NBA Jam (3)

When Simon finally entered the conference room, everything turned quiet. All the high-level managers were nervous and excited about the news they would receive next.

"Welcome to the second high level meeting of 1971. As many of you already know, Tanja Crawford worked very hard on the acquisition of the Los Angels Lakers in the last two months.

This project was a strategic plan of the company for 1971 and the project funds were completely prepared at the start of the year.

The successful acquisition will leave long lasting effects for Atari. We will become a major force in the sports entertainment and become a leader in the basketball world.

This new adventure inspired me to create a whole new genre of arcade games:

Sports Games

I already created the software and hardware plans for the new game. But many of those requirements will put Atari as a whole in front of large development difficulties."

While Simon attracted all eyes with his speech, his secretary was delivering folders with the project plans to each department leader. Steve Wozniak received the project information for the software part, Gunpei Yokoi received the hardware part, Claire Peterson received ideas for the marketing plan in cooperation with the NBA and Dennis Miller received a complete folder with all plans combined.

This way Simon wanted to make sure that the information for Atari's projects were kept secret and a leak of information could be discovered a lot better.

Only Dennis, Tanja and himself was in control of the whole plan, while the rest was only in contact with the needed information. Connecting the different parts of Atari was the main job of the leaders.

Most people had different reactions when receiving the folder and taking a closer look, while Simon stopped his speech and gave them some time.

Steve Wozniak was excited, Claire was curious and Gunpei Yokoi was a little nervous, but still full of fighting spirit. He undoubtedly had the hardest job, because he had to bridge a hardware cap of nearly two decades, compared to Simon's previous life.

"I know that this project will be very hard, especially for the hardware department of Gunpei Yokoi. For this reason, I will grant an additional 20 million $ in funding and allow the Human Resources Department to increase the poaching of high-quality talents for the Hardware Department. If there are any patents we need to acquire for this project, I will grant you additional research funds.

While the development of this project is planned to finish in the latter half of next year, the project of Space Invaders shouldn't be delayed because of this. If this causes additional need in manpower, I am willing to listen to any suggestions, but only in a reasonable frame."

Gunpei Yokoi breathed a sigh of relief when he learned about this condition. Undoubtedly, this was great news for his department. With the additional funding he could legitimately increase the strength of his department and hire many more of his former colleagues from Japan. This would further increase the manpower of the Japanese faction within Atari.

This fact was already calculated by Simon himself. If he increased the relationship with Japan by having a reasonable number of high-level talents inside of Atari, the future entry into the Japanese gaming market would be a lot smoother. If the total amount of Japanese within Atari would not be over 5-10 % of the total manpower, the ratio was still completely reasonable.

"While Tanja will mainly be responsible for the acquisition of the Los Angeles Lakers in the next few months, Dennis will have to contact the NBA. We will aim for the official license of the NBA and having the sole ownership of the license for 5-10 years, plus the priority for renewal under the same conditions. 

I believe the current NBA would be extremely happy to start a cooperation with us, especially the current commissioner J. Walter Kennedy."

Although likable and approachable, Kennedy was an iron-handed executive who let everyone know where he stood on issues. He once slapped Red Auerbach with a $500 fine for rowdy conduct during a preseason game. Before Kennedy's era, the NBA struggled with only nine teams, no television contracts, and sagging attendance.

Upon his retirement in 1975, the league had increased to 18 teams, landed a lucrative television contract, and improved its yearly attendance. The NBA steadily increased its position on the sports landscape under Kennedy as he laid the foundation for the game's future.

"Kennedy is currently aiming for an increase for the next television contract of the NBA. Former a partnership with Atari and featuring NBA stars in a well developed and marketed game will improve the conditions he will receive.

Furthermore, we will pay an additional sum of money to increase the contract length as much as possible. If this game is a success, we can use the developed technology to instantly create many more sports games. The world of football, tennis, rugby, hockey, and many more are waiting for us to develop.

If successful, this move will increase the revenue of Atari by a huge amount in the future and create an evergreen tree for the development of the company."

Everybody in the room was very satisfied with this vision. Because Simon implemented high bonus payments, everybody was happily working to receive huge profits. Especially the few managers that were already promised shares in Atari in the future. A long term and stable profit point would be a huge bonus for Atari, when it comes to listing on Wall Street in the future. 

The rest of the meeting Simon answered any questions the different department heads could think of. The meeting took nearly three hours in total, until everybody but Simon, Dennis and Tanja left the conference room. They were all very excited and kept staring at the new Head of Human Resources, Adam Baldwin.

He was hired through a headhunting company and was a former Head of HR at a large financial firm, with a young age of 38 years. After some wrong investments of the core investment team the company began to struggle and layoff. Before the ship sunk completely, Adam turned towards the headhunting company that referred him to Atari.