Author: Fortunately I didn't go

The next day.

Ethan Jones once again drove the Ford F-150 borrowed from Thomas Johnson, carrying the Snake-eating game console wrapped in tart cloth, and galloped towards Sunnyvale twenty-three miles away.

In the future, this city is one of the components of the famous Silicon Valley, but now, the only famous company here is a massage shop.

Of course, Ethan came here not to find a massage parlor. She walked around the streets of Sunnyvale for a few times and received guidance from the kind-hearted aunt. After a long and twists and turns, Ethan finally stopped in front of a factory door wrapped in a walled iron bar. On the gate with spikes, there was a sign hanging, with Exidy written in red on white.

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

"I'll look for Pete Kaffman." Ethan took off his sunglasses.

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

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

"Yeah, Pete, I'm Ethan."

Ethan patted the steering wheel happily, stretched out his thumb with his right hand, pointed to the car, and said, "I have pulled over the machine I introduced to you on the phone yesterday."

"Oh OK! Ethan, welcome to our Exidy Games Company..."

Pete Kaffman nodded quickly, opened the iron door, and signaled Ethan's car to stop at will.

That's right, Ethan came here today, and wanted to seek cooperation from Exidy, a coin-operated game console manufacturer.

This is also a decision he made based on the current information in the electronic game industry that he has collected in the past two months.

The electronic games industry has emerged very interestingly.

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

Even the next year, the creative MIT students developed "Space War". In 1971, the world's first word game, Journey to Oregon, was born at the University of Minnesota. However, the game that was born in more than ten years was only circulated in major universities and has never been successfully commercialized.

The reasons are the same, that is, computers are too expensive.

Scientists believe that electronic games born on computers cannot be popularized when computer prices are high, and students in universities also believe that people may not be able to access this thing in a short period of time.

But in the same year as "Journey to Oregon", a man named Nolan Bushnell felt that electronic games do not require a medium for computers at all, and their game feedback can be fully displayed with the most basic physical technology, and others have entered a dead end!

So he used the simplest physical technology to make the electronic arcade version of "Space War" created by MIT students in 1962, and named it "Computer Space War", which is also the world's first official commercial electronic game.

But "Computer Space War" failed because of the same reason as Ma Yun criticized Alipay engineers.

‘Many R&D personnel always like to design products with their own ideas, and do not consider the feelings of the general public at all. They always think that segmentation is the best, but they don’t know that segmentation will only bring visual chaos to ordinary people. What users want is the simplicity of the way."

"Computer Space War" is a cumbersome product, and ordinary people cannot understand the game made by the Proud Child.

But it doesn't matter, because the next year, in 1972, Nolan Bushnell saw the simplest game, table tennis at the press conference of the Mirohua Odyssey.

Because Mirohua priced Odyssey at that time at that time at that time, it was not a price that consumers of America could accept in 1972. The coin-operated arcade made by Nolan Bushnell could allow consumers to experience a new thing like video games for only 25 cents.

So, he felt that the opportunity had come, so he decisively copied the table tennis game, made it into "Pong", then placed it in the bar, and then...

Legendary stories that countless people have heard of have appeared.

The low price + novel things made Atari come out of nowhere!

Nolan Bushnell also successfully opened the door to the video game industry with his Atari!

Although Nolan Bushnell's plagiarism is a fact, he is indeed the father of electronic games, because when a group of engineers were thinking about how to let the public play electronic games on computers, he directly smashed the high threshold of computers.

This idea of ​​not building a house without building a foundation is the place where other engineers are speechless.

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

It is precisely because the most difficult promotion process in an industry has been done by these game manufacturers that when Ethan decided to make a splash in the electronic game field, he gave up the idea of ​​going door-to-door to go door-to-door to promote it.

First of all, the public's purchasing power is insufficient.

Because the current electronic arcade prices are too expensive, when merchants equipped arcades last year, at most, at least two thousand or even one thousand two hundred dollars a year ago, they must have wanted to earn unlimited benefits at a limited cost, rather than eliminate arcades 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 pulled away the merchants' old arcades, replaced them with new game motherboards and then brought them back to the game, so as to achieve game refurbishment. What the merchants paid was only one motherboard money.

When Atari didn't dare to mention elimination with the merchants, Ethan wouldn't be so stupid that he would go to scold him.

Secondly, Ethan remembers that when he was in school in his previous life, the teacher who taught finance said something-

‘Make money as early as possible, the risks cannot be defeated, and if you make money as early as possible, all three generations will be in a poor state.’

In Ethan's view, if you want to make money in this industry and make a lot of money, you have to erase the time of pushing the ground, and directly cooperate with arcade manufacturers who have maintained close ties with the market, and use existing channels to sell goods!

If you have to describe it, it is actually the same as the Hollywood movie production routine.

After the filming of an independent production company with production capacity but no distribution capacity, they will use the movie copy to find Bada and seek distribution help from Bada. Although Bada will charge a considerable fee in the process, independent production companies can also try to reach the top in one step through the use of broad channels.

If you don’t have fame, you have to give in!

And when fame becomes more popular, are you afraid of losing money?

Therefore, before leaving Mirova, Ethan directly confiscated the list of all the arcade manufacturers on the market that he collected from his old boss.

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

While Ethan drove the car in, several white men ran out of the warehouse after hearing the movement.

When they learned that Ethan was here to promote video games, several people present showed strong enthusiasm.

"Yo! Ethan! I'm glad you chose us!"

One of the middle-aged white men wearing overalls and dome hats also slapped Ethan's hand, then clapped his hands, and greeted the people around him: "Young guys, move quickly, remove the game console in Ethan's car for me!"

The high enthusiasm made Ethan look a little strange, and Pete Kaffman beside him smiled and introduced: "This is my partner Samuel Hawys, Ethan. To be honest, if your machine is really as good as you said, I think we have a chance to cooperate. After all, people are tired of playing games on the market now."

Peter Kaffman's words, Ethan could understand.

Although Atari had caused a storm of electronic games as early as 1972, so far, there is no real game on the market that is independently developed by merchants, and everyone copied it around.

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

And when everyone starts to plagiarize, the homogeneity of the games consumers play is very serious.

At the beginning, they may be interested in traveling, and later, all arcade manufacturers must face the fact that self-development is the fact.

It is precisely because Ethan learned about this that he intervened in the video game industry.

no way!

Who made him, who is now twenty, have forty years of R&D experience?

(Laughs~

Note: ①Exidy: Exidy, the most famous work is "Death Race", which is a very violent racing game. Players drive a car to hit people. The degree of crazy violence made it once appear in the New York Times and influenced the creation of "Mad Max" and "Violent Motorcycle". ② Although Nolan Bushnell copied, he is still the father of electronic games. This is recognized in the industry, because the success of him was not plagiarized the game, but broke the deadlock of people's thinking and did not use computers to make electronic games. ③ The game environment in 1975 written in the article is real. Nolan Bushnell himself complained that he copied Mirohua's table tennis game and others copied his "Pong". The market environment at that time was so outrageous and funny.
Chapter completed!