I see a different angle on the buyout of EA, one that took a few hours to well up in my heart. I was one of the first 50 employees of Electronic Arts, joining in late 1983 as one of a small group of producers. The console games business where I’d been Director of Game Development on Intellivision at Mattel had just collapsed.
Many people thought that this “Can a computer make you cry?” magazine ad was just marketing fluff.
It wasn’t.
We all believed that, at our best, game designers were producing art. We believed that game development was of equal creative standing with music, film, television and literature. We believed that by working with artistic people (and using our tech to magnify their visions) we could create and publish games that would do more than just entertain people. We were trying to create games that moved people, that brought out emotions as they played that made those play experiences memorable.
As in, “Can a computer make you cry?”
If you eavesdropped in the hallways (we all had cubes, no private offices) you’d quickly learn that these feelings were all real, and that they were shared all across the team at every level. We thought that a company that was treating games as art could also be profitable and grow into a major business.
That EA gradually evolved into the company we see today as it achieved that business success. But no matter how many years have passed, I (and many of my early EA brethren) still believe that across this industry our best games represent a new and potent form of Art. I still believe that the people who make games are Artists. I still believe that we can create games that move people, that bring out emotions as they play that make those play experiences memorable.
So memorable that people still come up to thank me for games our teams made that they played and loved 40 years ago.
That EA may be long gone, but its vision has not and will not fade with time.