"You are wasting your time at Harvard by monkeying around with games."
-- A Harvard professor's sage advice to Trip Hawkins
His real name is
William M. Hawkins III, but everyone knows him as Trip Hawkins. Writing a biography of Trip Hawkins is
tantamount to writing a history of
Electronic Arts and the early days of computer games, including
Ozark Softscape/
M.U.L.E. However, those looking for a detailed history of
EA should view that node. (Same goes for
3DO, notably
Anatole's excellent write up.)
Hawkins was born in 1954 in
Pasadena, California. In high school his hobby was designing his own board games. He carried his love for games over to
Harvard. At Harvard, the dark-haired,
charismatic ("Smarter than
Bill. Better looking that
Jobs.") youth convinced the administration to let him carve out his own
interdisciplinary degree. Taking an assortment of
computer science and
sociology courses he got what he calls a B.A. in "
Strategy and Applied Game Theory".
While at Harvard in the mid-70s, he invented a tabletop
football game. With financial backing from his dad (a physics grad from
Dartmouth), he manufactured the game and sold it via mail. People loved the game but Hawkins couldn't sell enough via
mail order to make it
a go. One of the limitations of the game was it required a lot of record keeping. Hawkins quickly recognized a computer would be an ideal
game machine, able to handle record keeping, but home computers were still a few years off. Hawkins also realized computer game companies would be big money when home computers were common place. Biding his time he enrolled in
Stanford and got his MBA.
Hawkins timing could not have been more perfect. On graduating he got a job right away as Apple's very first
marketing person. He was employee 68. In the early days of
Apple, everyone knew everyone else's employee number. Lower the number, higher your status and your perceived
net worth.
By 1982, home computers were well established and Hawkins realized the time was right to act on his computer game company idea. His time at Apple was informative, however. Apple treated its computers and software like works of
art. Its programmers and designers were treated like artists. His computer game company, then, would be the same. However, there are artists and then there are artists. Right? No one wants to form a company of artists that don't sell big until they die. The biggest selling living artists were
rock stars. Taking a cue from the music industry (not to mention the fact that
A&M founder Jerry Moss was an early investor), Hawkins decided to form a game company along the lines of a record company. This is one of the reason EA published computer games in packaging that resembled
record sleeves.
Hawkins was also big on making games approachable. During his time at Apple he had to deal with a lot of
nerds. And not just any nerds. I'm talking the lowest of the low: nerds that worked in retail shops like
Computerland. You know the type: snarky, without talent (unless you count reading
Kevin J. Anderson Star Wars novels a talent) and ready to pounce on you if you betrayed the slightest
ignorance of computers.
Hawkins along with several partners from Apple founded EA in 1982. Originally Hawkins wanted to call his company "Amazin' Software". His partners absolutely hated the name. Hawkins was wise enough to farm out the naming to some
ad wizards. Hawkins'
business model was not to be a software maker, per se, but a distributor, distributing the best works of other game companies. This model seemed a lot like the original business model of the
United Artists movie studio. The ad wizards suggested "Electronic Arts". That dovetailed nicely with an EA partner's suggested company name "
SoftArt". Unfortunately, that name was too close to
Software Arts, the all-powerful maker of
VisiCalc. (A few years later, Hawkins managed to sneak by his original name by forming a low-cost C-64 distribution wing called
Amazing Software.)
EA's original business plan was to be a billion dollar company in six years. EA achieved that although it actually took them twelve years.
While heading EA, Hawkins innovated the idea of linking computer games with real world celebrities. The first computer game to carry a celebrity connection was Hawkins'
Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One. Basketball stars
Julius Irving and
Larry Bird got paid something like $25,000 for use of their names, a huge bargain even in the '80s. The game was a massive best seller and never again would a sports celeb lend his name for such a
derisory sum.
In 1991, after 9 years as
CEO of EA, Hawkins was itching to get in on the hardware side of the game and he founded
3DO. 3DO would borrow from his EA model. He wasn't a hardware maker, his company merely set the standards and licensed the specs. Some big names signed on, like Korea's
GoldStar (makers of terrible microwaves) and Japan's
Matsushita (a company unknown in the west by its Japanese name but instantly recognizable as
Panasonic).
For 3DO's hardware design, Hawkins grabbed some of the most underrated over achievers in the gaming field. His chief designers were
Dave Needle and
R.J. Mical. Needle and Mical designed the
Atari Lynx and the
Amiga. Alas, third time was not the charm for Needle and Mical and they watched yet another innovative design swirl down the drain. Sales of 3DO hardware were not stellar. The game engine was remarkable on paper but by the time it got to market,
Nintendo,
Sony, and
Sega leap frogged them on the technology front and undercut the console price. The flaw in Hawkins licensing concept was manufacturers making 3DO only made 3DO. They could not, like Nintendo or Sony, sell their hardware
at cost or at a loss to drive game sales. Manufacturers needed to sell 3DO for about $400 to make a profit, while Sony, with
deep deep pockets, could sell
PlayStation for $200 and recoup money on game sales and third-party game licenses.
In 1995
People Magazine named him one of the world's 50 Sexiest People.
For hobbies, Hawkins enjoys attending
San Francisco Giants games. He's a season-ticket holder. For the last two decades, he has been playing
softball with the same four friends in a San Mateo city league, also known as the "
Rotisserie League". Hawkins' love of sports instilled in him a deep and wide respect for
fair play. In business Hawkins always tried to play by the rules. For example, while at EA, he refused to raid the staffs of his main competitors like
Broderbund.