BudgeCo

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Electronic Arts' box cover for Pinball Construction Set was much more glamorous than the boxes BudgeCo had developed for the game, which included the game in a Ziploc bag.

BudgeCo was a video game developer and publisher of the early 1980s. It was founded by Bill Budge, the designer and programmer of the 1980s hit Pinball Construction Set.

BudgeCo consisted of only Budge and his sister. He started the company as a distributor for his games Pinball Construction Set and Raster Blaster. He formed it out of necessity: he needed a way to distribute his games, and he realized he could do what the big distributors were doing: namely putting the games in Ziploc bags and delivering them to software stores. So Budge and his sister, who mostly handled the accounting, would assemble the game packages in one of the rooms of his house and deliver them to local software stores. By 1983, however, the market had changed and a distributor needed an entire marketing arm, which Budge couldn't afford. That year Budge met Trip Hawkins, who was looking for titles for his new company to distribute. Soon afterward, Hawkins' Electronic Arts (EA) took over the publishing and distribution of Pinball Construction Set which became one of EA's early, huge hits.

Shortly after this, Budge disbanded BudgeCo, which he says was something of a relief for him, since he was really just a programmer and wasn't interested in being an entrepreneur.

[edit] External links

• An interview with Budge in which he briefly discusses BudgeCo