Microprose: 40 Years in 15 Minutes | PGC Digital #1

hello everybody I'll try not to be boring I talk really fast sometimes and I practiced this this morning a couple of my people we got done in seven and a half minutes so we'll try and be a little slower this time so as you know I started microprose a long time ago and then went on to interactive magic to compose public and I'm now running I entertainment which is what's left of my inter interactive magic and you can see very early on we didn't have a lot of add talents so I put on my flight suit and since we were doing a lot of flight simulation games I would pull out my helmet which I guess we could use in the corona violator site now I put it on with my oxygen mask and I'd be an ad so you can find lots of ads out there me looking pretty silly then I did one picture when we took the company public it was pretty exciting that day all of a sudden the whole company was worth about 4 million bucks and then two years ago my kids took me to a Mexican restaurant

for a margarita so I just want to let you know who I am and before I left active duty I was an instructor pilot and the reason I talk so fast is because we pull the nose up at 22,000 feet bullets are either stomp on the left rudder and we'd start spinning inverted and we had 11 seconds to recover or we were supposed to eject or we'd make a big hole in the ground that had more than one student who decided not to recover and I'd have to pull her oxygen mask or slug him or something so I could recover the airplane because I never really wanted to eject from the airplane and some this morning the first thing the young lady said is where are you so if you can see this that old map of the U I say here's Tampa we're out here on the beach near Tampa and I'm sitting in a room right here and that's the beach that my wife and I will be at later this afternoon we are quarantined so she sits in the chair about 10 feet away but it's a beautiful place at 79 and sunny here in Clearwater Florida and I don't know

who and how many of you know what the Where's Waldo game was but it was a famous for a long time ago so how did I get here my dad was a World War 2 b-17 navigator and a company commander in the Korean War and I lost him when I was 8 years old I'm mark behind this case on it eight I felt pretty sorry for myself but I knew dad really wanted to be the pilot of that b-17 not the navigator so I decided to go the Air Force Academy I got those cool uniforms and I thought girls were like cool uniforms so I went and did it then I got to fly a bunch of cool airplanes and that was pretty fun and then I left active duty and went to a great if you're sharing slice and we've lost them here I'm afraid we can't see them can I can I just if you're showing your screen it's time to hit the green share screen button again please because I lost them and they see if I can do that one more time share screen I am showing screens oh and let's see this one want to see it yeah I'm full screen

like a so thank you for that story but yeah sorry interrupt we just wanna make sure you won't miss anything there you go okay well I want to make sure they saw or what a handsome guy used to be and this is where I am in Florida so you can see that little arrow right there and get and you can see this screen hello oh hi yeah no don't worry with each other I can see I can see that it's good okay so in 1984 I went to an airshow and I saw a bunch of cool air planes taxi and I decided since we were a flight simulation game company we needed that airplane so I called my partner said and I said said said said I found a great airplane we can buy it since we're doing airplane games and it's only a million dollars I hung up he went berserk called my wife and said Bill's nuts he won't spend a

million dollars on an airplane I called him about two hours later I said Sid we lost that one I got one for a half million dollars and I hung up and he's still berserk he can't get a hold me we don't have mobile phones at the time so I called him back about two hours later since it we lost both of those I found a piece of junk for $100,000 I think I'll buy that Rick goes by that one by that way so I was always selling something so I always knew I wanted $100,000 won and we took it out of the boneyard we used it in lots of ads of course we did lots of cool games over 250 of them into 12 years we did a lot of war flying games because I'm a retired Air Force officer and aviator so how did the Microprose come about well after I left active duty I went to business school the Wharton School got in the big MBA which everybody was doing back in the late 70s and I went to work for McKinsey & Company a big consulting firm and then I left McKenzie and went to general instrument and my boss wanted me to do spreadsheets income statements balance

sheets cash flows for five years for five divisions with five assumptions well I'm a smart lazy person so I found this thing called by Dan Bricklin called visicalc probably never a no be very heard of visicalc but it was a very first spreadsheet so I went down to buy one of those fancy things about a home computer and I'm ran into something called a trash eighty that was the old trs-80 it was a Radio Shack computer at 16 km Emory pretty ugly then next to it was this computer with some kind of fruit art with a bite out of it was brown and it seemed to have four colors I said well that's an improvement and then next to it I heard explosions yeah I said what's that he said that's a toy computer I said does it do visicalc yep does it do that cool game yep so I bought an Atari 800 I went home into the VisiCalc and did my business for general instrument but I was fooling around with the computer and somebody told me there was a guy in the back who had a user's group it was

called the smugglers some guy named Sid Meier so I went back to see Sid then turns out Sid was a pirate now I'm not being nasty said he told me he wasn't stealing the games he was just borrowing them for a little bit he wasn't reselling them he was just looking at him I said well that doesn't that's still count so I didn't want to deal with it at the time so two months later Sid and I are at a convention of all the salespeople from general instrument they're telling us over two days how good they're gonna be next year and Sid and I sitting the best Sid's the only software guy and I'm the only finance guy cuz I'm doing finance for the company and he says let's get out of here I know where there's some games so we left we word Bally's right there in the famous corner at Las Vegas went downstairs and Sid kicked my butt at every coin op game in the place boy it was not happy cuz hey fighter pilots don't like to lose and I saw a game called Red Baron and I said okay Meier

I'll beat you this I sat down scored 75 thousand points he sat behind me and scored a hundred and fifty thousand I went holy mackerel how'd he do that Sid how did you beat me he says well while I was watching you playing I memorized the algorithms where they were putting up the enemy so Sid watching the game one time memorize the algorithm so he beat me by doubling my score he says but it's not a very good game I could write a better game in a week well you know fighter pilots don't want to be out bragged and I said if you can I can I can sell it so about a month later he bought me a game I took it home I wrote him a four-page memo on how bad it was I gave back to him said this is not that good a week later he brought it back so I fixed all those things and that was Hellcat ace and I took Hellcat ace and went a computer store and I waited till they were closing I asked the guy if want to sit down and see my new game

he says buddy I'm gonna go home and I said well just let me show you well he and I sat there and played Hellcat ace for two hours at the end of two hours 11 o'clock at night he says ok I'll take a hundred I said a hundred he says yeah a hundred what do you charge me I looked around everything was 29.95 I said twenty nine ninety five he says no no you don't understand I'm I'm a retailer I get half off well I've never heard of that before I'd never been in the retail business didn't know anything about it so I said okay 1497 he says yep that's a deal so I called city soon as I got out on way back to the train to get back to to my house I said said said said we need 98 more of these because he had one and I had one we got the local neighbor kid to swap floppies in the hard drive so that they're in the drives so that we could make a hundred hellcat aces and all of a sudden we were selling stuff and all of a sudden we were making money so I would call computer stores and I'd ask to buy hellcat ace and they wouldn't have it

not be an irate customer and yell at him saying I was never coming to your computer store again and hang up I'd do that three weeks in a row the fourth week I'd call back and say hey but my name is John Staley I'm four Microprose I have a scam called Hellcat ace and we sold a million dollars of Hellcat ace with just me doing telemarketing pretty lucky way to go and Sid brought me that same year floor to the jungle that only worked well when I was demoing it because every Saturday I wasn't at the guard I was out computing stores demoing floor the jungle and then we sold chopper rescue the first two-player cooperative game that I knew of at the time to CBS games and that's where I met a couple of our former employees and the company started going along I think it took us three years to get the three million Strike Eagle was our first big success and that came about because I asked said we need to make a Strike Eagle because I want to fly it I'm never gonna get to I want to make a game about it and the big thing about Strike Eagle when you first launch the first thing you did was blow

up something and we always thought you had to give good returns and blowing up stuff Strike Eagle end up selling about ten million copies we're on the silent service gunship came out I think about 86 and we were making big bucks and we were doing well I think we did eight million dollars and of course trip Hawkins said of Electronic Arts anybody could sell gunship well and I was anybody and we were selling it at the time we were bigger than EA in Europe and I started our European operation so the four games you see on the left of the screen are for that I asked for then I hired a young lady said in my basement of at the beginning of Microprose and Syd's they started hanging around the basement end up marrying that young lady but first he took her to the Caribbean and I had to rescue him because he left this beautiful young lady at a hotel room well he was out exploring the history and that's how pirates came about and then railroad tycoon and civilization came about and when we were all knew

what civilization was we're excited about we were playing in the back and I get a phone call and I it's the president of Avalon Hill he says well Bill Sid stealing my game civilization was a board game as was railroad tycoon from Avalon Hill I bought him three martinis and he signed a release that's how we got civilization we took the company public in 91 I immediately sent half million dollars to Gilman Louie at spectrum holobyte which came around to be a good thing for us because we were competitors he was doing Falcon and we were doing strike eagle and all the other great games and I sold the company in 93 when we got a little financial problem and went to play golf for a living I found out it wasn't that good at golf so I started another game company in 1995 after I lost my I got out of my non-compete we did star Rangers we did the castle on was Bruce Jenner when he still was a boy and that we did capitalism industry giant we

license Apache from an English company we did f-22 and I got to know the rollout of the f-22 as a active Air Force reservists and doing the game and then we did poker games and bingo games and we were doing eight hundred thousand dollars a month this was a company I took public I sold in 99 it's now back as I entertainment network and I've been working on that for a long time and basically we had eight online combat simulator called warbirds we launched at 97 we bought it from a company in Texas it's generated over 25 million dollars we got a new one coming this year and next year with a Microprose we're gonna have a brand new version of warbirds you notice down the right-hand corner that those graphics down there this is a system written by the microprose CEO he's a great software guy I village today in Australia and we're gonna start using that system for a lot of microprose games and a few I

entertainment games so if you like some of these games from Microprose the first time you know like everything that's coming from the new market pros he won't let me tell you about him I've seen his development list there's about 20 very good-looking games all of them are in the history of the original market pros and he's gonna make some big announcements I had all the his game names on there he didn't want me to do that so we're waiting to it makes that announcement and I'm consulting with a company and trying to help him get going I'm gonna take a breath here because we're right in 15 minutes and I said here is the theme that Sid always gave me on how we make great games we had to make games that required decisions by players with limited information that are time critical with significant outcomes and reward the player who makes the right decisions and that's how we made great games at market bros and one of the things that's really cool my wife

and I we travel a lot and we'll get our crews someplace and of course I'm very shy but sometimes I talked to all the people there and I always find a few fans all over the world and this was their favorite game or that was that favorite game and my most favorite time is with the guy who's in charge of the whole crew says bill I loved your games you want free drink tickets so I still get beers and wines bought for me and it's great fun to see these fans and I think the new market pros will do even better than that so how do I do I made it right Dave I made it right in 15 minutes great what a great what a great adventure what a story we've got yeah we've got a little little time to play with that was perfect timing with time left for questions so we have a few actually from from folk here so I'm just gonna ask away old Ivan here have a look so we've got some questions here just in order Steve asks do you still play flight simulators if so which ones well

I play warbirds three times a week and I have to go kill ten customers because if they kill me they get a free t-shirt and I'm out of t-shirts so and we are still running historical simulations on five Sunday nights a quarter and we're taking Easter off but the following Sunday night we're running baa baa black sheep the Battle of the Solomon Islands and we're fine F for years and Japanese we'll be flying there zero a sixes and we get 60 to 100 guys on all shooting each other down all drinking all having a good time that's great we've also been asked that some physics is so important in flight combat games and simulation games what would the key what were the key moments over the years when you saw really big advances well one of the things when I first heard about this opportunity to talk with your conference was they asked me about online games

well I've been doing online game since 1963 wow that's a long damn time ago I was a high school student and I was in I won a National Science Foundation contest and I was given 12 weeks at the Army Signal research development labs in New Jersey where I worked on helicopter simulations for the Cobra and we were not programming we were moving jumper cables around to do programming and then we go air to air combat between the two gunships and this is we were testing the Cobra two years before the Cobra first came out so we've been doing online gaming for a long time but as it got better Sid and I actually played a tank game online at about 85 84 and it was I think to our BBS so every time the on games came along I got more excited because I like shooting other people down especially if nobody gets hurt sandy asked some with girl being

such a huge hit at the time did you find yourself becoming a bit of a rock star because of the success focus well Sid was always a rock star I'd go to a I'd go to a McDonald's and I'd say hey you ever heard of microprose and he oh yeah he says well I'm the founder he goes so you said Meyer now gunship came because I was serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff I was first Reserve Officer to be working for general Vesey and Admiral Crowe the two top generals the United States and general Admiral Vesey called me in one day and he goes major of course he was not a big guy and I'm kind of a big guy but when you have eight stars in your shoulders you're really big and I'm like yes sir he says I want you to go fly with the army guard and I want you to see if those helicopter pilots are up to speed on their mission so I spent a year flying with the army

guard and what I found was and I came back and said general Vesey I said sir they're crazy they were dogfighting in two helicopters they were backing in the trees they were doing everything good I'm a fixed-wing aviator they were making sure they scared the pants off the Air Force guy and gunship was famous and trip Hawkins did say anybody can sell gunship Bill's not doing that kind of job and that went on to where Tripp and I spent three different times trying to talk each other in there closing our companies and joining together he says bill you did the simulation I'll do the sports games and one more quick story with Tripp is mr. Nakayama from Sega called me says by Bill yes mr. Nakayama I'm a suit Tripp I said wear your suit Tripp he's cheating he didn't pay for a Sega Genesis royalties get him on phone or I gonna sue him well Tripp and I tried to get me to go in the Sega Genesis business with him I called Tripp I called naki I'm I got a phone I didn't make any money out of that deal but I put them together and Tripp we got

very famous Sega Genesis games amazing absolutely amazing and we've got a little bit more time and a couple more questions so Jeff asks what do you think about eSports will you integrate eSports into your games eSports competitions well we have these sports we've been having esports since 97 well every night we go up and shoot each other down that's kind of a sport don't you think we just don't do first-person shooting and we don't have a million dollars to give away but I'm trying to talk to new microprose guys and have an air-to-air combat battles and we'll give away some real money because maybe I could win and afford those t-shirts you know you never know I think eSports is kind of a cool thing I've never been an RPG kind of guy my kids are my son I've been playing games really since eight when Pirates came out I don't know if you had ever played pirates but we had three pirates all lined up three Commodore 64's load quote star quote comma eight at the time the

UK had cassettes so we had to make sure they worked on cassettes and the thing about cassettes and loading for 20 minutes and then it blow up so we enjoyed the pirates we set my three kids and I would sit down there and whoever had to go the bathroom lost their spot at pirates so what the heck so eSports are something I think is terrific I have met a couple of sports teams I know the United States Air Force in the United States Army are sponsoring eSports now it's basically to recruit people like me that want to go fly airplanes or go drop out of airplanes another question from Steve who says by the way that you can listen to your stories all night how close do you think aerial combat games get to your real experiences obviously playing a computer game is the closest we'll never get I taught flying for five years I spun the

airplane from 22,000 feet we did air to air we did all that kind of stuff for kids and pilot training and I've been trying to tell the United States Air Force since 1985 if they may give me a computer and let these guys practice we could cut flight time in half we make better pilots out but that's what they were afraid of they didn't want to lose the flight time they thought Congress would cut the money to them so let me get this straight you don't mind if people learn slower you just don't want to get your budget cut I thought what's the stupidest thing I've ever seen I actually went to ATC which is the Air Training Command down in San Antonio I stood there and presented it and the people were most interested were the Canadians the air force guy said this is really cool and I've got two three-star generals to play my game regularly and they're not as good as they think they are in the real airplane but I can tell you a computer simulation is the way to go for all training absolutely Sammi

asks am I looking let me get this straight I'm a very senior citizen I'm looking for going into my home here shortly because my wife says you can't drop me off at the VA but we do have 14 grandbabies I'm trying to teach to play golf but I know microprose the other half of microprose the defense company and I think you'll hear about that shortly the guy David Ligeti running it it's a very brilliant guy and he's been in the defense industry for 20 years doing virtual reality for 20 years so I can assure you that the new market Bros is gonna bring a bunch of those VR games a bunch of microprose type simulations air combat esports they're gonna knock your socks off and I'm gonna stand right there next to David and go drink Australian beer with a once-a-year just a question um when you were involved in the simulation games was it about

gameplay first or reality of experience first hand was that that's a really tough question because in warbirds right now we have a bunch of volunteers so they all want to do the flight this flight model that fight model they argue about well I'm gonna give me a good example we did f-15e Strike Eagle we had a bulletin board at a time and we had all these people that said that we weren't doing it right and one guy explained exactly why we weren't doing no we hired George were ago he played lacrosse with me at the Air Force Academy you know so had about five thousand hours in the f-15 so we get up there and say well how many hours do you have in the f-15 the guy says well none but I've read about it George says I got five thousand hours and they're 15 fully loaded the f-15 can't climb above 25,000 feet that's why we take off climb high hit that tanker and then go to the target so let's be very clear everybody thinks they know what it is I was always and Sid was always about the experience and then we had a very famous guy I'd like to sing

out about Arnold Hendry and you don't know Arnold Hendrick you should look him up great game designer he did all the designs for almost all of our first military Sims and the art would sit in my office would argue about this stuff back and forth and back and forth but what my job was is to make it fun say God blow up stuff quick you got to have some return quick but Arnold wrote the three hundred page manuals we used to have in Microprose that's amazing we've seen so much of the games industry over the years do you have any advice for people who want to get into the games industry now game makers you might be watching this for instance in your developers what do you say people want to get started well I think everybody thinks they're a game designer he included so I think there's a lot more and I talked to kids all the time it says oh he's really good at games he wants to get in games I said what part is gonna be in the brilliant technician the brilliant mathematician the very programmer is a brilliant artist a

brilliant project manager so find especially find something you want to be in the game and be brilliant at that and learn to work with other people cuz too many of my employees could never work with other people a famous famous game programmer Silas Warner who's gone now but he did the original Wolfenstein turned into doom well we had a secretary let it check his clothes every day to make sure he smelled good enough to be in the office no I can tell you you got to pick what you're gonna do be good at it I was good at sales and I was going to testing I tested all since game and we had one quick incident where Sid didn't want to put a deck down on silent service I said said we need a deck gun he says no there was no deck gun so too forty-four see that was that simulation versus gameplay I said said I'm going to Sears I'm gonna sell Sears I need a deck gun he said Wow he put the deck come on so I go there I got 25 Sears executives watching me on a

Commodore 64 believe it or not and on a big screen and I try to sink these three Japanese destroyers I get one of them two of them are chasing me they've depth-charged me I'm on the service I use my deck gun kill them both and they bought 50,000 copies of silent service so you gotta mix and match him so that makes a good game and something fun to do that's amazing look we have to welcome our next panelist to the station so I just wanna say thank you very much for being with us real real pleasure or something to say thank you to phrase it fantastic cause unfortunately you won't be able to hear from all the other people who'll see this because of the strange nature of this but I hope you'll join us again maybe for a future conference I would love to do that I did put my email on this thing I don't know if anybody can see that JW Staley at IEM t.com and pretty soon I'll have a microprose email again too and I'll be

working with our entertainment and Microprose so we're glad to talk and I will be joining the PGA Tour shortly I'm sure it says I can break a hundred