TITLE
How John Madden Became the ‘Larger-Than-Life’ Face of a Gaming Empire
AUTHOR
Kellen Browning
Kevin Draper
PUBLICATION
The New York Times
YEAR
2021
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
Trip Hawkins first met John Madden in the dining car of an Amtrak train traveling from Denver to Oakland, Calif., in 1984, after Madden had agreed to lend his name and football prowess to a football simulation video game. Madden, the legendary coach and broadcaster, quickly made it clear who would be calling the shots.Because of the limits of computer processing power, Hawkins, who had founded the gaming company Electronic Arts two years earlier, floated the idea of a video game with seven-on-seven football, rather than the 11-on-11 version used in the N.F.L. Madden just stared at him, and said “that isn’t really football,” Hawkins recalled. He had to agree.
“If it was going to be me and going to be pro football, it had to have 22 guys on the screen,” Madden once told ESPN. “If we couldn’t have that, we couldn’t have a game.”
GAMES MENTIONED
John Madden Football
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Scott Cole
Rex Dickson
Tim Esfandiari
Trip Hawkins
John Madden
Donny Moore
Raheem Morris
Michael Vick
Cam Weber
PRINT AVAILABILITY
December 30, 2021