Masters of Doom

by David Kushner

  You have begun preparing yourself for your quest, but even the townspeople seem unwilling to help you. They insist on gold for equipment and spells. Gold you do not have. Gold that the servants of the Wraith do have . . .

  Carmack sent the game to Nite Owl, the publisher of Shadowforge, which snapped it up. Though the graphics were not breakthrough—they had the chunky stick figures of most games—the game was huge in scope compared with most titles, offerings hours more of play. He earned twice as much this time, two thousand dollars, despite the fact that the game, like Shadowforge, was not a big seller. Carmack used the cash to finance his other hobby: modifying his car, a brown MGB.

  Though he was barely getting by, Carmack relished the freelance lifestyle. He was in control of his time, slept as late as he wanted, and, even better, answered to no one. If he could simply program the computer, fix up his car, and play D&D for the rest of his life, he would be happy. All he needed to do was churn out more games. It didn’t take long for him to find another buyer listed in the back of a computer magazine: a small company in Shreveport, Louisiana, called Softdisk. After buying his first submission—a Tennis game with impressive physics of the rise and fall of balls over a net—they immediately wanted more. Taking a cue from the Ultima series, Carmack, already a shrewd businessman, suggested selling not just one game but a trilogy: why not triple his earnings? Softdisk accepted the offer, contracting him to do a trilogy of role-playing games called Dark Designs.

  Carmack learned another way to cash in: converting his Apple II games for a new breed of computer called the IBM PC. He knew next to nothing about this system but was not one to turn down a programming challenge. So he drove to a store and rented a PC. Within a month he sent Softdisk not only an Apple II version of Dark Designs but a version converted, or “ported,” for a PC as well. Working long into the night, Carmack got his process so down pat he could create one game and port three versions: one for the Apple, one for the Apple II GS, and one for the PC. Softdisk would buy each and every one.

  With every new game, the company begged Carmack to come down for an interview. Who was this kid who’d taught himself an entirely new programming language in half the time it would take a normal person? Carmack declined at first—why screw up his life by going to work for a company? But eventually their persistence won him over. He had just put some nice new parts in his MGB and could use an excuse for a long drive. After all those years on his own, he hardly expected to meet someone who had something to teach him.

  THREE

  Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement

  Shreveport was renowned in the art of simulation long before the gamers arrived. In 1864, Confederate soldiers at Fort Turnbull duped invaders by positioning charred tree trunks on mounted wagons as if they were cannons. Spotting the apparent artillery, Union soldiers fled in fear. When a Confederate general came to inspect the site, he told the fort’s commander that his defenses were “nothing but a bunch of humbug.” The site became known as Fort Humbug.

  One hundred and twenty-seven years later, there were new simulated weapons in town—inside the computer games of Softdisk. The company was helmed by Al Vekovius, a former math professor at Louisiana State University at Shreveport. Though only in his forties, Al had a receding hairline with strands sticking up as if he had just taken his hands off one of those static electricity spheres found at state fairs. He dressed in muted ties and sweaters but possessed the eccentric streak shared by the students and faculty he would visit in the university computer lab during his job there in seventies. At the time the Hacker Ethic was reverberating from MIT to Silicon Valley. As head of the academic computing section at the school, Al, by vocation and passion, was plugged in from the start. He wasn’t tall or fat, but the kids affectionately called him Big Al.

  Energized by this emerging zeitgeist, in 1981 Al and another LSUS mathematician, Jim Mangham, hatched a business scheme: a computer software subscription club. For a small fee, a subscriber would receive a new disk every month filled with a variety of utility and entertainment programs, from checkbook balancing software to solitaire. The plan filled what to Al and his partner seemed like an obvious niche: the computer hobbyist.

  At the time the big software publishers largely neglected individual consumers, focusing instead on reaching businesses through retail. Though hobbyists congregated on BBSs, the computer bulletin board services online, early modems were still too slow to provide a viable distribution means. A monthly disk seemed like a perfect way to distribute wares to the underground. It also seemed like a great way to give exposure to young coders, who did not have another means through which to distribute their programs; it was like an independent record label, putting unsigned bands on compilation albums.

  In 1981 Softdisk’s first disk went out for users of the Apple II. Business went well, and the company soon expanded with programs for both Apple and Commodore computers. In 1986 the company launched a subscription disk for the IBM personal computer and its burgeoning clones, machines that could run the same operating systems. Personal computers at long last were plummeting into affordability. As a result, a world of new computer users—sometimes called “newbies”—opened up. By 1987 Softdisk had 100,000 subscribers who were paying $9.95 per month to get the disks. Al was voted Shreveport’s businessman of the year.

  The good times brought challenges. Al was soon running a $12 million company with 120 employees and feeling overwhelmed. Competition followed, including a company in New Hampshire called Uptime. In the winter of 1989, Al phoned Jay Wilbur, an Uptime editor he had met at a gaming convention, and asked him if he wanted to come down and help. Jay, who was growing tired of the cold and feeling underappreciated by the Uptime owner, agreed to run Softdisk’s Apple II department. He also mentioned that he knew two game programmers, John Romero and Lane Roathe—a former Uptime programmer—who were looking for work too.

  Al was thrilled. Though he had occasionally been including games on his disks, he sensed an opportunity to expand into the emerging PC entertainment marketplace. He could see other successful companies like Sierra On-Line, Broderbund, and Origin doing well in games. There was no reason that Softdisk couldn’t have a larger piece of that pie as well. He told Jay to bring the gamers down too.

  For Romero, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. He had just been through a series of disappointments, from the unrelenting winters of New Hampshire to his faulty gamble to leave his dream job at Origin for his boss’s ill-fated start-up. His wife and kids were clear across the country, waiting to see how his fortune would turn. Despite his early successes, a family life was once again slipping to the wayside. He hoped a new life down south would turn things around.

  The road trip from New Hampshire to Shreveport that summer of 1989 was just the prescription. Along the way, he bonded with his fellow gamers, Lane and Jay. Lane, with whom Romero had lived for a month, was very much a kindred spirit. Five years older than Romero, Lane came from a similar background. He’d grown up in Colorado, not far from where Romero was born, raised on heavy metal, underground comics, and computer games. Easygoing, with long hair wrapped in a bandanna, Lane got along perfectly with Romero. Though he didn’t share Romero’s insurmountable energy or ambition, he too loved the nuances, tricks, and thrills of Apple II programming. And, like Romero, all he wanted to do was make games. While in New Hampshire, the two even decided to merge their one-man-band companies—Romero’s Capitol Ideas and Lane’s Blue Mountain Micro—under one roof as Ideas from the Deep.

  Jay was an Apple II guy as well, but of a different nature. By his own admission, he wasn’t much of a programmer. But he had two important qualities that Romero respected: a genuine understanding of Apple II code and an intense passion for games. Seven years older than Romero, the thirty-year-old Jay grew up in Rhode Island as the son of an insurance adjuster and a gift card saleswoman. In high school Jay was tall but not skilled in sports. Instead he had a way with machines, whether racking up high scores in Asteroi
ds or dismantling his motorcycle. He used the money he received from insurance after a motorcycle accident in his early twenties to buy his first Apple II.

  It didn’t take long for Jay to realize that his predisposition was not for the solitary lifestyle of code. He was much more suited for the world of schmoozing and good times, a world he excelled in as a bartender at a neighborhood T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant. He became beloved in his bar and was even selected to teach Tom Cruise how to mix drinks in preparation for the bartender film Cocktail. Jay’s people skills led to him into restaurant management. Later at Uptime he was able to combine his skills: as a manager and as a game enthusiast. Now, at Softdisk, he was ready to soar even higher.

  By the time they hit Shreveport, Lane, Romero, and Jay felt like old friends. They had made an adventure of the trip down, stopping for a few days at Disney World. As they pulled up in Shreveport, however, they had no sense of their future or, for that matter, if they had even arrived. Baked into the northwest corner of Louisiana just a tobacco spit from Texas, Shreveport was in rough shape in 1989. A busted oil boom had left the area deflated and depressed. The air was thick with humidity, made thicker by the overgrown patches of swamps. Downtown crawled with homeless people escaping the heat in the shadows of run-down brick buildings—including the offices of Softdisk.

  Softdisk occupied two buildings in the downtown area. The administration office was built under a blacktop parking lot; the passing street sloped down a hill near the door. It was like working in an ant farm. As the gamers arrived, Al burst through the door with sparkling eyes, gushing about how quickly the company was growing and how eagerly he wanted their help. Romero and Lane showed him an Asteroids knockoff they’d made called Zappa Roids. Al was impressed, not only by their obvious programming abilities but by their youthful zeal.

  Romero made his ambition clear from the start—he had no interest in working on utility programs; he wanted only to make big commercial games. That was fine with Al, who explained how excited he was to get into the gaming world. Romero and Lane would be the first two employees in a new Special Projects division devoted solely to making games. On the way out, Al patted Romero on the back and said, “By the way, let me know if you boys need an apartment to rent. I’ve got some places in town; I’m a landlord too.”

  Romero, Lane, and Jay left Softdisk’s business office for the building where the programmers and “talent” worked. For a software company, it sure didn’t seem like fun. Squeezed between floors of insurance brokers, each programmer worked in a separate quiet office under bright fluorescent lights. There was no music, no revelry, no game playing. Life at Softdisk had become something of a pressure cooker, with several programs to get out the door every month.

  Romero introduced himself to a group of programmers. They asked whether Big Al had offered him a place to rent. When Romero said yes, they snickered. “Don’t do it,” one of the guys said. He told Romero how when he got hired he took Al up on the offer, only to find the apartment in a desperate state of squalor—a wooden shack in a bad part of town. When the guy lay on the couch, he saw a long worm poke its head up out of a patch of dirt on the floor.

  But nothing could get Romero down. He was back on track. The sun was shining. He had a job making games. His wife, Kelly, and toddlers, Michael and Steven, would be happy in the new environment. Now they could have a fresh start. He called and told Kelly to pack her bags; they were moving to Shreveport.

  Romero and Lane spent their first weeks living out their dream, working on games in the Special Projects division. Romero had another agenda too: to pull himself away from the Apple II and convert to the PC. Early on he told Al that he thought the Apple II was on the way out, especially because of the rise of clones of the IBM PC. By refusing to incorporate the new IBM software standard, Apple was rapidly diminishing as the personal computer of choice. What Romero didn’t tell Al was that he felt like he was missing the boat. His unbridled devotion to the Apple II, he thought, had put him about a year behind the curve. If he was going to be a Future Rich Person and Ace Programmer, he was going to have to master the PC before it was too late.

  “You can’t keep programming into the future on the same machines,” Romero told Al. “I want you to know that I do not know the PC but I’ll learn it really fast.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Al said. “Do whatever you want.”

  What Romero wanted to do was learn a hot new programming language called C. But he was told he couldn’t pursue it because the other programmers in the department didn’t know it. Romero felt limited by the others’ lack of skills. Instead, while polishing his game Zappa Roids, he hit the books, consuming everything he could about the PC programming languages Pascal and 8086 assembly. He soon knew enough to port one of his old Apple II games called Pyramids of Egypt to the PC. Within the first month, he had published something on Softdisk’s main PC software product, the Big Blue Disk.

  The problem was that his work on the Big Blue Disk started going too well. The PC department, overtaxed and unenergetic, started to rely more and more heavily on Romero’s skills. By the end of his first month, he was spending more time rewriting other people’s PC programs than working on his own games. Before he knew it, the Special Projects division was kaput.

  Al needed Romero instead to work on utility programs on the PC disk. Though Lane had the option to join Romero at Softdisk, he stuck with the Apple II division. It was the first sign, Romero thought, that his friend didn’t share his vision of the future, the sense of opportunity that awaited in PC, not Apple, games. Since Romero still wanted to learn the PC, he agreed to join that team for the time being. But, he told Al, he wanted to make games when the time was right.

  That time began to feel like it was never going to come. Romero grew unhappy. He spent nearly a year working on PC utilities programs. He did manage to refine his skills on the PC by porting more of his old Apple II games over to this platform. But PCs were still largely thought of as having only business applications. After all, they displayed just a handful of colors and squeaked out sounds through tiny, tinny speakers. Romero was nowhere near making games full-time.

  To make matters worse, Romero’s home life was bearing down. In order to save money, he moved his wife and kids into a house with Lane and Jay in nearby Haughton, Louisiana. It was tense, with the kids running around and Romero’s wife growing frustrated by his long hours and her lack of a social life. He would try to assure her, but she would just sit on the couch and mope. She was starting to lose hope that anything would become more important to him than his games.

  The bad vibes didn’t let up at work either. Romero’s initial impression of the beaten-down Softdisk crew only turned worse. Al was feeling the pains of running an increasingly big business and, to keep things in order, began to crack down. Romero and Lane were reprimanded for turning off the fluorescent lights in their office, a move they pulled because they hated the glare on their machines. Romero was also chastised for playing his music too loud. Grudgingly, he wore headphones.

  The employees were getting on his nerves too. No one seemed to be motivated. A narcoleptic technical support worker kept falling asleep on the job—even while being asked a question. Romero got in the habit of cranking up the heavy metal music in his office just to wake the guy up. Then there was Mountain Man, the guy running the Apple II department. He had been a buttoned-down engineer at Hewlett-Packard when one day he had something of a breakdown and went off to live in the mountains for a year. He came back in a cut-off denim jacket with a long, scraggly beard and took over the Apple II department at Softdisk. But his Zen-like philosophy of life didn’t do much for the growth of the department, Romero thought.

  Romero confronted Al. “You told me that I would make big commercial games, and all I’m doing is helping them out in the PC department. If things don’t change, I’m going to leave and go work for LucasArts,” he said, referring to the new gaming company launched by George Lucas, creator of Star Wars. Big Al di
dn’t like what he was hearing. Romero had proven to be one of his most valuable employees. He admired the kid’s ability to focus. Whenever Al came by to check up, Romero was sitting there with his big square glasses pressed up against the computer monitor, working for hours on end. He told Romero he didn’t want him to go.

  Romero said he had spent the last year studying all the PC games and felt they were glaringly under par. Because the PC was still not as robust as the Apple II, the games were lackluster—static little screens with crappy graphics, nothing approaching the sophistication of the games being done for the Apple II. Now was the time to strike. Al agreed and suggested they start a subscription disk dedicated to games, a monthly.

  “Monthly?” Romero said, “No way, one month is nowhere near enough time.”

  “Well, our subscribers are already used to a monthly disk,” Al said. “Maybe we could do it every other month, but that would be pushing it.”

  “I think we can do that. That’s still not a great amount of time, but we could probably do something decent, but I’m going to need a team: an artist, a couple programmers, and a manager, because I don’t want to sit there interfacing with management all day; I want to program.”

  Al told Romero he couldn’t have an artist; he’d have to farm out the work to someone in the existing art department. But he could have a manager and another programmer; he just had to find them.

  Romero ran back to the Apple II department to tell Lane and Jay the good news: “Dudes, we’re fucking making games!” Lane would now be editor of Gamer’s Edge, Softdisk’s new bimonthly games disk for the PC. All that remained was to get another programmer, someone who knew the PC and, just as important, could fit in with Lane and Romero. Jay said there was someone he knew who was definitely hard-core. This kid was turning in great games. And he even knew how to port from the Apple II to the PC. Romero was impressed by the apparent similarities to himself. But there was a problem, Jay said. The Whiz Kid had already turned down a job offer three times because he liked working freelance. Romero pleaded with Jay to try him again. Jay wasn’t optimistic but said okay. He picked up the phone and gave John Carmack one last pitch.