Playing to Win

A PASSION FOR THE GAME
It's hard to overstate how passionate EA game designers are about the products that they make. Nearly everyone you meet mentions that he grew up playing games: Pong, Pac-Man, even the obscure text-only games that left everything up to the imagination. "My favorite form of entertainment is games," says Danny Bilson, vice president of intellectual-property development, who has nonetheless written or directed over 150 hours of television and cowrote the movie The Rocketeer. "The reason why I work for this company is because I love games."

Traditionally, games are a guy thing -- more specifically, according to industry demographics, a 16-to-24-year-old-guy thing. As the market keeps expanding, though, the enthusiasts at EA have to figure out how to make products for people who are not like them. The casual gamer. The novice. EA is going after this audience with new content and game play. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was the biggest launch in company history, selling more than 9 million copies in fiscal year 2002. It was especially popular among children under 14, a younger audience than EA has traditionally drawn. It's easy to understand why. "They may never have played games before, but they go to a lot of movies," says Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications. "Their first time out, they go for the familiar."

According to EA, The Sims appeals to teenagers, parents, grandparents -- many of them casual gamers. More than half of its audience is women, unheard of in video games. As one staffer laments, "My aunt blames me for losing her job because she played The Sims so much at work." Part of the charm is that The Sims isn't a strange or threatening fantasy world. On the contrary, it's contemporary ordinary life. The simulated people, or "sims," take out the trash, go to work, make pizza, make friends, date, and fight -- the stuff of real life.

In attracting new customers, though, EA has to be careful not to lose its core customers, who don't want to see their beloved games dumbed down for newbies. So EA has begun focusing on the first five minutes of game play. That's how long a customer at Best Buy or Wal-Mart may spend trying out a game. The challenge is to create an experience that leaves these two distinctly different consumers with different impressions of the same game. It must be easy enough for one, yet hard enough for the other. "Some people don't like to lose, so you've got to give them a positive experience the first time they play," says Bing Gordon, EA's chief creative officer. "But at the same time, give a hard-core gamer the promise of challenging stuff to come."

RAISE YOUR GAME
Snoop Dogg has a fantasy that only EA can fulfill: He wants to play basketball like Kobe Bryant. Just listen to him rap in "Get Live."
Ya see my game is to back ya down and bang on ya.
I'm gonna bring it to your whole team,
Tryin' to win the whole thing,
Size me up for the ring.
I'm celebratin' while the other team's mad, their heads down hating,
waiting to get another rematch, but we ain't seein' that, believe that.
Next.

EA's sports franchises come out every year. And every year, the challenge is the same: Make them better than and different from last year's games. "We're trying to change the perception that it's just a roster update," says Steve Chiang, the general manager of EA Tiburon and the former executive producer of Madden NFL. "We think of five major hooks and five minor hooks that we mention on the box. But there are hundreds of other changes." One major hook in Madden NFL 2003 is being able to play online. Friends on opposite coasts can square off in a game between the New England Patriots and the San Francisco 49ers. Another hook is having Monday Night Football announcers John Madden and Al Michaels provide commentary in real time.

Hard-core gamers expect video games to reflect the latest advances. If EA doesn't offer a substantial upgrade, another company might, making its game this year's hot basketball or football title. Consumers also want cool new features. Enter Snoop Dogg: rapper, basketball fan, and Los Angeles Laker. Instead of just offering a great soundtrack -- NBA Live features hip-hop while Madden NFL has rock music -- the NBA Live 2003 team had a brainstorm: original music. EA asked several rappers if they would be interested in writing songs specifically for the soundtrack. It was a slam dunk. Some of the musicians visited EA's state-of-the-art recording studio in Vancouver and did their thing. "We asked ourselves, 'What's the next step in delivering a total entertainment experience?' " says Jeff Karp, vice president of marketing. "We feel that music adds another emotional element to the game." Not to mention a nifty marketing angle. The songs are available only on the game disc, but EA is providing radio stations with copies in hopes of generating buzz.