So "Tomb Raider" came out originally in October 1996. And Lara Croft became a pop culture phenomenon not just in the games industry but way beyond. It became a main entertainment franchise in the mass market.
Crazy. So the following spring I got really smart. This is Peter Croft . I went to a slideshow given by Peter Croft .
to receive funds to try to build his computer. He had been a Naval reserve officer, and so he bypassed Harvard administration, and received funding directly from the US Navy, rented the basement of the Croft Laboratory, built out the computer and then staffed it, not with Harvard students and professors, but with naval officers and enlisted. He would not allow any of the Harvard professors who wanted to run their problems on this machine, he would not allow them to use the machine. People offered compare him to Charles Babbage
Yeah, and there's-- when Alex first tries and on the free blast slab, he bails out. After he's talking to Peter Croft , and he's like, I bailed. Peter's like, no, it's the best thing you could have done.
But he'd seen the rise of girl power and a cherry, Tank Girl. And his original sketch for Laura Croft was in fact Lara Cruz, was just a simplistic thing. And another thing I say to developers when they're starting off about the points I made earlier about intellectual properties, if you can hang onto your IP, it could be worth a lot of money.
Yes, those were the jolly '90s. And so reunion with all the Lara Croft models with some old bloke, and it was a very tough job, and I survived it. So console games, still huge as we all know.
This is Peter Croft . I went to a slideshow given by Peter Croft . After the slide show go, hey, Peter.
So we had a veto over the scripts and over the cast. And when they suggested that Angelina Jolie play the role of Lara Croft , we said that's absolutely fine with us, no problem whatsoever. Yes, those were the jolly '90s.
Let's go up there and get the record, right? So in 1986, John Becker and Peter Croft at midnight on a full moon, they started right here--
George Bush's father as he talks about a kind of mainstream moderate Republican regime the people around uh Bush Senor were this National Security adviser Brent skor Croft his secretary of state James Baker who are mature practitioners and managers of the world not idealists
When you own the IP, you don't only just get the revenues from publishing, you get all the incremental revenues from licensing and merchandising and all these brands, powerful in themselves. So the value of having Lara Croft , it gave them incremental revenue through promotion. And of course, she didn't go unnoticed by Hollywood.
I got the record of Steve Schneider on the most famous big wall route in the world. Well, one week later, Peter Croft and Dave Shultz did it in 6:40. These guys were immortal.
Harvard Mark 1. Let me read to you a little about her first day on the job. "Hopper reported to Howard Aiken's Harvard command in the basement of Harvard's University's Croft Physics Laboratory on 2 July 1944. After being escorted down to the basement by an armed guard. If this wasn't disquieting enough, the presence of her physically intimidating boss was. 'I was a little bewildered and at that point, of course thoroughly scared',
It had all the planets lined up. But of course, everyone talks about the main character, Lara Croft . And Toby, the artist, was the person who created Lara.
And now they're looking at games because of the impact that games is having on society. And we managed to get ourselves an executive producer role, because we wanted to make sure that Hollywood didn't take Lara Croft in a direction we didn't want it to go.