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In the mid-80’s, a young man
from Pasadena was the head of his own gaming company. He had an
idea in his pocket for a brand-new football game, and he wanted
to get a big name to endorse it. He tracked down the biggest
name he could think of at the time on his private bus – former
NFL head Coach turned TV Commentator, John Madden.
Coach Madden patiently listened
to the pitch that the young man gave him, until he heard that
the new game was to be a 7-on-7 game. Coach Madden was adamant.
"It has to be 11-on-11 or it’s not real football. If it’s
not real football, then I don’t want any part of it!" So
the young man agreed.
In 1989, John Madden Football for
the Apple II made its debut, and a legend was born.
For this reason, for heading the
company that has changed the way sports games are played, for
being a leader and innovator in the sports gaming industry that
the rest of the pack has yet to catch, and for giving us the
nucleus of EA Sports as we now know it, we are proud to announce
Trip Hawkins as a charter member of the PC Football Hall of
Fame.
Trip Hawkins was born 1954, and
grew up in Pasadena, California. He started out his gaming
career by designing his own board games in high school. Mr.
Hawkins went to Harvard where he combined social science and
computer courses to create his own interdisciplinary major,
strategy and applied game theory. He also enrolled on the MBA
program at Stanford, and upon graduating joined Apple as manager
of market research at a time when it had 50 employees and had
sold 2,000 computers in its history. While reporting to the
founders of the company over a period of four years, Mr. Hawkins
helped develop and introduce many successful products as Apple
grew to 4,000 employees and joined the Fortune 500. He left
Apple in May 1982.
Founded Amazing Software, later
to become Electronic Arts, with Bing Gordon, a college friend,
and others in 1982, where he was CEO for nine years and chairman
of the board for 12 years. Electronic Arts rose in only four
years to become the largest supplier of computer entertainment
software in the world and achieved a consistency in profits and
growth unrivaled in the industry.. Originally they planned to
only produce games for computers, but by 1990 they conceded that
they should enter the market for console software too.
Electronic Arts went public in 1990 at US$8 a share - this rose
to US$35 within a year.
In December 1990 he turned over
more of the day to day control of EA to Larry Probst and Bing
Gordon.
Trip Hawkins then became Founder,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The 3DO Company. Founded
in 1991, 3DO developed, published, and distributed interactive
entertainment software for personal computers, the Internet, and
advanced entertainment systems such as the PlayStation game
console and the Nintendo(R) 64 game system, and was a licensed
publisher of software products compatible with the PlayStation 2
computer entertainment system. 3DO marketed and published its
products worldwide under multiple brand names including Army
Men(R), Heroes(TM), High Heat Baseball(TM), Might and Magic(R),
Vegas Games(R), and World Destruction League(TM).
In Late 2003, 3DO fell into
bankruptcy, and was bought out by Microsoft. Mr Hawkins is
currently starting up a new company to create entertainment
applications that will run on mobile handsets called Digital
Chocolate.
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