Electronic Arts

"American Invaders on the Way," was how COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES announced the existence of Electronic Arts to British computer owners. "Electronic Arts is the name of a new American software house set up by a group of independent games designers." (January 1984 page 16 ). The news was a little out of date. The company had been founded two years previously by ex-Apple Director Trip Hawkins. Now, for the first time, its games would be available in the UK, distributed by Centresoft, who would go on to launch US Gold later in 1984. "If US are Gold then we must be Platinum!" Trip Hawkins later told C&VG*

Electronic Arts slipped through US Gold's grasp. The company instead agreed that German company Ariolasoft would distribute their titles in Europe. This deal expired in April 1987 by which time Electronic Arts was ready to join the growing number of American companies distributing their own games in the UK.

Ground Floor, 2-3 Cursitor Street, London EC4A

The Companies House record for Electronic Arts (company number 02057591) shows it was founded in September 1986. It started out as a business called Hazlist Ltd, based at 70/74 City Road, London EC1Y. Then December 1986 sees a change of address to Ground Floor, 2-3 Cursitor Street, London EC4A and the company changes its name to EOA Ltd in January 1987. Hazlist Ltd was an off the shelf company, that's one which has been set up but has no trading history. They are ideal for anyone who want to quickly establish a company; Newsfield, publishers of CRASH and ZZAP64!, was founded in exactly the same way. The question is, at what point did Electronic Arts Inc step in and buy Hazlist Ltd for themselves as the foundation for their new company?

Companies House records Trip Hawkins (or rather, W. Hawkins III) appointed as a director on 19th January 1987 along with Tim Mott, who is also associated with the early days of Electronic Arts Inc. That confirms the name change and move are associated with EA buying Hazlist Ltd, rather than being the actions of solicitors shuffling their off the shelf companies around for boring administrative reasons. This is terribly interesting but also frustrating because I'd neglected to get a picture of Cursitor Street. Hang on.

Here it is. 

July 2023

It's long gone. Fortunately the Streetview cameras caught the previous building before it was swept out of existence around 2013. It was an unremarkable 1950s/60s office block and presumably EA used space behind the ground floor windows facing out onto the street.

Why call the UK subsidiary EOA instead of Electronic Arts? The EA logo at the time was a square, a circle, and a triangle next to each other and a similar effect was used when writing out the company name on packaging.

Someone involved in the UK company clearly took this abbreviation literally. The EOA name sticks around for six months, long enough for magazines like POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY to start using it as a title their readers would recognise. There's a POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY report headlined "EOA plans not yet AOK" (29 May-4 June 1987 page 6) which talks about some of the difficulties the new company is experiencing:

POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY
21-27 August 1987 page 10

"a spokesman said last week that the company wouldn't be ready to announce details of its UK operations for "a matter of months" The spokesman put the delay. down to negotiations over ргеmises... EOA - as the UK offshoot is called- is currently based in west London, When the UK office was opened, plans were announced to manufacture Skyfox, Mule, and the Deluxe range of graphics programs in the UK Amstrad and Spectrum conversions of existing and forthcoming programs are also expected at some date. The company's distribution contract with Ariolasoft expired at the end of April, and the current hiatus leaves ЕОА without a UK distributor."

[Frustratingly a lot of the relevant issues of POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY are missing in action; scans of March 27th and August 28th 1987, and July 28th 1988 would be gratefully received.]

EOA clearly wasn't working as a name and was formally changed to Electronic Arts Ltd on 16th July 1987 (at 3pm). August saw PERSONAL COMPUTER WEEKLY announce a list of 26 titles EA planned to release in advance of its formal launch (14-20 August 1987 page 7). The bulk of the games are for the Commodore 64, PC, Amiga, and Atari ST. Two games are also listed for the Amstrad (Archon and Arctic Fox) but none for the Spectrum. The Ramjam Corporation had already converted Archon to the Spectrum for Ariolasoft in 1985 and the Amstrad version was handled for EA by a company called Lynsoft (about who I know nothing). The Zen Room handled Arctic Fox for the Amstrad and later the Spectrum. I'm going out on a limb and guessing the Spectrum version was further behind which was why it wasn't mentioned on EA's list of launch titles. I'm going further out on a limb and assuming The Zen Room was a programming team from CRL and within a year that relationship would sour.

Langley Business Centre, 11-49 Station Road, Langley, Berkshire, SL3

Electronics Arts Ltd introduced itself to the world at the PCW Show in September 1987. CRASH followed this up by making a two page interview with Trip Hawkins the centrepiece of it's show coverage in the November 1987 issue. This always seemed like an odd decision, given EA hadn't released or advertised any Spectrum games at this point. Was the interview intended for Newsfield's new multi-format magazine THE GAMES MACHINE, but wasn't used for some reason and got repurposed. Anyway, CRASH briefly mentions that UK software houses CRL and Nexus have signed up with EA as "affiliated labels." EA would handle distribution of games for its affiliates leaving them to "concentrate on product and make more product and make better product." Martech also signed up as an affiliate by December 1987. EA's first game in the UK is probably PHM Pegasus. That's the first game to be advertised starting around September/October 1987 . It's a Lucasfilm game. This is also odd. Activision distributed Lucasfilm games in the UK and, apart from PHM Pegasus and it's sequel Strike Fleet, they continued to do so all the way up to 1988's Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders.

Then the affiliates programme starts to go wrong. Nexus went bankrupt, due to "historic indebtedness," in December 1987. Next CRL and EA split acrimoniously in June 1988. "Rumours abound that EA are far from happy with the software that affiliate label CRL have been producing," wrote ACE (June 1988 page 11). The following month the news for CRL was worse: "CRL are alleging that EA owe them a lot of money under the terms of the distribution agreement signed a year ago. EA are countering with the claim that CRL's games just weren't of the 'high industry standard' stipulated." The writs started flying and, as so often happens, once things went to law the story disappears from magazines. The comment about the standard of the games is interesting, given EA were caught out by the furore over CRL's game Jack the Ripper. The first game to be rated 18 by the BBFC and the third in CRL's moral panic bating series, the two previous games Dracula and Frankenstein had been rated 15. WH Smith refused to stock Jack the Ripper describing it as "'pretty nasty," and "not suitable for their software buying public"; SINCLAIR USER (December 1987 page 20). John Forrest, a director of EA, told POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY: "We knew it would be certified, but 1 thought it was in the same genre as other releases, so we have not really informed dealers in. any major way." (November 19-27 1987 page 1)

CRL's Jeff Lee described the aftermath of the fall out to Graeme Mason as part of an interview for RETRO GAMER and you can read some of his unused interview at wizwords.net :"In June 1988, half the staff were made redundant because Electronic Arts either held back or completely stopped payment (EA were in dispute with CRL over the their distribution agreement); this was catastrophic because they were our exclusive distributor." Jeff also briefly mentions the terms of "the distribution arrangement we had with Electronic Arts, which had a contractual requirement on us to supply 10 SKU's (single title on a single format) per month." This brings to mind the deal Imagine did with Marshall Cavendish and another between Odin and Telecomsoft, to supply 10 games in one year for their Firebird label. Martech also ended up opting out of the affiliates label; annoyingly I've managed to loose the reference to this but I'm 75% sure it was around December 1988.

EA published a game called Fusion in 1988. It received middling to good reviews but didn't set the world on fire. The developer of Fusion was Bullfrog and their second game Populous was a massive successes and won every review award going.

THE ONE
September 1989 page 17

Bullfrog's story is one for another day. The game was an important one for Electronic Arts Ltd. The British arm of the company was finally supporting a local developer and guiding them to international success. EA used to print a boxout on the inlay of each game, and it was finally living up to its high-minded mission statement: 

"We're an association of electronic artists who share a common goal. We want to fulfil the potential of personal computing. That's a tall order, but with enough imagination and enthusiasm, we think there's a good chance for success. Our products, like this one, are evidence of our intent."  

March 2023

EA, unlike Activision, didn't bother to stay in London, They very quickly moved to Langley, near Slough, which is convenient for Heathrow Airport and the main line to Paddington. I got a bit confused hunting for the Langley Business Centre. When I did my initial scouting on Streetview I became convinced the business centre was part of the site of what is now Langley College. I was wrong. The business centre is further up the road towards the station. It's not difficult to find, it just took me a while because I kept looking in the wrong place. The last Streetview photo, May 2021, shows the place open for business. By the time I arrived it was all boarded up and closed. This wrong footed me, somewhat. I hoped to take a picture looking through the gate, the only place you can still get a good look at the site, but there were a couple of security guards in the gate building who watched me with interest as I crossed the road. I decided it was better to ask for permission as the gate was set back from the pavement and potentially off public land. I was politely told "no." So, I crossed back over the road and took the view you can see above (the security guards are just out of frame to the right). It turns out the Langley Business Centre is due to be demolished. Slough Council approved the proposal in September 2020 and the site will be cleared for a new set of offices and housing.

90 Heron Drive, Langley, Berkshire, SL3

You might have noticed that Electronic Arts Ltd are still going and experiencing some success as a publisher. I'm going to cut the corporate history short here because success is just not that interesting. I'm sure Trip Hawkins will be very sad about this and I'm sure I'm skating over a lot of hard decisions and tough business calls but the abbreviated version is, EA were much more stable than Activision Ltd and their story is much more straightforward as a result. After four years at the Langley Business Centre the company jogged just over a mile down the road to Heron Drive and what is now part of the Heathrow West Business Park. 

March 2023

I couldn't find number 90. Frankly the Heathrow West Business Park needs to sort it's act out. There seem to be two businesses at 50 Heron Drive (in different buildings), and all the rest have unhelpful names that put Unit P next to Unit D. It's just not good enough. I wandered around, baffled, for a bit before taking a more general photograph to give you a sense of what it's like to be on an empty industrial estate at 10.07 on a Sunday morning. I suspect the site has been redeveloped at some point between 2000, when EA moved on, and now.

2000 Hillswood Drive, Chertsey, Surrey, KT16 0EU

March 2023

And what a place to move on to. Hillswood Drive is swish with a capital S. You turn off the M25 at junction 11, swing round a couple of roundabouts and turn off into acres of landscaped parkland. The remarkable thing about Hillswood Drive is there are no buildings in sight. The old EA office has a very American street number, 2000, but I've no idea where numbers 1-1999 are. The road takes you through sculpted countryside and past occasional signs asking you to be careful of horses or goslings crossing the road. It's almost a disappointment when the first building does come into view and it's a generic glass and brick box. Number 2000 is off to the left, hidden behind a screen of trees and across a bridge. It's lovely. A real statement address, designed to impress visitors. A steel and glass box with enormous front windows facing onto a lake. I felt I was committing some aesthetic crime just by parking in the wrong place. The problem was, there wasn't really anywhere for me to stop. The car park was protected by a barrier so in the end I just parked up in the taxi waiting area and nipped over the road. These days 2000 Hillswood Drive is the home of Samsung Europe.

Onslow House, Onslow Street, Guildford, GU1 4TN

And what of EA? Well in 2008 they moved to Guildford. Home of Bullfrog; although they were absorbed into the EA body corporate in 2001. EA are still in Guildford, 15 years later, and a slew of smaller developers have grown up around them; Hello Games, No Man's Sky; Criterion Games, Need for Speed series; Media Molecule, Little Big Planet; 22Cans, Peter Molyneux's company; and more.

April 2023

EA have a slightly more visible presence on the street than Activision; EA are at least listed on the front door of Onslow House. If you want confirmation, you need to look up to see the Titanfall box.

April 2023

I'd come to Guildford to kill two birds with one stone, a Bullfrog recce was obviously also on the cards (for later). EA's current headquarters and Bullfrog's first office are surprisingly close together. When you stand at the junction of Bridge Street and Onslow Street you can see both. Obviously I was going to use the panorama function on my camera to get both in the same shot. In the picture below, EA's office is on the right of the picture in the distance. Bullfrog's first office at 3 Bridge Street is closer on the left.

April 2023

* C&VG May 1987 page 48

Trip, mate, I'm really sorry I cut the history short. Feel free to email the edited highlights to whereweretheynow@gmail.com. Likewise, if you're Clem Chambers of CRL please send me the inside goss about what happened between you and EA. It's not actionable for libel after 35 years. Probably. I remain on Twitter @ShamMountebank. I'm not planning on moving to Threads because the name gives me nuclear war fear, but maybe I could make Instagram work...?