Brøderbund Software

Was the mouse based on anybody in particular?

The mouse wasn't based on somebody, but it was the idea of there was a woman who knew at Broderbund called Tomi Pierce, who it sounds like was a very important person to him.

I don't know if there's any relationship or anything, but she eventually married Doug Carlston, the guy who ran or created Broderbund.

And she, yeah, she's got credit of loads of little ideas in loads of games.

She's the kind of person who will just sort of be in a conversation and go, well, why don't you do this? Why don't you put this in there?

it's so cool if you haven't seen it look it up just it's really really cool it's like a two section box and it's very difficult to understand but it's basically two rhombuses rhombi yeah maybe yeah why not put together and it just it's just it's very difficult to describe but it's very very cool and i want it in my life and it is a horrendous amount of money to buy

Yeah, it very nearly never happened as well.

Really? Yeah, the original release was just a standard box and it sold piss poorly because no marketing effort went into the game at all from Broderbund.

Every time I see that, I wanna cry a little bit.

This was, this thing was published by Domark, I think in the United States, and Broderbund published it in a lot of other places.

No, actually, Broderbund published it here, and Domark published it in the UK.

I got it backwards.

That makes sense.

They were just some schlubs.

And I believe, it seems like I read this, that when they changed the name to Domark, they put the two dots over the O, just because it would look cool.

Sort of like Broderbund did.

MECC had 'The Oregon Trail' and a reputation for quality which Softkey bought after a hostile offer that the board rejected.

Softkey then acquired Broderbund in nineteen ninty eight – a company that owned Myst and Carmen Sandiego.

These acquisitions doubled its market reach but also added legacy costs.

At each step he relied on an accounting trick reporting inflated revenue numbers by consolidating licenses early to satisfy stock price demands.

There's a big difference there.

Later on, the brass at Hasbro start looking around at companies like The Learning Company and Broderbund.

Obviously, they don't buy them.

That whole mess ends up going to Mattel, their competitor.

I actually walked in with a prototype to Bard's Tale, what would eventually become Bard's Tale.

I walked in with a prototype into a software company up in Northern California called Broderbund.

And I sat and I was sitting in the president of the company's office showing him my demo.

And he did not get the game.

People don't take you seriously.

And back then, especially, it was, I think, difficult.

But then years later, Broderbund offered me a contract for a different game because they realized, I think, they realized that they missed out on the chance to do the big game that I did.

And so they were super nice people.