Producer Warren Spector worked at Origin from 1989 to 1996. Project teams endorsed Beeman’s doctrine: “Sleep is for the weak.” In recent years, Electronic Arts has taken heat for its sweatshop working conditions, but marathon crunches were a fact of life at Origin long before the purchase. We had a motto for it: ‘A game’s only late until it ships, but it sucks forever.’ If the game’s creative vision demanded a megabyte of graphics, and the only way to load that into memory was to write our own operating system – ” (the dubious “voodoo memory” scheme Origin created in 1992 for Ultima VII: The Black Gate) ” – well, that’s what we did, and damn the risk to the schedule or the consequences to the budget, not to mention the programmers’ lives.” Origin project director Stephen Beeman recalls, “Origin’s cardinal virtue was its commitment to do whatever it took to ship the director’s vision. The company later took the slogan “We create worlds.” Founding Origin with $70,000 in family money, he and his brother Robert created a culture that prized creative vision and expansive, thoroughly developed game settings. Garriott had already gotten rich in high school, from a game he coded in BASIC in his bedroom and sold in a ziplock bag. Why did Origin sell? It was partly due – brace yourself – to the price of floppy disks.įounded in 1983, Origin was a creature of the dawn. The sad story could be a case study for future MBA students.
Yet Origin never sold its soul rather, EA spent the next 12 years gradually and painfully devouring it.
The next year, 1992, Origin entered dire financial straits and sold out to EA. In 1991 Hawkins left EA to found the short-lived 3DO Company. This reference in Ultima VII proved prophetic. The three items that power the Guardian’s evil generators are a cube, a sphere and a tetrahedron – the former EA logo. turn out to be murderers in league with the player’s nemesis, the Guardian. Two high-profile nonplayer characters, Elizabeth and Abraham, perform seemingly helpful tasks for the player – but E. Ultima designer and Origin co-founder Richard “Lord British” Garriott even worked an EA reference into Ultima VII (1992). For Hawkins the question was never, “How good is this game?” It was always, “How can we sell this?” To high-minded execs at Origin – makers of the Ultima and Wing Commander series, the high priests of the high end, who valued commitment to an artistic vision – this attitude was sacrilege. This is the way we’re going to win.”įurthermore, EA was all about marketing. Forced into a costly out-of-court settlement, Origin execs asked Trip Hawkins why he had allowed the suit he responded, “This is just business. As one example, EA had filed a frivolous lawsuit against Origin. Hawkins III, founder of Electronic Arts? Because (as this exec explained) EA meant to win in the computer game business not only by making good games, but by preventing competitors from making good games too – by actively interfering with their ability to do business. The speaker: an executive at the computer game company Origin who today, no doubt, would prefer to remain anonymous. The scene: a bar at a gaming convention in the late 1980s.
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