The Escapist Article on EA's relationship towards Origin : Varney, Allen. The Conquest Of Origin, Origin created worlds, EA shipped games, EA won.. Retrieved on 2006-09-25.ca:Electronic Arts
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