See quote below. Personally I see him as a moronic idiot who had some excellent franchises and did a great job of destroying them (High Heat Baseball, Might & Magic series) and plowed them into early graves. I still can’t believe he tried to “buy” good reviews for his games too. I think this guy deserves to be in the Hall of Shame.
With the 2005 D.I.C.E. Summit set to kick off later today, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced that Trip Hawkins will be awarded the AIAS Hall of Fame Award. Set to receive the award at the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony set to be held at the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas on February 1, the award’s given to those that have made a significant impact or contribution in the industry.
“It is an incredible honor to be recognized by my distinguished peers in the industry,” said Trip Hawkins. “It is a great privilege to join the industry¹s greatest luminaries and be one of few to be named an AIAS Hall of Fame inductee. I love this industry and am not finished pushing its boundaries.”
Trip Hawkins created his first game, Football Simulation, in 1973 following his graduation from Harvard. He later worked at Apple, then in 1982 moved on to work at Electronic Arts. In the 90s, Hawkins left EA and formed 3DO. After the closing of 3DO, Hawkins formed mobile company, Digital Chocolate. The 2005 D.I.C.E. Summit will run from January 31st, 2005, (tonight) through February 2nd, 2005 at Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas, NV.
Trip helped create Electronic Arts. He marketed game designers as rock stars before anyone thought to do this; maybe developers could answer whether or not they’d like to be featured in advertisements? His company made Pinball Construction Set and Cut & Paste word processor (both of which featured mouse-like interfaces before the Mac existed), MULE, Hard Hat Mack, Murder on the Zinderneuf, Racing Destruction Set, Dr. J versus Larry Bird (which effectively started licensed sports games), blah blah blah. Tons of amazing, amazing games, all important for various reasons.
If you ignore much of the later days of 3DO, which were pretty much a disaster, he was undeniably a pioneer in the industry. Hell, even the 3DO console was ahead of its time.
But I’m bought off. He once bought me lunch. We talked about baseball.
Exactly. What about richard garriot, or steve meretzky, or ken silverman? These guys haven’t made a splash in a couple of years but they did advance the industry as a whole.
Now trip didn’t do any thing to directly improve games. He’s just a biz guy. But he’s a good one-- he built an empire. He (or EA, if you prefer, but he led and founded EA) played a big part in making gaming mainstream.
Steve, I didn’t know any of the early stuff, but you can’t deny the last 5 years he became a CEO nitwit. And as far as bought off, I’m referrign to the letter he wrote (gamepro?) where he was mad the mag gave some game 3do made bad reviews and he stated several times that the amount of advertising in their magazine should have bought 3do a better review.
SO basically, it like you’re saying to Blake Edwards, “But what have you done for me lately?” Perhaps before you rant against an award for a lifetime’s work, you should know about their life, not just some of his decisions you personally don’t like.
Regardless, I think other developer’s deserved this award before Trip…
Honestly, I don’t think ANYONE has liked ANY decisions Trip has made in the last 5+ years. I don’t know much/anything about Blake Edwards, but did he take a great company/IP and personally drive them into the ground?
Yeah he’s one of the early pioneers, he should be in.
jpinards argument is very similiar to the arguments against enshrining someone like Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage in the Baseball Hall of Fame. They were closers before the role of closer became that of a one inning specialist. So the public at large is amazed by the huge save totals that closers of today are racking up and less impressed by what Sutter and Gossage did for their teams despite them being true pioneers and groundbreakers for their era. Instead of going back and evaluating Sutter and Gossage in their time, they’re being evaluated against a totally different era (see also: Jim Rice).
Perhaps now that steve took a few moments to enlighten jpinard and show him the forest for the trees, he’ll realize Trip Hawkins is Hall of Fame caliber.
Well, like who? Who’s done more to affect the entire industry over the last 20-25 years?
OK, let’s try a more contemporary example. If John Carmack spends the next five years behaving erratically and destructively, driving iD into the turf and singlehandedly torpedoing the Doom and Quake licenses [note to self: insert monster closet joke here], does that then mean that he doesn’t deserve credit anymore for the enormous influence he had over the rise of the FPS genre?
You realize, of course, that without Trip, there wouldn’t have been a company to drive into the ground to begin with? And EA is hardly “in the ground.”
Isn’t that treating game designers like rock stars part of the problem with gaming today? How many times do you want to play games like Daikatana, American McGhees whatever, Chris Sawyer’s locomotion. In the book publishing world putting the author’s name first is a seal of quality because that author has talent and puts out good books. In the game industry there are a few hard working designers that put out the hits with regularity but with the exception of Sid Meier their name isn’t on the front of the box.
I’m sure Trip is a nice guy but treating developers like rock stars makes them act like rock stars. They put out a couple of solid hits, then they get lazy, megalomanicial and coke/drink themselves into uselessness. Then they produce a bunch of crappy solo projects and ruin their good name until no one wants what they are producing anymore.
My dis-taste for Tip has nothing to do with EA Derek. But it’s great you can make incorrect assumptions on my behalf :roll: It’s nice you’re a rich sheep, since it’s obvious you’ll be beding over to take whatever EA dishes out as the continue to eat up as much of the pc market as they can.
But back to Trip… He took 3 franchises many of us loved and through total idiocy and ignorance ruined them: High Heat Baseball, Might & Magic, and Heroes of Might & Magic.
Every title in the Heroes of Might & Magic series except the first one were published by 3DO. Both HOMM2 & HOMM3 were fantastic games, 4 was the only stinker.
