Electronic Arts submission letter
Been finding all kinds of cool stuff in my garage archives, which my assistant Aaron is helping me finally get organized, digitized and 21st century-compatible.
Like this submission form I filled out to submit my game Karateka to Electronic Arts back in 1984, when I was a junior at Yale.
I’d almost forgotten I’d sent Karateka to EA as well as Broderbund. It boggles my mind to think of the ways my life might have been different if they’d said yes.
Future of Games Symposium
I’ll be joining a UC Santa Cruz symposium in Silicon Valley on April 15, “Inventing the Future of Games.” Sims creator Will Wright will give a keynote. The panel I’m on is about “Games and Cinema.”
I love being in an industry where we get to study what we’re doing from an academic point of view, while we’re doing it.
GDC: Making Prince of Persia
For those of you who missed GDC — or, inexplicably, went to GDC but missed my talk about the making of Prince of Persia on the Apple II in 1985 — that talk has now been posted online along with the other “Classic Game Post-Mortem” talks in the GDC Vault.
You can see higher-quality versions of the original “making of” videos I showed at GDC, including my brother running and jumping and lots more, here at jordanmechner.com.
GDC 2011: The wheel turns
Nearly everyone I spoke to at GDC 2011 in San Francisco agreed that it was one of the most energizing GDCs of recent years.
I loved the “Classic Game Post-Mortems,” a series of one-hour talks in which game designers spoke about the making of their early games: Eric Chahi on Another World (aka Out of This World), Peter Molyneux on Populous, John Romero and Tom Hall on Doom, Mark Cerny on Marble Madness, Toru Iwatani on Pac-Man were fascinating, inspiring, and touching to hear. (I gave a talk about making Prince of Persia, and really appreciated the generous response.)
But what really grabbed me was the energy and excitement surrounding indie games, especially on new platforms like mobile phones, iOS, Facebook, XBLA and PSN. More than in any previous year, I was reminded of the Apple II zeitgeist of the early eighties. It feels like we’ve come full circle, as an industry, to that time when a tiny team with few resources but talent, creativity and elbow grease has the potential to produce the next hugely influential mega-hit.
And I’m pretty sure I just met some of them in San Francisco.
