The Goddess Shines on America

Three hundred miles north of Los Angeles is the city of San Jose.

Fifty miles from San Jose to the north and deep into the San Francisco Bay Area, which is the main area of ​​​​Silicon Valley.

In fact, a little north of San Jose is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay. This is a long and narrow inland harbor. Silicon Valley was formed along the east and west coasts to the north. It did not enter the Pacific Ocean until the Golden Gate Strait in San Francisco. harbor.

Electronic Arts is registered here, Redwood City is located here, which is about ten miles further south of San Francisco International Airport, which is only a short distance from South San Francisco. The West Bank of the Bay Area stretches out a section of Redwood Shores, allowing Redwood City to have the only deep-water port south of San Francisco, and the King's Avenue that runs from San Francisco to San Jose is also its main northeast-southwest road.

The Electronic Arts building is at the start of the Sequoia Shores jut into the bay.

The location was easy to find, so when Alice rushed to the building non-stop and excitedly, she was even complaining, why didn't the boss keep the company inside the peninsula? Wouldn't it be noisy for the company to face the inter-county expressway?

"But isn't the traffic more convenient?"

Slowly parking the Lincoln sedan, Lawrence, who accompanied him, smiled and said, "Besides, the bay is full of residential areas in Redwood City. If we really arrange the company there, it will be troublesome in terms of business dealings."

Alice just snorted.

At this time, EA was only a five-story building, and when Lawrence's Lincoln stopped, someone with a heart was already at the door to greet him.

"You are welcome, Mr. Lawrence, and Miss Wang."

The greeter was in his early thirties, with a big square face and thick black hair. He walked straight up from the door of the company and said enthusiastically, "I've been waiting for you for a long time! A movie from DreamWorks, haha!"

"Hello, Mr. Hawkins, I am here this time only as a venture capital broker."

Seeing that Hawkins was the first to shake hands with him, Lawrence quickly reminded with a smile: "Be a professional assistant for Alice's investment matters."

In this way, Hawkins turned his attention to Alice, slightly surprised.

When he received the call earlier, Hawkins recognized Lawrence before he could finish his introduction. Roger Lawrence, the boss of DreamWorks, for Hawkins, who loves watching movies, this name has been louder than well-known actors recently.

Buying EA was a bold proposition, but Hawkins immediately agreed, at least agreeing to negotiate with the other party instead of saying no.

This is not just because the caller is Lawrence, but Hawkins is very clear that the reason why he wants to establish Electronic Arts is to produce high-quality games. Although the company's current performance is also good, but if it can get a high investment from the boss, so that the company can develop faster and produce more high-quality games faster, why not do it?

So as early as half an hour before Lawrence called to inform that the car would arrive at EA headquarters, Hawkins was already waiting in the front lobby. He smoked one cigar after another, but it could only make him more excited. At this time, Lawrence actually revealed that the investor was the famous "Ghost Story" director, little Alice. The feeling is beyond words.

"My God! You are my idol, Alice!"

Hawkins strode forward, holding Alice's outstretched right hand tightly with both hands: "That "Ghost Story" is really cool! Really! I watched six shows in one breath! One breath, Alice, and then the whole schedule I watched it fifteen times!"

"Er... er... is it?"

"Yeah, yeah! It scared me! Don't you know, Alice, I'm a gamer, and it's not unusual for me to stay up in the middle of the night. It turns out that your film is really good, and it's specially for shooting some people after they go to sleep. , Haunted house in the middle of the night!"

Clutching Alice's right hand tightly with both hands, Hawkins couldn't stop once his mouth ran into the train: You don't know, every time I worked in the middle of the night, I had to mess up the bedroom. The lights are bright! And I live on the second floor, so I have to turn on the corridor light, turn on the living room light on the first floor, and close the bedroom door to work. Otherwise, I have to turn around every three seconds! "

"Uh...uh...well...I'm honored..."

Alice knew it, and there was absolutely no difficulty in this acquisition...

After Hawkins finally calmed down, the three went to his office together. In fact, although this building is large, the working area of ​​the employees is very concentrated. When they passed the office area, more than a dozen people at several desks all looked at Alice.

"Hey boss, isn't this Alice?"

"No way, the company's new boss is actually Alice? Haha, Tripp, I said, why did you agree to be acquired so easily? It turns out that the idol is here!"

"It's a good idea for Alice to join! Let her write the script for our game, wouldn't it be a hit for all of them!?"

This was really beyond Alice's expectations. Seeing the pleasant surprise of the dozen or so sloppy programmers on the desk, she said with a dry smile, "It seems that I'm still a bit famous in your company, otaku!" Goddess?"

It seems that there is such a posture, because there is no woman in the room...

Hawkins blushed a little. He was a 30-year-old boss after all. He was a fan of a middle school girl. He knew this kind of thing well, and it was a bit too shameful to say it.

"Shut up!"

He shouted: "Do your job honestly! I want to talk to Alice about some important things now, so keep me away from my office!"

"Good boss!"

"Go to hell!"

"Hurry up and get out, I'm busy too!"

You call me and everyone calls together, Alice knows it, Electronic Arts is worthy of Electronic Arts, with this kind of relationship between superiors and subordinates, it’s no wonder that they can’t make good games~

In this way, as soon as he walked into the CEO's office, Lawrence said with emotion: "This kind of working atmosphere is really important to a game company. It is really extraordinary that your company can achieve the current achievements after four years of establishment."

After entering the room, Hawkins became humble: "But our scale is still a bit small after all. If we can usher in a high expansion, even if we immediately challenge Nintendo, I will hug me!"

Well, is this modesty or showing off?

However, Alice will choose to acquire Electronic Arts at this time, which can be said to be stuck.

Electronic Arts is Tripp Hawkins, a former Apple employee who founded it in 1982, and he was the only employee for the first six months. The original veterans made up 12 people. As for the overall development, it will be delayed until 1984 when the vice president of sales, Larry Probst, joins. After that, EA really grew rapidly.

Well, since it has been developing at a high speed since 1984, if Alice does not take advantage of the acquisition now, but wants to do so in the future, it will be much more difficult.

In other words, as a typical programmer, the functionality of Hawkins' office is far more important than comfort. Except for the necessary reception sofa, there is hardly any extra decoration in the house, but it happens to be on the wall...

"Jurassic Park?"

A large poster was pasted on it, and Alice looked at it strangely.

"If it wasn't for the lack of technology, I actually planned to make it into a game!"

Hawkins said happily: "The plot is like this. After being blocked by a rampant carnivorous dinosaur, the protagonist of the game must find a way to escape from the park. But although this idea is good, I couldn't think of how to design it for a while. .”

Alice nodded in agreement and said, "Judging from the current host performance, whether it's buildings, characters, or monsters, they are just simple piles of color blocks. Your plot concept is tantamount to treating the game as an interactive game." It is not something that current game consoles and home computers can casually support.”

This is Alice's sincere speech. After all, from her point of view, the picture quality of games in the 1990s, not to mention the 1980s, is appalling. Think about it, when a person is used to playing various 3A masterpieces in the 21st century, and suddenly turns around to face Super Mario in the 1980s, that feeling...

"Interactive movie? Color block stacking?"

However, even though it was just Alice's casual remark, it immediately made Hawkins stand where he was, as if possessed by a demon: "Make the game... like a movie, Alice, what do you mean! ?”

"Any game can have a plot. Even the simplest games like Snake and Tetris can tell a story if they are cleverly designed."

There was no suspense about the acquisition itself. Seeing that the topic was inevitably going to discuss games, Lawrence was naturally happy to be an audience. After serving a cup of coffee, he happily sat on the sofa after finishing his duties as a driver, and just kept silent.

"Think about it, isn't Nintendo's new Super Mario ending just to save the princess? It's just that the current computer performance is still very poor, even if there is a plot, it's just a simple display of subtitles."

Of course Alice was happy to give Hawkins some inspiration: "But I think, you should have heard of Moore's Law? It won't be long before the improvement of computer performance will give the game a lot of room for development. You know, the more stories there are The more the game can arouse the interest of more players, if we directly add game operation elements based on a movie-style script, are we afraid that the players will not be addicted?"

To be able to establish a game company and lead it to the top of the world, Hawkins' talent is naturally needless to say. After hearing Alice's announcement, his eyes lit up immediately.