“It was basically a computer game without a computer, and my friends didn’t find it all that fun. They gravitated toward watching TV,” says Hawkins. “I enjoyed the idea of a sports game that involved thinking, making choices, and living with the outcomes. When I first heard about computers, I thought, Someday, if I can combine the simulated gameplay with the pretty pictures of television, everyone will want to play it.”
His first business venture may have been a flop, but he already had a plan to turn his beloved geeky football game into something bigger. Hawkins designed his own major with a focus on game design, and after the first retail store to rent microprocessors opened in Los Angeles in 1975, he began conceptualizing what his video-game company might look like.