Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ symbol: ERTS) is a pioneering and still prominent maker of games for personal computers (see computer games). Its fortunes largely mirror those of the game industry itself.

In 1982 Trip Hawkins and several colleagues left Apple Computer and founded a company called Amazin’ Soft-ware. The company was founded with the goal of making “software that makes a personal computer worth owning.” Hawkins also had an ambitious goal of turning it into a bil-lion-dollar company, but this goal would not be achieved until the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, after considerable internal debate, the company changed its name to Electronic Arts in late 1982. This name reflects Hawkins’s belief that computer games were an emerging art form and that their developers should be respected as artists. This would be reflected in game box covers that looked like record jackets and promi-nently featured the names of the developers.

In 1983 EA published three games for the Atari 800 computer that typified playability and diversity. Archon combined chesslike strategy with arcade-style battles; Pin-ball Construction Set let users create and play their own layouts; and the unique M.U.L.E. was a deceptively simple game of strategic resources—and one of the first multi-player video games. EA titles published in the later 1980s include an exploration game Seven Cities of Gold, the graph-ically innovative space conquest game Starflight, and the role-playing series The Bard’s Tale.

In its early years the company published games devel-oped by independent programmers, but in the late 1980s it began to develop some games in house. EA sought out innovative games and promoted them directly to retailers. While it was difficult at first to market often-obscure games to stores, as the games became successful and regular retail channels were established, EA’s revenue began to outpace that of competitors. (Hawkins left in 1991 to found the game company 3DO.)

Challenges and Criticism

By the 2000s EA, now under Larry Probst, had suffered loss of its once-dominant position in what had become an increasingly diverse industry. EA was criticized by some investment analysts for declining to follow the trend toward ultraviolent, M-rated games such as Grand Theft Auto, though the company later softened that stand. In recent years the company’s big sellers have been its graphically intense and realistic sports simulations, nota-bly John Madden Football. (Besides the NFL, EA has con-tracts with NASCAR, FIFA [soccer], and the PGA and Tiger Woods.)

In 2007 EA announced that it would come out with Macintosh versions of many of its top titles. However, crit-ics have noted that the company seems to be publishing fewer original titles in favor of yearly updates (particularly in their sports franchises).

Along with much of the game industry, EA has increas-ingly focused on console games (see game console). EA currently develops games for the leading consoles; in fact, about 43 percent of EA’s 2005 revenue came from sales for the Sony PlayStation2 alone. (Total revenue in 2008 was $4.02 billion.) EA has also been expanding into online games, starting in 2002 with an online version of The Sims, a “daily life simulator.” (See online games.)

Some critics have objected to EA’s practice of buying smaller companies in order to get control over their popu-lar games, and then releasing versions that had not been properly tested. Perhaps the most-cited example is EA’s acquiring of Origin Systems and its famous Ultima series of role-playing games. Once acquired, EA produced two new titles in the series that many gamers consider to not be up to the Ultima standard.

The company has also been criticized for requiring very long work hours from developers; it eventually settled suits from game artists and programmers demanding compensa-tion for unpaid overtime.

EA has shown continuing interest in promoting the pro-fession of game development. In 2004 the company made a significant donation toward the development of a game design and production program at the University of South-ern California.

Meanwhile, founder Hawkins has founded a company called Digital Chocolate, focusing on games for mobile devices.