Then hither you are, 3,000 feet to a higher place Nazi-occupied France, in a Douglas C47 Dakota with other members of the U.S. Ground forces'southward 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. Rifle in paw. Fright in your gut. It's June 6, 1944. D day. You're moments away from leaping into the predawn sky and encountering who knows what on the ground. Over the engine'southward drone, the captain barks an lodge to get set up and y'all —

Expect, stop the state of war. "There's just not plenty happening," says Rick Giolito. Between the opening shot and the helm's line, he counted xv seconds. That's likewise long. "Make it v." Okay, restart the war.

You're preparing to jump, when enemy fire of a sudden strikes the aeroplane.

Agree on, this scene could be improve. "Could I go smoke in the cabin?" Giolito asks. A producer, Brady Bell, makes a notation.

You land on a farm in the French countryside, not quite sure where to go. Armed with an M1 Garand, a Colt .45, and grenades, you set up out to find your squad and avoid getting captured. Information technology's night and tranquility.

Too quiet. "I gotta hear Germans yelling outside," says Giolito. "You know what would be good? If you heard Germans banging on the door of the barn, trying to get in." Bell adds this to his list.

After taking out some Nazis, you recover a machine gun and go ane-on-i with a tank, triggering a mighty explosion.

"Cool," says Giolito. "You become to blow up a tank."

In a darkened role in the Los Angeles studio of Electronic Arts, down the street from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Giolito and his team are fine-tuning their ain work of art, the latest version of Medal of Honor, or MoH in EA shorthand, a Earth War Two video game inspired by movies like Saving Private Ryan. The last version of MoH, in which you were a 24-year-quondam lieutenant named James Patterson, arriving on Omaha Beach past gunkhole, sold more than ane.3 1000000 copies.

Giolito is MoH's executive producer, so technically speaking, he creates games. Simply he and his crew are aiming higher. Their goal is to create an authentic historical feel. Like Spielberg. But unlike and perhaps, as some gamers would dare to say, better. Instead of simply watching D twenty-four hours unfold in heart-stopping detail, you are a part of it. You kill Nazis, y'all save soldiers, you survive the invasion.

Actually, if you want to live to fight another day, yous meliorate start practicing. State of war is hell.

Welcome to the entertainment industry of the 21st century, where video games are serious business concern. Last year, U.S. calculator- and video-game revenue surpassed domestic box-office receipts, and this year, the game manufacture is expected to widen that gap with more than than $x billion in sales. In this competitive and demanding field, Electronic Arts is a bona fide hit maker. The company, based in Silicon Valley, has created more than 50 best-sellers (more than i million copies each) over the by iv years. Fiscal year 2002 was its all-time e'er, with 16 all-time-sellers (more than whatever other game maker) and $one.7 billion in sales (xxx% college than the previous twelvemonth). Its share price has more than than tripled since January 1998, giving EA a market valuation in excess of $x billion. (Disney shares, by contrast, take lost more than 50% over that same catamenia.)

Much of EA's lineup bears a striking resemblance to a multiplex marquee, with games pegged to the latest Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and James Bond movies. Best-selling sports "franchises" such equally FIFA Soccer, Madden NFL, and NBA Live offer new versions each respective flavour. And The Sims, which is now the best-selling PC game of all time, has branched out to the Web with its beginning online edition.

But EA is more than than just a successful visitor in a glamorous industry. It is a model of successful direction for companies in whatsoever industry. Lots of organizations struggle to turn ideas into blockbuster products. EA pulls it off by honing the mode that it develops and markets games: by thinking of its products every bit emotional, cinematic experiences, not toys. By assuasive its 12 studios the liberty to introduce while instilling the bailiwick to meet deadlines. And past non taking its success for granted. "Every time nosotros transport a game, we're equally nervous as someone who's on Broadway for the get-go fourth dimension," says EA president and COO John Riccitiello. "Every fourth dimension we practice it."

The anxiety is understandable. A top title takes anywhere from 12 to 36 months to produce and costs EA between $5 million and $10 1000000. That'south twice as much every bit the visitor spent just half dozen years ago. Indeed, back in the beginning, all yous needed to brand a game was a decent imagination, a solid agreement of algorithms, and a dry basement to call your studio. Now a company like EA has to pull out all the stops: motion-capture sessions with star athletes. Photo and audio field trips to Europe. Original soundtracks by hot artists. And in the case of the game that's based on Lord of the Rings: The Ii Towers, voice-overs performed by the film'southward bandage.

Given all of the creative parallels, it seems easy to mistake EA for a Hollywood studio. But that's an unfair comparison: Making games may be more than complicated. The market place is ruthless and fickle, shaped past fleeting tastes and the march of technology. Different a movie whose release can exist delayed until the time is correct, a game'southward technology tin can quickly go stale. "In Hollywood, if you succeed one out of three times, yous're doing okay," says Bing Gordon, EA's master creative officer. "In this industry, that'southward not plenty."

Information technology'Southward IN THE GAME
Fall is crunch fourth dimension at EA. The company generates eighty% of its acquirement during the vacation season. With transport dates looming, many of EA'due south products are in the final stages of product, and veteran game makers like Bruce McMillan are playing them viii to 12 hours a day. McMillan is a luminary in the manufacture, having helped develop Madden NFL, MoH, and Harry Potter. The championship that he's perhaps best known for, FIFA Soccer, is the best-selling sports game in the world. Since its release in 1996, information technology has generated more than than $ane billion in sales.

An executive vice president and group studio general director, McMillan spends his mornings calling EA'due south studios and his afternoons playing the latest "build" of the games. From his Vancouver, British Columbia office, he calls EA's London studio, then follows the sun, calling product teams in Orlando, Florida; Austin; and finally Los Angeles and San Francisco. At this stage, he'due south "tuning the games." He plays, gives notes on what needs fixing, and plays some more. "What I've realized over the years is that unless a game has nifty game play, it doesn't matter how pretty it is," he says. "Nosotros tin't hide backside the graphics." Past "game play," he means fun interaction. Yesterday, he noticed that some of the bad guys in Bond shot with the same skill at each level of the game. "I desire them to experience more than menacing equally you get to the college levels," he says.

McMillan, 39, is lean, with blond hair and a playful air about him. He'due south an avid soccer role player, and his office overlooks EA's soccer field. While tuning FIFA Soccer 2003 yesterday, he noticed that the defense wasn't playing smart. It reacted the same whether yous brought the brawl up the sideline or to the eye of the field. But in a existent match, he says, "it's always easier to pass the ball sideways or backwards. That's a basic mechanism of football." Less than 24 hours later, the FIFA team made the adjustment by tweaking the artificial intelligence. "Some of them were hither until four in the morning," he says.

Before in the week, McMillan himself was awake until four in the morning time reviewing games. His married woman woke upward and walked into the den to find her husband talking to the Goggle box screen again. McMillan was playing FIFA at the game's highest level, where the artificial intelligence is at its all-time. "It studies your tactics and looks for play patterns," he says. "The move you used to score the first time won't work the next time you try it." After taking a i-0 lead, he was stymied in the second half, unable to penetrate, and he tried in vain to fend off the computer's attacks on his goal.

The side by side morning, his 9-year-old son Alexander was getting set for school when he noticed the score on the TV screen: 2-1. He looked at his bleary-eyed father and said, "You lost over again, did you?"

McMillan grew upwardly playing video games in Vancouver. More specifically, he grew up at the arcade on Hastings Street, which isn't far from the EA studio where he now works, and he would pump every quarter that he had into the machines. He lets his three kids play considerably less. The rule is 3 hours a week, unless he has a game that he wants Alex to try. He's ane of the visitor's unofficial testers. Like his begetter, Alex gives notes too.

Dad, school was great today. I got 35/35 on my spelling test. . . . I played the game today that you left at the house. Really fun but the control feels slow, and I don't understand all the buttons. . . . The first mission is piece of cake. Took me v minutes or and then. I'd make information technology harder. . . .The dart gun was cool. . . . Why can't I get back and replay levels to be meliorate? . . . I promise Harry Potter is doing well. It's going to exist fun to play it with yous on Friday.
Dearest, Alexander

The boy has a knack for uncovering bugs that the creators oasis't run across. In an before version of FIFA, Alex discovered that he could score past lobbing the ball from midfield all the way into the net — something an experienced player wouldn't endeavour, because it would never happen in existent life. "That drove our producers crazy," McMillan says with a touch of pride.

A PASSION FOR THE GAME
Information technology'due south hard to overstate how passionate EA game designers are nigh the products that they make. Nearly anybody you meet mentions that he grew upwardly playing games: Pong, Pac-Man, fifty-fifty the obscure text-just games that left everything up to the imagination. "My favorite form of amusement is games," says Danny Bilson, vice president of intellectual-property development, who has nonetheless written or directed over 150 hours of television and cowrote the flick The Rocketeer. "The reason why I piece of work for this visitor is considering I dearest games."

Traditionally, games are a guy matter — more specifically, co-ordinate to industry demographics, a 16-to-24-year-old-guy affair. As the marketplace keeps expanding, though, the enthusiasts at EA have to figure out how to make products for people who are not like them. The casual gamer. The novice. EA is going after this audience with new content and game play. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer'southward Stone was the biggest launch in company history, selling more than 9 one thousand thousand copies in fiscal yr 2002. Information technology was particularly popular among children nether 14, a younger audience than EA has traditionally fatigued. It's easy to understand why. "They may never accept played games before, but they get to a lot of movies," says Jeff Brownish, vice president of corporate communications. "Their first fourth dimension out, they get for the familiar."

According to EA, The Sims appeals to teenagers, parents, grandparents — many of them casual gamers. More than half of its audience is women, unheard of in video games. As one staffer laments, "My aunt blames me for losing her job because she played The Sims so much at work." Role of the amuse is that The Sims isn't a strange or threatening fantasy world. On the contrary, it's contemporary ordinary life. The simulated people, or "sims," have out the trash, go to work, brand pizza, brand friends, date, and fight — the stuff of real life.

In attracting new customers, though, EA has to exist careful not to lose its core customers, who don't want to meet their beloved games dumbed down for newbies. So EA has begun focusing on the outset five minutes of game play. That's how long a customer at All-time Buy or Wal-Mart may spend trying out a game. The challenge is to create an experience that leaves these ii distinctly unlike consumers with different impressions of the aforementioned game. It must be easy enough for one, yet difficult enough for the other. "Some people don't like to lose, and then you've got to give them a positive experience the first time they play," says Bing Gordon, EA's chief creative officer. "But at the same time, give a hard-cadre gamer the promise of challenging stuff to come."

RAISE YOUR GAME
Snoop Dogg has a fantasy that only EA can fulfill: He wants to play basketball like Kobe Bryant. Just listen to him rap in "Get Live."
Ya run across my game is to back ya down and bang on ya.
I'm gonna bring it to your whole team,
Tryin' to win the whole thing,
Size me upwardly for the ring.
I'one thousand celebratin' while the other team's mad, their heads down hating,
waiting to go another rematch, merely we ain't seein' that, believe that.
Side by side.

EA's sports franchises come out every year. And every year, the challenge is the same: Make them better than and different from concluding year'due south games. "We're trying to modify the perception that it'due south merely a roster update," says Steve Chiang, the full general manager of EA Tiburon and the former executive producer of Madden NFL. "We retrieve of five major hooks and five small-scale hooks that we mention on the box. But there are hundreds of other changes." I major hook in Madden NFL 2003 is existence able to play online. Friends on opposite coasts can square off in a game betwixt the New England Patriots and the San Francisco 49ers. Another hook is having Monday Nighttime Football announcers John Madden and Al Michaels provide commentary in existent time.

Difficult-core gamers expect video games to reflect the latest advances. If EA doesn't offer a substantial upgrade, another visitor might, making its game this year's hot basketball or football title. Consumers also desire cool new features. Enter Snoop Dogg: rapper, basketball game fan, and Los Angeles Laker. Instead of just offering a great soundtrack — NBA Live features hip-hop while Madden NFL has rock music — the NBA Alive 2003 team had a brainstorm: original music. EA asked several rappers if they would exist interested in writing songs specifically for the soundtrack. It was a slam douse. Some of the musicians visited EA'south state-of-the-art recording studio in Vancouver and did their affair. "Nosotros asked ourselves, 'What's the next step in delivering a total entertainment experience?' " says Jeff Karp, vice president of marketing. "Nosotros feel that music adds some other emotional element to the game." Non to mention a nifty marketing angle. The songs are available only on the game disc, but EA is providing radio stations with copies in hopes of generating fizz.

The recording sessions led to some other new — and unexpected — feature. "Snoop said, 'I desire to be in the game,' " says Karp. And so EA added him forth with fellow rappers Fabolous, Busta Rhymes, and Hot Karl, who hoop information technology up with Tim Duncan and Jason Kidd. The musicians were given NBA skills co-ordinate to whichever player they wanted to model themselves afterwards.

In terms of engineering, EA hopes to unveil a radical comeback in each iteration. In NBA Live 2003, that innovation is the new "freestyle control stick." It allows y'all to use both joysticks on the controller, rather than just one. At present, in addition to moving a player forward, backward, or sideways with the left joystick, you can perform more sophisticated moves with the right stick, or right analog.

This is about more than than just adding a new button, says software engineer David Bollo. This is about increasing the level of control, which is a very big deal to gamers. Bollo is more than happy to demonstrate. He'due south sitting at his desk in the NBA Live role, not far from a row of NBA jerseys hanging from the ceiling. Although he can't palm a existent basketball game, when he picks upwards the game controller, he plays similar Jason Kidd. "And so I can palm the ball behind me or I tin can sweep information technology between my legs," Bollo says, moving various players like a puppeteer. "If I desire to become fancier, I can cradle information technology to the correct, then cross over and spin my way through traffic. I'one thousand a big fan of the spin move."

Some improvements come straight from gamers, and not just those at EA. Later on focus groups in Europe said that FIFA wasn't accurate enough, EA assigned lx people to fix the game. 1 of the biggest changes involved the ball, and how it remained glued to a thespian's human foot when he dribbled. "We had to do an accented rewrite," says Rory Armes, a senior studio vice president. The reason? The more realistic a game appears, the higher customer expectations become.

The moves themselves come up from actual athletes. The Madden NFL studio, for instance, has tapes of every NFL game going back about five years. Chiang and his team study the tapes for acrobatic catches and tackles every bit well as for memorable celebrations, like the time San Diego Chargers wide receiver Tim Dwight tilted the brawl back and pretended to drink it. "What's real to our consumers is what'southward on Telly," Chiang says.

Really, EA is going for authenticity rather than realism. It'south an important distinction. The games look and feel real, merely not also real. For instance, in that location is no trash talking in NBA Live, the coaches don't get fired in Madden NFL, and there's no ominous blackness smoke or fatalities in NASCAR Thunder. (Although there are plenty of fatalities in MoH, there's no blood.) When the cars crash, there'southward but white fume, the sign of a less severe accident. At first, NASCAR insisted that the cars, plastered with corporate-sponsor logos, couldn't be damaged even afterward collisions. Eventually, though, Chiang'due south squad convinced NASCAR that bent hoods and crushed bumpers were a office of racing.

FUN AND GAMES AND SERIOUS Business organization
Information technology takes a tough company to make entertaining games. "The forgotten aspect of creativity is discipline," says John Riccitiello, president and COO. It's something that EA never forgets. Coming up with a clever thought for a game is the easy part. The difficult part, the part that EA focuses on relentlessly, says Riccitiello, is identifying the correct thought, assembling the best development squad, solving the inevitable technical problems, creating a game that people want to play, getting all of the work done on schedule, getting it to market at the right fourth dimension, and knowing how to generate fizz about it in an increasingly crowded market. Truthful, many stages of that process are inherently creative, just what ties them together is discipline.

There is the subject of trying to understand ideas in the making. "This is where a lot of groovy ideas get lost," says McMillan. "Maybe y'all don't understand what somebody is describing, and information technology could exist the next Sims." Early on in the process, game makers try to identify the artistic center of a game, or what they take come to call the "creative x." At its core, NBA Street, which features rim-ramming 3-on-three action, is well-nigh becoming a street-ball legend. Def Jam Vendetta, a new championship, is hip-hop meets professional wrestling. "When we were edifice The Sims, nosotros knew what we wanted in the game," Riccitiello says. "We knew what to put in and leave out. Ditto James Bond 007, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings."

There is the subject of understanding the audience through focus groups. The bailiwick of sharing best practices and technologies across the studios through an intranet library. "There's a maxim around here," says Brown in communications. "If somebody develops a better blade of grass in one game, that grass volition be in somebody else'due south game the adjacent day." At that place's besides the discipline of grooming the next generation of executive producers. EA's "emerging leaders" plan gives participants firsthand experience in departments outside their ain. At that place is the discipline of studying (well, playing) the competition. "We frequently know more than about the characteristic prepare of our contest's products than our contest does," boasts Riccitiello.

There is the discipline of methodical project direction. "If yous're working on a game and you miss your deadlines, you won't be working here very long," says Riccitiello. "This isn't some sort of summer campsite — information technology's boot camp. If you're non a hunter-carnivore, if you're not willing to work as difficult every bit you tin to win in the market, it'southward not a good identify for you."

And withal, the staff is encouraged to have creative challenges. Neil Young was the executive producer on Majestic, an online conspiracy thriller that broke the rules of traditional computer games. It was episodic, like The X-Files. Information technology took interactive play to a new level, offering clues via email, fax, and telephone. But EA discontinued the game because of disappointing sales. Despite being a high-profile flop, it was considered groundbreaking, if flawed, internally. Young was non fired. He became executive producer of Lord of the Rings: The 2 Towers, ane of this year'southward most important titles.

ON TO THE Adjacent GAME
The Academy Accolade in Rick Giolito'southward function sits perched on a high shelf in a higher place his desk in EA'due south Los Angeles studio. "Oh, you noticed my Oscar?" he says. It'south a joke. The award actually belongs to Marker Lasoff, who won a 1997 Oscar for his visual-furnishings work on Titanic and has joined EA as fine art director on MoH. That, in a nutshell, sums up the cinematic nature of video games today. If y'all want to create a war game that feels as compelling as a moving picture, you lot raid Hollywood.

MoH was originally created by DreamWorks Interactive, the much-touted multimedia experiment started past Steven Spielberg, forth with Bill Gates, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Later the company failed to alive up to its pedigree, EA bought DreamWorks Interactive and promptly transformed MoH into a best-seller. Similar other EA acquisitions, the studio retains a expert fleck of its original identity. In fact, in that location was a Spielberg hither merely the other day, says Giolito. The director'south son dropped past to play video games with a friend.

The MoH product team decided that it was creating more than than a game. It was a "deep, interactive cinematic experience," says Giolito. Rather than spell out the histrion's objectives, the game starts in Normandy, and yous figure out your mission past encountering soldiers who instruct you through scripted animation. Last year, when EA debuted a trailer of the game at E3, the industry'southward large trade show, people waited in line for 3 hours to see it.

The development team is obsessed with authenticity. Information technology hired retired U.S. Marine Corps captain Dale Dye to serve as a consultant on the game. Dye, who earned iii Purple Hearts fighting in Vietnam, consulted on Saving Individual Ryan, Born on the Fourth of July, and Platoon. He teaches the game makers gainsay tactics and how to handle various weapons. He leads the camouflage-clad team in maneuvers in a mini – boot camp on a paint-brawl range. "The people making the game get an understanding of what information technology means to flank and what it means to piece of work as a squad out in the field," says Giolito.

For the D twenty-four hour period scenes, six designers and sound engineers traveled to Normandy to take pictures of the beaches and the towns, and to record the sounds of the French countryside. The multilayered soundtrack, featuring music as well every bit sound effects, gives the game its rich, cinematic feel, and hopefully, says sound designer Erik Kraber, it sparks emotions too. "Ultimately, MoH is a beginning-person shooter, so y'all're firing your weapon, but in between that, nosotros try to create attachment to graphic symbol and personality," says Kraber. "Then if yous lose someone in battle, it's not taken lightly. That's the Holy Grail in our game."

It's the sort of game that prompted EA to hire Barry Jackson. Although he doesn't play video games, he has worked on a dozen films every bit an illustrator, including Shrek and Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jackson has helped refine the MoH preproduction process, which Giolito is sharing with other EA studios. Offset, a group armed with Mail-information technology Notes gathers in a modest conference room that'southward busy with camouflage netting. Anybody tosses out dramatic moments to include in the game, such as an ambush, a reunion, or a dream sequence. And then they start rearranging the Post-its to build the narrative arc of the story. It'due south a common script-writing technique, says Jackson, known as "footstep-outlining."

Jackson and his team of illustrators brand digital sketches of each moment (they call them "story beats") and cord them together in an "animatic" (something that resembles a flip volume of blackness-and-white action scenes that can be screened like a short film). Kraber adds the music and sound effects. The upshot is a pattern outline of one level of the game, the equivalent of a single chapter in the story. Jackson also charts the visual progression of action, tone, shape, and intensity to make sure that each chemical element builds to a climactic signal, similar the Dow on an fantabulous day. "You lot become a better story this way," he says.

In but iv weeks' time, the MoH team and EA executives have a clear thought of a game's tone, mood, and objective. "I was looking for a better way to communicate to senior management what nosotros're doing," says Giolito. "Now they tin can see how the game unfolds moment by moment. It'due south like a play or a movie."

Really, in the example of MoH, it'southward more like a miniseries. Adjacent year's installment involves dramatic rescues, unexpected reunions, surprise attacks, and whatever number of plot twists. World War II lasted vi years, simply EA is hoping that MoH will last a lot longer. Giolito, for one, isn't worried almost running out of ideas. He picks up a letter of the alphabet of commendation almost a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Later the soldier's unit was attacked, he was shot at and nearly killed by a grenade, even so he still managed to go later on a machine gunner and afterward clear an airfield then that the wounded could be airlifted off the battlefield.

Giolito shakes his head, amazed. It doesn't affair that this soldier fought in Vietnam. Heroism is heroism. "Real life spins more intricate, interesting stories than anybody could ever make upward," Giolito says. "I'll exist expressionless and cached before we explore every possible story in this game."

Chuck Salter (csalter@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer based in Baltimore. He has even so to win a game in Madden NFL 2003. Acquire more near Electronic Arts on the Web (world wide web.ea.com).

Sidebar: THE Discipline OF Creativity

At Electronic Arts, creativity is built on a foundation of management subject field. EA fifty-fifty takes a disciplined approach to the challenge of developing creative leaders. A dozen or and then producers and designers at each studio meet throughout the year for a series of workshops. A dancer came in to talk about how movement tin be used to express physical and emotional states. A film expert talked about the apply of music in silent films to enhance the action. The idea behind the programme is simple yet effective, says Andy Billings, vice president of human resources and organizational development: Expose artistic leaders to other fine art forms and new ideas, and encounter what rubs off.

This past September, the guest speaker was Henry Jenkins, a director of the comparative media-studies programme at MIT and a passionate gamer. Imagine the motion-pic industry in its infancy, when it had been around for merely 25 years, he told the grouping. "That'south where you lot are now," said Jenkins. "Video games volition be the virtually important American art form for the 21st century."

The challenge for EA's game creators is figuring out how to build an industry and how to create lasting art. In a previous workshop, Jenkins talked about narrative structure, character development, and memorable moments in Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Poe. "What can you put in a game that volition endure?" he asked.

Over two days at the Vancouver studio, EA'southward creative leaders pondered these and other issues. The nature of fandom. The propensity of rule breaking and how designers might encourage this to enhance a game. And the importance of leaving space in a game for imagination, or the "meta game." Meaning that the game continues in the player'due south mind even when the console is switched off.

That's how the creativity sessions are supposed to work as well. "We're taking a group of people who more or less grew up with 'fight or flight' video games and proverb, We can't just have great graphics," says Rusty Rueff, senior VP of human resource at EA. "In that location has to be deep, nuanced storytelling."

Betwixt presentations, producers and designers played video games. Every bit they deconstructed competitors, there was gleeful criticism, along with something else: genuine admiration when they saw something unexpected. They couldn't assistance it. Deep downward, they're gamers.