Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 16 Exidy
The next day.

Once again, Ethan Jones drove the Ford F-150 borrowed from Thomas Johnson, carrying a Snake game console wrapped in oilcloth, and sped towards Sunnyvale, twenty-three miles away.

In the future, this city may be part of the famous Silicon Valley, but now, the only famous company here is the massage parlor.

Of course, Ethan didn't come here to find a massage parlor. He walked around the streets of Sunnyvale for a few rounds, accepted the advice of a kind lady, and after a series of twists and turns, Ethan finally stopped in front of a factory door surrounded by iron fences. On the gate with spikes, there was a sign with Exidy written in white on a red background.

After honking the horn, a white man dressed in labor uniform emerged from the factory. After seeing the expensive Ford pickup truck, he immediately trotted over and asked, "Sir, who are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for Pete Kafman." Ethan took off his sunglasses.

The handsome face, which was as handsome as Tom Cruise, stunned the white man for a moment and he said, "Sir, I am Pete Kafman."

Then he asked, "Are you Ethan Jones? The Ethan Jones who called me yesterday?"

"Yeah, Pete, I'm Ethan."

Ethan patted the steering wheel briskly, raised his right thumb, pointed behind the car, and said, "I have already pulled over the machine I introduced to you on the phone yesterday."

"Oh, okay! Ethan, welcome to our Exidy Games company..."

Pete Kafman nodded quickly, opened the iron gate, and motioned for Ethan's car to park anywhere.

That's right, Ethan came here today to seek cooperation with Exidy, the coin-operated game machine manufacturer.

This was the decision he made based on the intelligence he had collected in the past two months about the current video game industry.

The video game industry is very interesting.

Although the world's first electronic game was born in the laboratory in 1947, it was not until 1960 that the emergence of the world's first commercial minicomputer PDP-1 brought electronic games from scientific laboratories to higher education institutions.

Even though the following year, creative MIT students developed "Spacewar", and in 71, the world's first text game "The Oregon Trail" was born at the University of Minnesota, but the games that were born in the past decade or so were only circulated in major universities and had never been successfully commercialized.

The reason is the same: computers are too expensive.

Scientists believe that electronic games based on computers cannot become popular while computer prices remain high, and university students also believe that the public may not be able to access this thing in the short term.

But in the same year that "The Oregon Trail" appeared, a man named Nolan Bushnell felt that video games did not need computers as a medium at all, and that their game feedback could be displayed using the most basic physical technology. Everyone else had reached a dead end!

So he used the simplest physics technology to make an arcade version of "Spacewar" developed by MIT students in 1962, and named it "Computer Spacewar". This was also the world's first officially commercial electronic game.

But "Computer Space Wars" failed for the same reason as Ma Yun's criticism of Alipay engineers:

'Many R&D personnel always like to design products with their own ideas, without considering the feelings of the general public. They always think that segmentation is the best, but they don't know that segmentation will only bring visual confusion to ordinary people. What users want is simplicity.'

"Computer Space Combat" is a cumbersome product. It is a game made by a genius that ordinary people cannot understand at all.

But it didn’t matter, because the next year, in 1972, Nolan Bushnell saw the simplest game, table tennis, at the launch of MILO Odyssey.

Because at that time, MIRO priced the Odyssey at one hundred dollars, which was not a price that American consumers could accept in 1972. However, the coin-operated arcade machine made by Nolan Bushnell allowed consumers to experience the new thing of electronic games for only 25 cents.

So, he thought his chance had come and he copied the table tennis game, made it into "Pong", put it in the bar, and then...

The legendary story that countless people have heard came into being.

Low price + novelty made Atari a hit!
Nolan Bushnell also successfully opened the door to the video game industry with his Atari!

Although it is true that Nolan Bushnell plagiarized, he is indeed the father of video games, because when a bunch of engineers were thinking about how to let the public play video games on computers, he directly smashed the high threshold of computers. This broken window idea of ​​not building a house without a foundation is what made other engineers speechless.

Nolan Bushnell's approach immediately attracted countless people to follow suit. In just two years, this new thing, electronic arcades, occupied the entrances of major bars, billiard rooms, and bowling alleys in America.

Precisely because the most difficult promotion process in an industry has already been completed by these game manufacturers, when Ethan decided to get involved in the electronic game field, he simply gave up the idea of ​​personally going door to door to sell the products.

Firstly, the purchasing power of the masses is insufficient.

Because electronic arcade machines are too expensive nowadays, when merchants equipped arcade machines at a price of one thousand or even one thousand two hundred dollars per machine last year or at most the year before last, they must have wanted to make unlimited profits with limited costs, rather than eliminating the arcade machines in a short period of time.

At this time, in order to promote new games, Atari only dared to launch a motherboard replacement service. They took away the merchants' old arcade machines, replaced them with new game motherboards, and then brought them back to them, thereby refurbishing the games, and the merchants only had to pay for a motherboard.

When Atari didn't dare to mention elimination to the merchants, Ethan would not be so stupid as to seek blame.

Secondly, Ethan remembered that when he was in school in his previous life, his finance teacher said something -

'Make money early, and you will never be defeated by risks. If you don't make money early, three generations will be in trouble.'

In Ethan's opinion, if you want to make money in this industry, if you want to make big money, you have to eliminate the time spent on ground promotion, and directly cooperate with arcade manufacturers who already have close ties with the market, and use existing channels to sell products!
If I have to describe it, it's actually the same as the Hollywood movie production routine.

Independent production companies that have production capabilities but not distribution capabilities will take film copies to the Big Eight after filming a movie and seek help from the Big Eight in distribution. Although the Big Eight will charge a considerable fee in the process, independent production companies can also try to make a big splash by using a wide range of channels.

If you don’t have fame, you have to make concessions!
Now that you are famous, why would you worry about not having money?
Therefore, before leaving Milova, Ethan directly copied the list of all arcade manufacturers on the market that his old employer had collected.

Exidy is the closest electronic game console manufacturer to Ethan's home, Los Gatos. Founded in 1973, they are now the game console supplier to many bars and billiard halls in the San Francisco area.

As Ethan drove the car in, several more white people ran out of the warehouse after hearing the noise.

Upon learning that Ethan was here to sell video games, everyone present showed great enthusiasm.

"Yo! Ethan! We're glad you chose us!"

One of them, a middle-aged white man wearing overalls and a bowler hat, high-fived Ethan, clapped his hands, and called out to the people around him, "Boys, hurry up and take the game console off Ethan's car!"

Ethan was a little surprised by the high enthusiasm, and Pete Kaufman beside him smiled and introduced: "This is my partner Samuel Hawes. Ethan, to be honest, if your machine is as good as you say, I think there is a chance for us to cooperate. After all, people are tired of the games on the market now."

Ethan could understand what Pete Kaufman said.

Although Atari created a storm in the electronic game industry as early as 1972, there has not been a single real game developed independently by a business on the market so far; everyone is just copying from each other.

The reason is very simple. When excellent works come from university students and there is no clear copyright owner at all, plagiarism, the easiest way to make money in the world, will naturally be used instinctively by everyone.

And when everyone starts to copy, the games that consumers play become extremely homogeneous.

At the beginning, they may play for fun, but later on, all arcade manufacturers will have to face the fact that they have to develop their own games.

It was because Ethan understood this that he got involved in the video game industry.

no way!
How could he, who is only 20 years old, already have 40 years of R&D experience?

(laugh~
Note: ①Exidy: Exidy, the most famous work is "Death Race", which is a very violent racing game. Players drive cars to hit people. Its crazy violence made it appear in the "New York Times" and influenced the creation of "Mad Max" and "Road Rush". ②Although Nolan Bushnell plagiarized, he is still the father of video games. This is recognized by the industry, because his success is not plagiarizing games, but breaking the deadlock of people's thinking and making video games without computers. ③The game environment in 1975 described in the article is real. Nolan Bushnell himself complained that he copied Milova's table tennis game and others copied his "Pong". The market environment at that time was so outrageous and funny.

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(End of this chapter)