#CinemaJourney
#GameChangers
#GameChangers
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Football, America's favorite sport.
00:11Since the 1970s, the National Football League has dominated the U.S. sporting landscape
00:16with hundreds of millions of fans tuning in weekly to watch their favorite team beat on
00:21each other.
00:22It's America's game.
00:25Fans sought ways to replicate the bone-crushing excitement.
00:28You put a player on there and someone would do nothing.
00:31It was ridiculous.
00:32But as the digital world grew, one man, Tripp Hawkins, he sees the potential.
00:36Put it all on the line.
00:39How are you going to do that?
00:40With dirty tricks.
00:41I ran a clean room to take apart the Genesis.
00:45Oh, big risks.
00:47We were going to do it Tripp's way.
00:49He was relentless.
00:50This is wrong.
00:51I thought this was criminal.
00:53And top talent.
00:54They look really badass.
00:56We walked in the room, took the guns out of our pocket and put them on the table.
00:59Creating one of the most popular sports video game franchises of all time.
01:05Joe Montana football.
01:06It may be my best game of the season.
01:08Nope, that wasn't it.
01:09Back to the drawing board.
01:10They have no idea.
01:11Madden.
01:12That's the one.
01:13Absolutely David defeating Goliath.
01:16And it almost didn't happen.
01:18John's standing over us and he goes, what the f*** is that?
01:48The train.
01:54A simpler way to travel and see America.
01:57In 1984, on one cloudy December night, an Amtrak passenger train traveling from Denver,
02:03Colorado to Oakland, California carried a few football fanatics who would have a very
02:08important all night discussion.
02:11And the results of that 939 mile journey would change the face of third party software and
02:17video game football forever.
02:19Wait a second.
02:20Okay.
02:21First of all, you don't call it video game football.
02:23You call it Madden.
02:24Madden.
02:25Madden.
02:26Madden.
02:27Madden football.
02:28But how did this video game, endorsed by a quirky NFL announcer, become the flagship
02:35football franchise?
02:36There has to be something special about you.
02:38Well, to find out, we need to hop off that train and meet one of its young football obsessed
02:43passengers.
02:44The first thing you have to do is have a big idea.
02:48And Tripp Hawkins did.
02:50Tripp Hawkins, you could tell he was always really interested in sports.
02:54Tripp Hawkins had almost an infinite love of all things competitive and he liked football
03:01especially.
03:02So Tripp and a collection of his friends had played Stratomatic football since they were
03:08in junior high school.
03:10Stratomatic was before its time.
03:12It was the beginning of fantasy football.
03:14I think that for Tripp, that the experience that he had playing Stratomatic football gave
03:20him insight about game design because you're constantly arguing about the game design when
03:24you're playing one.
03:25And so, naturally, Tripp began to tinker.
03:28He came up with his spin off it.
03:30Which he called Acustat Pro Football.
03:33You'd have cards with stats on it.
03:35You'd sort of roll your dice and score based on that.
03:38Really does sound like a modern game you'd release now.
03:41Unfortunately, football fans in 1972 found the game had too many numbers to crunch.
03:47But when it comes to crunching numbers, a fortuitous contraption was on the horizon.
03:52And Tripp knew that it was going to change the world.
03:55Tripp Hawkins, he sees the potential of video games and he sees the potential of personal
04:00computers.
04:01His provoking thought was that someday there'll be a computer in every home.
04:05The computer really is a profound new way to play.
04:09Tripp was the first person to articulate his vision for an industry that was way, way bigger
04:15than anybody else was perceiving it.
04:17A medium that would compete with all other media.
04:22From the very beginning, he had this vision that sooner or later, computers will be able
04:28to play realistic simulations of sports games.
04:32But Tripp's plan for global gaming domination was too early.
04:37So in the meantime, he became employee number 68 at a little computer company run by two
04:43Atari rejects.
04:44He was with Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC and saw a mouse.
04:49A clever bit of technology that Steve decided to borrow for his computers.
04:55And in turn, Tripp would borrow something from Steve.
04:58What Tripp learned at Apple mostly was the culture, how a company should run, how employees
05:05should be treated, and also the way you want the public to view your company.
05:10And after four years, Tripp cashed in his juicy Apple stock options to the tune of seven
05:16and a half million dollars, which in part helped him establish his own company, Electronic
05:22Arts in 1982.
05:24A company with the sole purpose of publishing video games.
05:28However, by now, computer technology had caught up, but so had the competition.
05:35In the spring of 83, there were at least 100 other companies attempting to sell software
05:41on discs.
05:42They would need something to set themselves apart from the crowded field.
05:47For that, they reached out to advertising guru Jeff Goodby.
05:50We started just free associating with them about what the future of gaming could be.
05:55And the idea that we had was really to start treating the people that created games the
06:01way that the music industry treated musicians.
06:04It felt like, honor them, use their names, and you know, we took beautiful photographs
06:09with these characters that were programming the games.
06:12People like Ann Westfall and John Freeman, who created Archon and Murder on the Zinderneuf.
06:17And John Field, who created Axis Assassins and The Last Gladiator.
06:22And of course, Bill Budge, who created Pinball.
06:25Who all looked like they were rock stars in a black and white picture that looked like
06:28it had been shot by Robert Mapplethorpe.
06:30Actually, they used Norman Cee, who at the time was taking shots of the biggest names
06:35in rock like Kiss, Van Halen, and The Rolling Stones.
06:38They looked really badass.
06:39They were like music artists to us.
06:41They were people in the world that were making something important that everybody should
06:44care about.
06:45It became aspirational.
06:47We all were kind of working in our parents' houses.
06:50We were like, hey, wouldn't it be great if we got signed by EA?
06:54But here's the thing.
06:56To get signed by EA, you had to get discovered by a producer.
07:00Whatever that meant.
07:02In the early days, we did not have producers in the video games industry.
07:05It's a term that essentially Electronic Arts invented.
07:08Another bit of inspiration from the record industry.
07:11We had a set of rules that guided us on how to evaluate deals.
07:16Tripp even had Jerry Moss from A&M Records come in and train his new producers.
07:22When I first heard about it, I thought, well, that's kind of cool, but it seems different.
07:24And after I'd had the experience of that training, I just thought, oh my God, I get it.
07:29You would give a producer money, and his job was to go turn that money into video games
07:33that turned into more money.
07:35And this small company, with their free thinking, wildly creative, rock star programmers, and
07:40talent-developing producers, began to score some big hits like Hard Hat Mac, Mule, and
07:46Worms.
07:47All published on floppy disks for PC platforms such as the Apple II, Atari 8-bit machines,
07:54the Commodore 64, and IBM PCs.
07:57By the end of that year, we had moved from 100 to number one.
08:02The industry couldn't help but to take notice.
08:06I grabbed a couple of my buddies from Atari, and we checked these things out.
08:10The first thing that struck us was the packaging, it was really awesome.
08:14The packaging of the games looked like record albums.
08:16You could open them up, the photography and the artwork was beautiful, you could read
08:20the back, they listed the credits on the back, they were called artists, so the whole presentation
08:27was really striking.
08:29But when we booted up the games, compared to what we were used to in the coin-op world,
08:34we were kind of laughing, like, look at this stuff.
08:38But Dr. J and Larry Bird, especially for me, because I was a sports guy, really hooked
08:44me.
08:45It turned out EA's Simple 101 basketball game did something the other games didn't.
08:50What Dr. J and Larry Bird did was he created a collection of expectations out of the customer,
08:55out of the player, that were based on the fact that they were controlling a guy named
08:59Larry Bird or a guy named Julius Erving.
09:01You know, we couldn't recreate at that time all the spectacular dunks and the moves.
09:05Here he comes, way rock the baby to sleep and slam dunk.
09:10But because of their real-life counterparts, your mind would sort of fill in the gaps.
09:13The assumption was that, get inside with Dr. J, you're going to dunk the ball, you're going
09:17to be unstoppable.
09:19But Larry Bird can hit that three-pointer all day.
09:22What a play by Bird!
09:24When you made a great slam, the backboard would shatter and this old guy would come
09:28out with a broom and kind of like, scold you, and then clean it up and you play again.
09:33There was a heart and soul to that game that I just had never seen before.
09:37So good that eventually Donald Traeger himself left Atari and joined Electronic Arts.
09:44Now, regarding the idea of athletes licensing their names and endorsing products, it was
09:49really nothing new, but it was new for video games.
09:54You make a buck, we make a buck.
09:56They got that we were not exploiting them, we were in partnership with them.
10:00The success of Dr. J and Larry Bird proved there was a market for sports fans who wanted
10:06to play video games.
10:07It was early in terms of a pioneer for setting up what became the sports game business.
10:12But Tripp knew that the big business of sports video games couldn't ignore the biggest sport
10:17in America.
10:18And he'd been developing a game for two years that was about to change everything.
10:26In 1983, Electronic Arts released its first smash hit sports computer game.
10:32At some point, Tripp had this idea to really bring his passion to life for football.
10:38And with the project already over two years in development by a young programmer named
10:43Robin Antinick, Tripp Hawkins just needed to add the finishing touch with the perfect
10:47celebrity endorsement.
10:49And in the 1980s, there was only one guy on Tripp's mind to help bring his game to life.
10:56Joe Montana.
10:57Unfortunately, Joe was already huddling with Atari and their three-on-three Atari football.
11:03So Tripp and Ye went to the next best guy.
11:06You know, you can't imagine a bigger name in football than John Madden, especially in
11:10that era.
11:11He's a bigger-than-life character.
11:13They have no idea where we are, who we are, where we're coming from, or who we're throwing
11:17to.
11:18John Madden was really the cultural spokesman for the NFL.
11:22Despite only having played pro for one year, he coached the Oakland Raiders for 10 winning
11:27seasons and led them to their first Super Bowl title.
11:30He was an analyst.
11:32His playbooks were kind of famous.
11:34The love that everybody had for him within the NFL and the players.
11:38He was a guy you could go grab a beer with.
11:41He was unpolished.
11:42He was unapologetically himself.
11:45John was raised in a fairly simple family, and he was easily astonished by certain things
11:51in life.
11:52We took a ride down to Palm Springs for a talk he had to give there, and there's these
11:57beautiful citrus trees, and they're just so manicured.
12:02John says, do you think they're real?
12:04So I pulled over and we opened them, and we ate them, and we were astonished that this
12:07could be so real.
12:09And we're just like two kids from the city who didn't know much better.
12:14And that folksy charm landed him a ton of endorsement deals.
12:17Ace Hardware.
12:18Ace is the place.
12:19Florsheim shoes.
12:20Tough Acton.
12:21Tin Acton.
12:22The only one proven to prevent athlete's foot.
12:24Probably the most famous campaign was all the Miller Lite commercials.
12:27Boy, can I go for a nice cold white beer from Miller?
12:32John's character as a character became obvious to the public in the Miller Lite commercials
12:38when he was breaking through whatever he was breaking through in each one.
12:41How many times have I told you, use the door, huh?
12:44I forgot.
12:45I'm sorry.
12:46It was Madden's ability to break down plays that Tripp was most interested in.
12:50John was able to break the game down so that Joe, anybody, could understand it.
12:56But how does one score a meeting with the face of football?
12:59According to John Madden's son, Joe, the right play went through the kids.
13:03My dad's involvement with the game originated from my brother calling up my dad before parents'
13:10weekend at Harvard.
13:12Which conveniently was Tripp Hawkins' own alma mater.
13:14So Tripp connected with Joe's little brother, Mike, and Mr. Madden committed to a quick
13:18discussion.
13:19So that ten minute conversation after my brother's freshman football game, it went well past
13:25ten minutes.
13:27But Madden was a busy guy, and he had a game to commentate the next day.
13:31So my dad, I guess, is famous for not wanting to fly.
13:35Not to fly in an airplane.
13:36It's the only way.
13:37The wheels never leave the ground.
13:39But dad's like, I want to know more about this, but look, I have a train to catch.
13:44If you want to, this train, it goes overnight, and you're welcome to join me.
13:48So Tripp Hawkins and game designer Joe Abada took the night train from Denver to Oakland.
13:53All stops, destiny.
13:55Out of that, Tripp had kind of the whole genesis of what the Madden game, what it was going
14:00to look like.
14:01But before he agreed to join the team, Madden had one huge condition.
14:06If I'm going to be part of it, it has to be realistic.
14:09And Tripp's like, well, so what does that mean?
14:12My dad said, well, every game right now, it's like a seven on seven.
14:16Or worse, just three on three.
14:18My dad's like, there's no linemen.
14:19I'm a lineman.
14:21There's no linemen representations.
14:22It has to be NFL, it has to be pro, and there has to be, like, 11 guys on every team.
14:29That made the game really complicated if you want it to be real.
14:32So they passed out.
14:34I mean, that was never heard of.
14:36And Tripp realized that the game he had already been developing for three years would have
14:41to be redesigned to fit Madden's demands.
14:44Having been developed for the Apple IIe, the computer's limited power, memory, and disk
14:49storage was problematic and outdated compared to popular arcade games like 1983's Ten
14:55Yard Fight and 1987's Tecmo Bowl.
14:58Honestly, I was just glad I wasn't the one stuck in the middle there.
15:03No, that was Donald's job.
15:05I was assigned to work with John Madden.
15:08Internally, it had kind of a bad rep because it had been the downfall of a lot of previous
15:14employees.
15:15It had been around a long time.
15:17It was not going well.
15:18It was a struggle.
15:19And so finally, after a grueling development process, they had something they could show
15:24to the man himself.
15:26One day, two or three years later, my dad gets a call from his agent saying, Tripp Hawkins
15:31has something to show you.
15:33And we were moving towards this first meeting with John where the team was going to show
15:38him a demo of the game and we were also going to do marketing photos and cover photos and
15:43whatnot.
15:44So we had it all set up.
15:45We were excited and John comes up and he's standing over us looking at the computer and
15:51we run this goal line play and he just looks at us and goes, what the f*** is that?
15:57And so John Madden had burst through the metaphorical walls of Donald's mind and Madden Football
16:03was in danger of collapsing.
16:06And to be fair, Madden had given them clear instructions.
16:09If I'm going to be part of it, it has to be realistic.
16:13There's got to be 11 players against 11 players.
16:17What he saw on the screen was definitely not that.
16:20It was seven on seven, which we really thought was the max we could get out of the processor
16:26at the time and still move at speed.
16:29And we were like, OK, back to the drawing boards.
16:32Aside from the glaring 11 versus 11 issue, another hurdle was applying the right balance
16:37of stats to the players.
16:39So Madden called a friend.
16:41Creating a football game, players had to be rated.
16:45John knew that I already did that.
16:47I created something called grid grade.
16:49I gave players grades and then units grades.
16:52And then if you sum it all up, ideally you should figure out who has the best team.
16:58Next thing I know, I'm being called over to Electronic Arts.
17:01Electronic Arts, for Frank, was a whole new world.
17:03I was a little blown away by the whole scene there because it was Nerf balls going everywhere,
17:09the drawing on the walls.
17:10It was invigorating.
17:11And so they got to work.
17:13Trying to come to something that works mathematically.
17:16The result was a system for how players would interact during gameplay.
17:20But four years after that fateful train ride, they were still in development.
17:26And so another producer was brought in to get the project into the end zone.
17:31So my job every day was to come in with a list that was a missing from alpha or a missing
17:36from final list and to get stuff crossed off that list.
17:39And if Trip Hawkins came in and he wanted a bug fixed or he wanted a feature changed
17:44and it wasn't on that list, I tried to be a gatekeeper to keep that from happening.
17:48It was a painful experience trying to finish that product.
17:53And thanks to folks who did lots of hard testing, we managed to ship that product and get it
17:58in the marketplace very late in 1988.
18:01Finally, Trip's long-awaited masterpiece, the first real football simulator, was available
18:07for football fans everywhere.
18:09EA even listed John Madden's rigorous demands on the back cover.
18:13And while the 11-on-11 issue was solved, it was not without big sacrifices to gameplay.
18:20Because with 22 players on the screen, all with their own set of unique parameters, the
18:25game just ran slow.
18:27John Madden on the Apple II in the early stages were really, really rudimentary.
18:34You'd look at it now and you would kind of laugh at it.
18:38It was hard to assess the real potential for Madden at that time because it was limited
18:44to Apple II and then eventually Tandy and PC.
18:47You know, for me, it was like I was into games with color and I played Karateka.
18:53You know, so for me, at the time, there were all these great games.
18:56You know, Madden was too early in what it was to be interesting.
19:01Despite the molasses gameplay and chunky graphics, Madden Football on PC did deliver the kind
19:07of experience both Trip and Madden had long envisioned.
19:11Even if, just like Trip's Accustat, it wasn't a hit.
19:14But as the 80s came to a close, technological breakthroughs were coming that would once
19:19again change everything.
19:21Now you're playing with power.
19:26Having spent years making video games for PCs...
19:29It became real apparent pretty quickly that consoles were definitely back.
19:33It was in the culture.
19:35The numbers were just outstanding.
19:38But making games for consoles came with one big drawback.
19:42When you got into the actual business aspect of it, to make cartridges or to put out content
19:47on Nintendo, you had to have a license from Nintendo.
19:50You had to go through an approval process.
19:52You had to work with Nintendo to basically buy cartridges and manufacture them.
19:57Trip's big resistance to console had been having to pay royalty to a platform developer
20:05and also being tied into their releases, their manufacturing capability.
20:11He just thought it was too onerous of an agreement.
20:15The other part of it is that the economics of cartridges stunk.
20:19We could duplicate discs for 50 cents at the time, packaged were a couple bucks.
20:24A cartridge was 10 bucks before you'd done anything with it.
20:28But whatever they did, EA couldn't afford to ignore where the industry was headed.
20:33I had become a producer developing my own products.
20:37And our first release was our first game that we actually hired internal staff for.
20:43Skate or Die.
20:45Which we had designed and built as a Commodore 64 game.
20:49And on computer, Skate or Die became a big hit.
20:53A big hit on computer was like, I don't know, 100,000 units.
20:56But because we didn't do console, we licensed that to Konami, who then put it out on the NES.
21:04And it sold like a half million copies.
21:06It happened again when I did Jordan vs. Bird.
21:11Which again was a big hit.
21:13A license by Milton Bradley for the NES.
21:15And that did, I don't know, like a million and a half units or something like that.
21:19As a result, we got to see what sales looked like.
21:21We got to see how our products got received by that market.
21:24So Electronic Arts had a dilemma.
21:27How to tap that lucrative console market without giving in too much to Nintendo.
21:32Part of my job as a producer was to bring products from other markets to the U.S.
21:36At the next Tokyo game show that I went to, Sega showed on the floor that they were going to build a 68,000 base machine.
21:44Motorola's 68,000 processor and 16-bit graphics made consoles suddenly more powerful than arcade machines.
21:52And I took note of it because we were doing games for the Amiga.
21:56Amiga was a 68,000 machine with very similar specs to what they were describing.
22:01And perhaps this faster processor could give Madden the juice it needed.
22:06We had all the statistical simulation experience.
22:10We had the good graphical and higher-end development experience from the Amiga, which a lot of guys didn't get into.
22:16I said if they choose to bring that to this market, we got a lot of software that can go to that machine fast.
22:22The Sega Genesis hit stores in August 1989.
22:27Genesis, a system with twice the power, twice the intelligence, twice the challenge.
22:33When Sega Genesis entered, the branding platform was around 16-bit gaming, and that was sort of the next generation.
22:40So at that point in time, the decision was made to pursue a different strategy on the Genesis.
22:45A direct competitor to Nintendo, the Genesis presented a unique business opportunity for Trip Hawkins and Electronic Arts.
22:52One too good to pass up.
22:54Trip finally agreed, OK, we're going to do console, but we were going to do it in Trip's way.
23:00But Sega's way was a lot like Nintendo's way.
23:03You're going to make games for the Sega Genesis? You've got to buy the cartridges from Sega.
23:07Electronic Arts says, I'm not going to do that.
23:09So perhaps just like Steve Jobs had borrowed and reverse-engineered Xerox's mouse for the Apple IIe,
23:15Trip decided to buy a Sega from Japan, and EA would get their hands dirty trying to reverse-engineer Sega's 16-bit machine.
23:24I ran a cleanroom to take apart the Sega Genesis so we could publish cartridges without having to pay Sega what I would call a manufacturing tax.
23:35So the cleanroom was a mechanism that allowed companies to reverse-engineer existing hardware.
23:42In a protected environment that was essentially a lockdown, where we as the game developers weren't allowed any information or any access to that lockdown environment.
23:53But we were then handed clean information that we could then use to build games.
23:59Apparently for Trip Hawkins, it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
24:04His vision was to do these on our own, release them separately, and have our own development deal separate from what Sega was offering to the other developers.
24:15I knew that we were picking a fight with Sega.
24:19And when Sega Corporation of America found out...
24:22The problem was that Electronic Arts were planning to introduce cartridges that they produced that they didn't pay any royalty back to Sega.
24:34Trip wasn't going to get bullied into paying their fees.
24:37Trip showed up with our unlicensed product and said, we begin shipping these in the next couple months, with or without you.
24:46I thought this was criminal.
24:52After finding out Electronic Arts had reverse-engineered their brand new Sega Genesis console, Sega of America were on the warpath.
25:01So we went to EA's headquarters in a conference room there, and I met Trip.
25:05He said, well, this is what we're going to do, and we're not going to pay you a royalty.
25:09And I thought the idea was criminal.
25:14And I said to him, Trip, didn't your mother ever teach you the difference between right and wrong?
25:19This is wrong. You can't do this.
25:21Trip did not take this accusation lightly.
25:24He was offended. He did not like me at all.
25:28And he said, that's not fair. We're creating the stuff that's making their hardware worth buying.
25:34And Trip knew that Sega didn't have much leverage, as they were only going to release eight titles at launch.
25:40And contrary to popular belief, the Blue Hedgehog was not one of them.
25:46You know, there really wasn't a lot going on on the Genesis.
25:49This is at a time where Sega doesn't have Konami and Acclaim and Capcom,
25:54because they're locked behind Nintendo's licensing policies.
25:57So Sega really didn't have a winning hand at that meeting.
26:00But I do have to say that Trip Hawkins didn't even have to approach Sega at all.
26:05He was going to do what he was going to do.
26:07Trip was playing hardball.
26:09We were going to sue him. It was going to be an expensive lawsuit for both Sega and for Electronic Arts.
26:15But that never quite came to be.
26:17As Sega, fearing that Trip would share his information with other third-party developers, waved the white flag.
26:23Or, as Tom Kalinske put it,
26:25We made a deal, as good businessmen should.
26:28So Trip's gamble paid off, literally.
26:31Sega gives him concessions that they did not make to other companies.
26:35First of all, they have a reduced royalty on the amount they have to pay for the cartridges.
26:39At the rate of $2 per cartridge.
26:41And secondly, they were allowed to manufacture their own cartridges.
26:44And that's the reason why, if you look at Electronic Arts cartridges for Genesis,
26:48they're vertical instead of horizontal, and they have that little yellow tab on them.
26:52It's because Electronic Arts made its own cartridges.
26:54It was pretty much just marketing.
26:56It was to be special, to kind of stand out and be different.
26:59And they'd be allowed to make as many games as they wanted.
27:02As opposed to our normal contract, which was for a third party, was for four games a year.
27:06And also Electronic Arts has control over the types of games it wants to release.
27:11Lastly, Trip negotiated a cap on royalties after 2 million units sold.
27:16And it gives EA sort of a massive advantage, cost structure advantage, over other Sega licensees.
27:23But when EA evaluated Sega's slate of upcoming games, they quickly realized...
27:29There is no real competition in the football space.
27:32Even if you wanted to play football on a Nintendo.
27:34The closest you got really was Tecmo Bowl.
27:37But it wasn't as much of a simulation as it was an arcade game.
27:41All the guys in the middle are just running into each other, they're just going...
27:48It's not realistic in any way, you can kind of cheat the system really easily.
27:52For example, if you wanted to beat Minnesota, your best choice was Bo Jackson and the Raiders.
27:57But, if you wanted to beat Miami, well, it would be Bo Jackson again.
28:04Whoever had Bo Jackson, whoever had the Raiders, was going to win.
28:07You know, you could beat the other team on any given day, 75-0 or something like that.
28:11Which never really happens in football.
28:13You can't stop Bo Jackson.
28:15It turns out, EA knew one way to stop Bo Jackson.
28:19To create a football game that's a more accurate, more realistic simulation of the sport itself.
28:24But this game wouldn't be Madden Football.
28:27We had made the decision that the John Madden brand was our sacrosanct brand,
28:32and that we were going to save it for the best of our games.
28:34And at the time, the original team was busy porting the game to other PC formats.
28:39So for this new product...
28:41At the time it was just called Sega Football.
28:43Then it was my job to go find a developer to build that game.
28:46So Richard started by finding somebody else who'd already developed a football game.
28:51The previous year, there had been an IBM PC game that had licensed the Monday Night Football brand.
28:58And while it only did modest sales, it had a concept that Richard really liked.
29:03I'm going to play a sports video game that looks like I'm playing the TV version of that game.
29:11It also was how people thought about football.
29:13Most people have never been to a pro football game.
29:16They've seen a TV game, which means their notion of what's correct about pro football is what's on TV, not what's in person.
29:23And so as a result, building a football game that would be TV-based is the obvious idea.
29:29But the developers of ABC Monday Night Football weren't just going to let EA take their game.
29:36So instead, Richard took their developers.
29:40Some of the people at the developer for the Monday Night Football game founded a company called Park Place.
29:46And Richard hired Park Place to create an A-grade game.
29:50But what he didn't know was that he was getting the B-team.
29:59So Richard had hired developer Park Place to build Sega Football for the Genesis console.
30:04I had hired Park Place because they had done Monday Night Football.
30:09We would ask them to produce a script, which was basically, tell me what you're going to make, and then a development plan, which was, tell me how you're going to make it.
30:17Park Place Productions, it was a very small company. I'd say seven or eight people were there.
30:23Troy Linden, the president of Park Place, called me and had an interesting offer.
30:28He wanted me to start a new football game.
30:31And that game?
30:32Sega Genesis Football. There was no name, there was no title to it.
30:37There was a brief design I was given from Electronic Arts for what the football game should become.
30:42What's on TV, not what's in person, is the obvious idea.
30:46I think that was the biggest concern going in, is how could I deliver this level of a new game that hasn't really been done before.
30:54And just to clarify, Jim was the only guy at Park Place hired to work on the game.
30:59For the prototype, I got to make all the decisions. Nobody was looking over my shoulder.
31:04During the first two months of development on this, I was supposed to be getting a technical design document ready, but I didn't do that.
31:11I kind of put that aside and just started working on the game.
31:14I wanted to do a 3D field. I also wanted the players to have a physics engine that drove them, so that their movement on the field would look realistic.
31:23Right off the bat, those were my two goals, and I really wanted to prove those two things.
31:28So after two months, EA came calling to check on what they thought was the paper-only version of the development process.
31:35So my technical director at the time, a guy named Scott Kranz, and I, when we had that meeting,
31:42we discovered that the engineers that were on our project were not the engineers that we thought were on our project.
31:47Rich thought that in Park Place Productions, he'd hired the same team who built ABC Monday Night Football.
31:54But in truth...
31:55None of those people were working on my product.
31:57I think Electronic Arts thought that Troy Linden, the president of Park Place, was doing this game.
32:02We walked in the room and metaphorically took the guns out of our pocket and put them on the table.
32:07Meaning, we're here to kill this thing.
32:10They were expecting to talk about it.
32:12So the first thing he said is, well, I'm going to do this 3D field.
32:16I'm going to be able to make it so that, depending on what side of the field,
32:19the field's perspective will change to give you the sense that your perspective has changed within the game.
32:24And we're like, ah, ha, ha, ha, how are you going to do that?
32:27They actually got to see a prototype.
32:29So he said, how about like this? And he turns the machine on and it's running.
32:33Everything had to be lined up just right so it looked correctly.
32:36All the players had to be sized smaller as they went farther away and larger.
32:40And that was part of the physics model of how the game worked.
32:44And so I look at Scott and was like, okay, didn't think that was going to happen.
32:48So then we get the next thing out on our list.
32:50That one is, how are you going to get 22 players running around the field?
32:53He goes, how about like this?
32:56The Sega Genesis had a lot of capabilities.
33:00The way that their graphics could support horizontal scanning of lines separately.
33:05I could repurpose the sprites from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen.
33:12At which point I'm now looking at Scott and going like, I think I'm going to put my gun away.
33:17I knew even before they got there, this was good.
33:19This hardware on the Sega Genesis is awesome.
33:22And it can do things that nobody's seen before.
33:24Jim was, from the very beginning, somebody who showed a real talent for what we were doing.
33:29We had a very fun to play game in, I think, about three months, probably less.
33:36And Jim's arrival on the scene couldn't have come at a better time.
33:39Because there was some dark clouds growing.
33:42About that same time, we started to hear about Sega's plans for that fall.
33:46They were planning to do this game called Joe Montana Football.
33:50Sega's ego was still a little bruised from Trip's reverse engineering stunt.
33:54I knew that we were picking a fight with Sega.
33:58They were going to spend $10 million to advertise that game.
34:01Their old nemesis from Atari's three-on-three football was back.
34:05Welcome to Joe Montana Football.
34:06At the time, the game was still in development.
34:10Welcome to Joe Montana Football.
34:11At the time, Montana was fresh off his fourth Super Bowl win.
34:15Great game.
34:16But hey, EA had Sega Genesis Football.
34:20Stand by with the bleep button.
34:22Oh.
34:23So we had a marketing discussion about our product.
34:26The John Madden brand was our sacrosanct brand.
34:29And basically said, Trip, we got to call it John Madden Football.
34:32We got to.
34:33We can't go out there as Sega Football against Joe Montana.
34:35That will not work.
34:37And so John Madden was a relatively late choice in the product's development,
34:42driven by the fact that we had Joe to answer for.
34:46It would be a close race,
34:48because the company developing Joe Montana was Mediagenic,
34:51and it was a scramble to the finish line for them as well.
34:54Since I don't like being rushed, we're taking extra time to perfect my game.
34:58Sega, they'd signed an expensive deal with Joe Montana,
35:02and whoever was building it for them was floundering.
35:06Mediagenic has been leading Sega on over the course of months
35:10about the state of the game.
35:12And when Sega finally in September is like,
35:14hey, I need this game by November, what have you got?
35:19They learn that the game is far from completion and won't be done in time.
35:23We needed Joe Montana Football done in time for Christmas of that year.
35:27Cool.
35:28It became extremely clear to us that they were not going to make it.
35:33In the fall of 1990,
35:35Sega was developing its own football game for their Genesis console.
35:39It may be my best game of the season.
35:41And so EA had to pivot.
35:43All the Madden stuff came into the product really late.
35:45More than just a simple name change,
35:47Jim now had a whole heap more work to do.
35:50Number one, he's going on the splash screen.
35:52The other thing we did was we adopted John's playbooks.
35:55I would code them up and get them to play well.
35:58It was complicated.
36:00Every team had different player ratings.
36:02They had different formations, different personnel you could bring in.
36:06Probably the one clear design invention that I'm responsible for in that product
36:11was we had something called passing windows.
36:14And it made it possible for you to decide, I'm going to throw it to A, B, or C.
36:18There were three little windows.
36:20I personally was not very excited about it,
36:23but Electronic Arts felt very strongly about it.
36:26But in the end, I think they made the right choice.
36:28Jim and the team were pushing hard to beat Joe Montana to market.
36:32And then the phone rang.
36:35Okay, we got to do Joe Montana for those guys.
36:37Sega had fired Mediagenic.
36:40So Sega turns to Electronic Arts and says,
36:43Well, you made a football game. Can you help me out?
36:46And I'm like, I'm literally, no.
36:49Because, you know, I have spent the last year doing the impossible.
36:52I have been absolutely David defeating Goliath.
36:57The last thing in the world I'm going to do then is help him up.
36:59But like it or not, by now, EA and Sega had become strange bedfellows.
37:04Electronic Arts was transitioning to becoming a console developer.
37:09Not creating this Joe Montana game would have put them in a very bad position.
37:13And Sega would have said, do I want to continue to partner with a company
37:16that's not going to have my back when I need them?
37:19Especially when you consider that I gave them everything they asked for
37:23when they became a license only a few months ago.
37:26But time was not on their side.
37:28We needed Joe Montana football done in time for Christmas.
37:32Trip Hawkins says, take the Madden engine and strip out all the simulation parts.
37:37I did an edited version of Madden is the way I would describe it.
37:40We took the scaling screen out, got to be a 2D only screen.
37:43We cut the playbooks way down.
37:46I think there were 16 plays on each side. That's it.
37:49But for the most part, we managed it to be a six week job.
37:52And while they didn't quite make it by Christmas,
37:55that product shipped in January of 1991.
37:59By then, it was too little too late.
38:02Because the game that did make it in time for Christmas,
38:05Get in there, get my guys in there.
38:07John Madden, American football.
38:09With 17 different teams and more than 100 plays.
38:12And it dominated sales that Christmas.
38:14And into 1990, moving 400,000 retail units.
38:18It was the first game that we ran out of cartridges for.
38:21At retail, you could not find one.
38:23I think I first became aware of the fact that this game was a hit.
38:28When I saw it on the cover of a video game magazine saying it was game of the year.
38:32And as for Joe Montana football.
38:35Like guys from the 49ers weren't playing Joe Montana football.
38:38They were playing John Madden football.
38:40On the Sega Genesis, it was designed perfectly for that machine.
38:44Meanwhile, a follow up to the original Madden was eventually released for PCs.
38:49But with its outdated graphics, it floundered upon release.
38:53Further cementing that Sega was Electronic Arts future.
38:57You know, there really wasn't a lot going on on the Genesis.
39:01And it became a Madden machine.
39:03It was a huge success.
39:04Electronic Arts made the Sega Genesis the go to console for sports.
39:09EA would eventually begin releasing Madden yearly.
39:13Need I say more? Okay, I will.
39:15Football, he studies it, analyzes it, puts it in his game.
39:18With each iteration, the stats getting deeper and more refined.
39:22The players grading process got more and more complex.
39:25When we first started, the most grades for any player was 12 grades.
39:29Now, I think it's closer to 300.
39:32Professional football players were playing this game.
39:35Since 2001, I've been playing this damn game.
39:38And not only were they playing it, but it was a big deal to them.
39:40And it was a big deal that they were in the game.
39:42And it was a big deal they were good in the game.
39:44If you disrespect me this year, we're going to have some real issues.
39:47The culmination of Trip Hawkins' 20 year obsession with creating the perfect football game
39:52was realized with the release of John Madden Football.
39:55And it's gone on to become an empire.
39:59It's just this amazing sort of journey across a lot of work, a lot of people's effort
40:05to make this game great year after year.
40:07And none of it would have been possible without the man on the splash screen.
40:11I had no idea that having the Madden on it would make any difference at all.
40:15I thought people would just buy the game because it's a great football game.
40:18John Madden became the coach for generations of football gamers
40:22and stayed on the cover of every release until 2000.
40:26Then returned in 2023 to commemorate his sad passing.
40:32The one thing that John would want everybody to focus on was coach.
40:38That's how I'll always remember I'm losing it.
40:43Football was John Madden.
40:47All the successes he had, the day he was inducted into the Hall of Fame
40:51was easily the best day of his life.
40:54He wanted to be remembered as a coach.
40:59But that's why I think he loved the fact that he had a video game.
41:03We've gone from what they do on television to, in the last couple of years,
41:08television starting to copy things that we do in the game.
41:11So there's been a complete circle there.
41:16And we ended up helping define what a television sports experience is,
41:20much to our surprise.
41:22Trip Hawkins and John Madden, two very different men united by one thing,
41:27their love of football.
41:30And while Trip and Madden's call to destiny began on a train,
41:33for the next leg of our journey, we'll need to answer the call of duty.
41:38And try not to piss me off.