The company I decided to write my Baldridge paper on is Electronic Arts (EA) video game company. They are the leading independent developer of entertainment software (video games) in the world. They have over 7,900 employees worldwide and last year they had of $3 billion in revenue. As whole last year including all video games accessories, systems, and games the industry had $13 billion in sales so EA was responsible for 23% of that and they only make games. They are the #1 producer of sports video games in the world and have been for the last ten years. For most video game company’s to have 2 games that sell over a million copies would put you in the top ten last year EA had 24 games sell over a million copies. Leadership has been fading at Electronic Arts for years now. But when Trip Hawkins established the company in 1982 he was very driven to make this company one of the top video game companies of all time. Back then most game companies made plain 8 bit 1 dimensional video games most which never changed the back rolling screen. Trip believed that make a 3 dimensional 16 bit games although it would be costly was a move that the industry had to make. He went around to several other major video game companies and headhunted for individual that shared his vision of making this new kind on video game possible. Dave Evans and Pat Marriott were two executive producers of video games at Apple at the time when Trip came to them with this ideal. “There was such a huge risk of leaving a well established company like Apple for this brand new company. But he just made you believe that we could achieve something so unbelievable, how could we say no?” said Dave Evans. As Trip went and met with other video game programmers he established his team. From there he led this company from 11 individuals to what it is today.
In 2003 when Trip left EA he was consider one of the top CEO’s for a video game company of all time. With him leaving on top they have had two CEO’s since then with the most recent being John Riccitiello. John was the Chief operating officer at EA until he left in 2004 only to return in 2007 to be the CEO. To me it would be hard to establish leadership with 3 CEO’s in the last four years. I believe that to be a good leader you have to not only motivate your employees but lead by example. So when John left EA to go to a rival company only to return a few years later make me questions his loyalty. Strategic planning is something that EA has really improved on of the years. Most of the games that they make are released on an annual basis. Early on the company would release one of those games and then have that staff work on other titles. Sometimes this would keep designers that worked on one game last year from working on that game the next year because they were having problems finish a different game. EA then realized that they were going to have to hire more people and assign them to work on one game year round. So they had employees assigned into teams to work on a specific title only. What they have done now is established a team leader for each of their game tittles.
The qualifications to become a team leader are to have worked for EA for at least 5 years working on game development. The team leader is in charge of running game development and design. Their also responsible for keep the team motivated and are encouraged to make sure that the team works together to complete their tasks. They make sure that the game you start working on at EA is the game you work on for your entire career there. So that if someone high up on a game leaves someone else on the games team can step up and pick up the slack. After EA releases a game it starts collecting and brainstorming with all of the surveys they have received back from customers who purchased the game. They also have forums online where designers answer questions from gamers. Since they are now working on these games year round and because of that they can eliminate a lot of the glitches on the game before their release. The team leaders get together weekly and compare game play, online play, & graphics. It makes it easier for the programmers that if there is a problem in the game development with all of the teams working together they can fix these quicker than most. Customer and market focus is something that EA really excels at. Back in 1999 with every game that they sold included a code to register your game with EA.com and complete a survey about the game. By doing this you would receive a cheat code for the game and be entered in their monthly drawing to win EA items that ranged from video games to tee shirts. The best thing about it is that they would make improvements to their games based on what the people play the game see as problems. There has even been instances where their customers who had made suggestions on the games have been brought in to test next years games. They have had the # 1 selling sports video games for the last 10 years for baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer & golf. I would attribute their success to customer service and meeting the customer’s expectations. I have covered measurement, analysis, and knowledge management in the other topics. They strive to get surveys back from all of there customers about there games it has grown over the years they say now they are receiving about 65% of surveys from customers back. They have faced several competitors of the years but most of them have fallen. At the highest point there were 7 companies who made sports video games now it is down to 3. They are constantly tracking online play of their games with other companies to see how they rank. As well as monitoring the sale of games to returning customers.
To make the sports games even more realistic they have signed exclusive deals with the NFL, NBA, NHL, and PGA to include the professional athletes from those sports likeness. In 2001 EA developed the orb technology in which they would have really professional athletes come into the studio and put these orbs and play their sport. From there they would record the players movements and import it into there graphic design team so that the games would have the players real movements. A lot of the players and coaches are brought into the studio to help EA put in real player that teams run as well as look over the animation to make sure that it looks. In 2006 they started ad face scan where the players not only play like themselves but look like themselves as well. This year they have made this technology available to gamers so with a side view and front view of your face you can import your self into the game. From there they adopted the slogan “EA Sports, if it’s in the game it’s in the game.” Referring to how realistic their games had become. Human Resource focus is very important to Electronic Arts. They strive to be one of Forbes magazine to 100 companies to work for. They have five studios located in the United States where the games are created at. At all five of those locations they have a fitness center to help keep employees in shape. Since at times they can be working all hours of the day and night. They offer daycare for all employees that is open 7 days a week and are free of charge. They have company softball, basketball, flag football, and hockey teams that most everyone in the company participates in with all of the fields being located on site. Along with that they have a full locker room with showers, hot tub and spa. They have an on site restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, & dinner with a large area for employees to eat at so that they don’t have to eat their desk. I feel that they are really ahead of the curve on this one. I was so impressed by this I have included some pictures of the facilities at the bottom of this paper. I believe that having all of these activities on site really would make the employees happy and by playing sports together teaches them better teamwork and helps them build stronger relationships among coworkers which can only help them work together in the office. Process Management at EA seems to be pretty efficient. One of the new processes EA has been working on is online gaming. Most of their game sales are for the stand alone systems like Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Over the last 3 years EA has been getting all of there games ready so that if a customer wanted they could play their games online as well as the standard way that they been played for years. After gathering tons of information from there surveys they noticed that a lot of people were asking for the ability to play games online against people all over the world. So EA talked to Microsoft and Sony about setting up a network where this can happen. Then after those deals were worked out EA met with their game teams to make sure all the games can be designed for online play. They believe that it really adds value to their games. Also now when you play a game online if there is a glitch or a problem with the game you can have the error report sent directly to EA and they can e-mail you a patch to fix this. Business results with EA speak for themselves. They have been the # 1 in sports video games sells for 10 years. They have been called the innovator in graphic and game play by Game Informer magazine one of the industries top publications. As a customer of theirs for the last 16 years I can say that every year they seem to out do themselves. I frequently have said that it will be impossible for them to outdo themselves on the next year game. But every year it seems that they make the games more and more realistic and their sales numbers reflect that. All and all I feel that EA could be a Baldridge award winner. Then seem to be on the top of there game in all fields of their business. They really are an industry leader with their products but they way they treat their employees. It’s hard to find a company that is very profitable but also a great place to work at.