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TECHNOLOGY - July 5, 1994

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Dean Takahashi, Times staff writer

Brian Fargo, who 10 years ago was just a small-time video game designer, has turned his Interplay Productions Inc. in Irvine into a major player with $60 million in annual sales.

A block away from Interplay, Martin Alper, a poker partner of Fargo’s, has expanded Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc. to a venture with more than $100 million in annual revenue. They both anticipated the rising popularity of multimedia games, which combine sound, graphics, video and text.

Such companies aren’t creating enough jobs to rival the numbers employed by the aerospace companies, such as Hughes Aircraft and Rockwell. But, having emerged as they did in the midst of the recession, they point the way to future prosperity.

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Ahead: the information superhighway. The phone and cable TV companies are already wiring Orange County with fiber-optic cable. When that happens, Orange County will no longer be defined by its existing borders. It will be part of cyberspace. I’ll see you there.

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