Chapter 131: Growing Threat

"My goodness, Ethan, you could've at least given me a heads-up. This really was quite the 'surprise.'"

Steve sat in the reception room, his eyes constantly wandering around. It was his first time visiting GAMENOVA's new headquarters.

"You mean Minesweeper? It's just a little game, after all. A friend asked me to make it."

"It is a little game, sure, but it's unexpectedly fun."

Steve recalled trying it out on a friend's newly purchased PC. Compared to GAMENOVA's recent lineup of titles, Minesweeper was like a tiny embellishment tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of a much larger game.

It was the kind of project that required very little development effort, yet it felt as though it had been made specifically for PCs.

No, more accurately, it seemed to have been created specifically for the mouse, a peripheral that very few people had ever bothered using.

"So, Ethan, are you planning to enter the PC gaming market?"

GAMENOVA had never ventured into the PC business before. Up until now, they had focused exclusively on arcades and home consoles. Even while locked in a fierce rivalry with EA, all of their new releases had still launched on the NovaBox.

"You could call it a small experiment."

"Michael contacted me because he wanted two games designed to help promote the mouse. Coincidentally, we were also preparing to add some useful peripherals to the NovaBox, so everything just fell into place."

"I see."

"But it's such a shame that Minesweeper isn't being officially released to the public. If people could play it on other PCs as well..."

"...Wait. Two games?"

"That's right, two games."

….

Round Rock, Texas.

PC's Limited, or rather, Dell Computer.

"Hello, thank you for calling Dell Computer."

A salesperson answered the phone, listening to the customer's request.

"You'd like to order several NMD mice? ...Oh, sir, the promotion that included Minesweeper has already ended."

"If you'd still like Minesweeper, you can purchase our Mouse Entertainment Bundle floppy disk. Order today for just $39.99."

"That's right, sir, the bundle."

"In addition to Minesweeper, it also includes another brand-new title developed by GAMENOVA: Spider Solitaire."

The other end of the line fell silent for a few seconds.

"...I'll take it!"

Truthfully, neither Minesweeper nor Spider Solitaire was some astonishing next-generation masterpiece in the eyes of players familiar with DOS games.

From a gameplay perspective, both titles drew inspiration from traditional card games or mathematical puzzles, simply packaging those ideas into electronic form.

They were nothing like what people typically imagined when they thought of "video games."

There were no complex graphics, no immersive story, no role-playing…. they merely moved familiar games onto a computer.

Wasn't it just solitaire? There was nothing particularly new about it.

Yet it succeeded and it succeeded spectacularly.

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Logically speaking, it shouldn't really have had much to do with anyone else.

This so-called Mouse Entertainment Bundle wasn't being placed on the shelves of game stores like Sierra's PC titles, nor was it competing directly for the market occupied by other PC game developers.

But that didn't mean nobody had a problem with it.

The conference room at EA was eerily quiet. Trip Hawkins sat with his hands clasped on the table, silent for what felt like an eternity. No one dared say a word, afraid of setting him off. Never before had Trip felt such overwhelming frustration and helplessness.

"This is outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!"

The disappointing performance of One on One had far exceeded his expectations, but it hadn't been enough to break him.

As EA's first title for the NES, the results were still within the realm of acceptability, and at the very least, the development costs had been fully recovered.

Sure, GAMENOVA had handed EA a humiliating defeat in the very genre they dominated. But as long as EA still had a firm grip on the PC gaming market, they could regroup and come back swinging.

After all, even without developing games, EA was still a successful publisher.

Trip looked toward the man seated beside him.

Larry Probst.

EA's Vice President of Sales.

His brilliant sales strategy had transformed EA from a development studio into a comprehensive entertainment company in just two years.

The strategy itself was simple, bypass traditional publishers and sell games directly to retailers.

That had always been EA's greatest competitive advantage. Yet less than a month after One on One fell flat, GAMENOVA suddenly burst onto the scene alongside Dell, releasing two PC games in rapid succession.

And Dell's sales model just happened to closely resemble EA's own.

"'Learning tools'? My ass!"

"They're clearly using Dell as their publisher!"

Trip spat angrily.

Thanks to Dell's established sales network, GAMENOVA's two new PC titles found their way into homes almost overnight. It was as if someone had activated a cheat code.

Dell's PC sales surged right along with them, and for perhaps the first time, a game was driving PC sales.

These weren't low-cost consoles like the NES or the NovaBox. They were personal computers, productivity machines that cost well over a thousand dollars apiece.

Even EA's biggest hits had done little more than compete with Sierra and other established publishers for a larger share of the existing PC market.

GAMENOVA, meanwhile, had carved out an entirely new market among office workers who had never even played video games before.

On the surface, the move didn't seem directed at anyone, but everyone in the industry knew exactly what it meant. They were digging at the very roots of EA.

A purely entertainment product with absolutely no office functionality had achieved sales rivaling office software and had become one of the essential programs every PC owner wanted installed.

Trip couldn't shake the feeling that he had simply been walking down the street… when, out of nowhere, someone had attacked him, and they hadn't just wanted to hurt him, they had wanted him dead.

If EA lost its initiative in the PC market as well, there would truly be no way to recover.

Looking back over his entire career, he had never felt so defeated. Trip considered himself an extremely cautious businessman, and he had deliberately avoided every unnecessary conflict.

He never confronted Sierra head-on, instead quietly growing EA's own niche in sports games. Nor had he competed with companies like Konami in the fiercely contested arcade market.

All he had ever done was quietly build his own corner of the industry, a place that, by all accounts, should have been harmless to everyone else.

But then, completely out of nowhere, a disaster he had never asked for came crashing down on him.

"Sir…"

At last, Probst forced himself to speak.

"I have an idea."

Trip took a deep breath, suppressing his anger before nodding for him to continue.

"Take a look at GAMENOVA's two games. They're completely different from everything GAMENOVA has made before."

"I think… this might not be intentional. They may genuinely lack experience and technical expertise in PC game development."

Trip frowned slightly.

"That's possible..."

"DOS development and console development are completely different fields."

EA's own attempt to develop for the NES had been far more difficult than outsiders realized. Without help from engineers at Nintendo and Konami, they never would have been able to create a game of that quality.

"Neither Sierra nor Broderbund would ever agree to work with them."

The PC gaming industry had its own established sphere of influence.

There was only so much market share to go around, and the major companies had already divided the pie among themselves. On the surface, they competed fiercely, but behind the scenes, however, there was an unspoken understanding between them.

"We need a flagship PC title."

"We'll force them back into the console market."

"Hmm..."

"Contact Interplay."

"Aren't they looking for investment for that new game they're calling Wasteland?"

Interplay had long been one of EA's trusted partners. After finishing The Bard's Tale, they had been planning an entirely new RPG set in a completely different world.

"Tell them we're willing to provide them with an improved graphics engine for the 16-color EGA standard!"