Electronic Arts “We See Farther” Poster and Mini-LP Game Box Collection

By the time Trip Hawkins joined Apple in 1978 to work on Product Marketing, the company had about 50 employees.  When Apple has its initial public stock offering in December of 1980, Trip and many early Apple employees suddenly had a substantially greater financial portfolio than before.  As Director of Product Marketing for an incredibly successful computer company, Hawkins could have padded his cash and stayed with Apple.  

However, while working there Trip Hawkins began to envision how the computer software industry, specifically the computer game industry, would evolve.  In early 1981, Hawkins met with Sequoia Capitol about investing in a new software company he was developing.  Sequoia thought the idea had promise, if a bit raw, and convinced Trip to leave his position at Apple and work full-time on the new venture.  In February 1982, Trip Hawkins moved into a spare office at Sequoia to hone his ideas.

After months of revising business plans “Amazin’ Software” was the name Hawkins chose for the new company, which was basically reviled by nearly everyone.  Central to the final business plan was Hawkins’ concept of “Software Artists”; that game developers would become similar to famous actors, film-makers, authors, singers, performance artists, and other well-known entertainers.  Where their star power could, by itself, guarantee a certain amount of business for a film, book, album, tour, etc.  So, at an off-site strategy meeting, Trip suggested “SoftArt” as a new company name and all of the attendees liked both the Software Artist concept and the “SoftArt” name.  But there was one problem; an existing company called Software Arts which was the creator of the popular early spreadsheet software VisiCalc.

With “SoftArt” name idea dead, the attendees began brainstorming other ideas, such as “Electronic Artists”. The Software Artist concept reminded many of the film studio, United Artists.  But, UA as famously created by D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin; themselves artists eager to escape control of the major studios.  In the case of “Electronic Artists”, the game developers would be ‘the artists’, not the founders of the company.  Opinion in the meeting shifted towards a merger of the new potential names, and Electronic Arts was incorporated in November 1982.

Now that the name of the company was settled, Electronic Arts began recruiting a stable of talented Software Artist game developers.  The early catalog of games these artists created were unlike most computer games in 1983, which were largely improved versions of console video games.  Electronic Arts positioned the company as a Hollywood-studio-for-game-developers, which would allow developers the opportunity to work on games that were different, complex, and appealed to a wider range of gamers. 

By the summer of 1983, Electronic Arts was planning on how to introduce themselves to the world.  What they decided on what a two-pronged marketing campaign, and it would be expensive.  One prong would be a Declaration-of-Beliefs and the company’s philosophy around game development.  It was aspirational, insisting that – in the future – games would advanced enough to evoke emotional experiences in users.  It was bold and brash, especially coming in the 8-bit era barely three-years removed from the Pac-Man craze.  This came to be known as the “Can A Computer Make You Cry” ad.

The second prong of the marketing campaign would be to introduce Electronic Arts first games, or “publications” as they called them, and core to that would be an introduction of the rock-star Software Artists behind those games.  EA’s “We See Farther” advertisement not only introduced the company”s early games and the game developers, it also reenforced the philosophy that games would become deep and engaging experiences.  For fascinating details around the “We See Farther” photoshoot and promotional tour, be sure to check out this great article from Eurogamer.

I remember having this exact poster in my room as a kid and I was always intrigued by the choice of the word ‘farther” over ‘further’.  As an adverb, both words mean the same thing – in increase in distance.  However, as an adjective, ‘further’ can deviate towards describing the act of ushering something along, while ‘farther’ always means a greater distance.  Farther it is.  And, a sincere note of thanks to Blake Patterson of Byte Celler, for being incredibly kind and quite generous in selling his copy of Electronic Fun with Computers and Games magazine with the “We See Farther” poster to me.  I hope that I continue to do the both justice.

For many years now, I have collected copies of some of the early computer games that I have the most fond memories of.  And, since I was running an Atari 1200XL, occasionally I had to swallow my Atari-pride and play on a friends C64!

M.U.L.E., Archon and Dr. J vs. Larry Bird: One on One, are games I lost countless hours to with friends and other kids in the neighborhood with Ataris.  Seven Cities of Gold and Bill Budge’s Pinball Construction Set are a set of games I spent a lot of time with solo, exploring the New World and building pinball tables to play and share.  Starflight is a fantastic game, perfectly blending exploration, ship-to-ship combat, diplomacy and resource-management, but I had to wait until I had an Amiga to play it.

The Bard’s Tale, officially titled “Tales of the Unknown: Volume 1 – The Bard’s Tale“, was never released for the Atari 8-bit systems, and I had to start my experience on a good friend’s Commodore 64.  inXile’s remastered edition of the Bard’s Tale Trilogy is a fantastic way to relive those great games.  As an aside, I do wish that Interplay and Electronic Arts would have found a way to have Bard’s Tale sequels while also continuing with a Tales of the Unknown series.  How great would a “The Monk’s Tale“, or a “The Paladin’s Tale“, or “The Rogue’s Tale“, etc., have been?

Rather than have these important games sitting on a shelf, I wanted to properly display them, and as a collection with the “We See Farther” poster and original magazine.  The spines on the Mini-LP boxes are so small they would be lost on a shelf, where they would be exposed to dust and cover wear.  Having them all of the games framed and arranged together on a wall is a fitting and proper tribute to the place these they have in my personal history, and the memories they bring of laughing with friends and enjoying the times playing them.  Or, of standing in the local computer shop for hours, devouring every detail from the game boxes and trying to figure out which game I could bring home with my limited teenager funds.

In truth, at the time, I only was able to scrape enough together to buy a couple of these games; Dr. J vs, Larry Bird and Pinball Construction Set.  If I remember correctly, my fast-food, minimum-wage, job paid $3.35/hour in the mid 1980’s, and was lucky to get 12-15 hours per week.  As for the rest of these treasured games, I, ahem, acquired them through alternative means.  As much as I wish I was one of the estimated 30,000 people who bought M.U.L.E., I was not.  Hopefully, this collection can act as a bit of a make-good for my wayward youth.

Originally, I picked out some shadowbox frames for the game boxes from a local store.  They were okay, but nearly too small and I wanted a bit of an upgrade.  I probably spent too much time researching 12×12 shadowbox frames for the games, but I ended up with seven Muzilife’s shadowbox frames¹ and they have worked out very nicely.  The Muzilife’s are reasonably priced, have real glass, and are made of wood.  Yes, it’s not hard-wood, but that would increase the price by 4 or 5 times.  For the EA Mini-LP game boxes, Muzilife’s are just the right size and depth.

For the Electronic Fun with Computers and Games magazine, I bought a 8.5×10 7/8’s magazine frame from CreativePF², which wasn’t cheap but is a great and high quality frame.  It also is made of wood, with glass, and the cardboard backing is cut just right for the size of the magazine.

I am very happy with this frame upgrade and how the entire collection looks and is presented.