December 13, 1992
Had a surprisingly good time at the Broderbund Christmas party. Michael Baisuck and I had a drunken man-to-man in the parking lot after they kicked us out. “You know why I hate you?” he said. “It’s so goddamned easy for you. You’re rich, you’re creative, you’re good-looking, you speak five fucking languages, you can dance, and you’re not arrogant! If I had your life, I’d be having such a good time… But you don’t even seem to be enjoying it!” He proceeded to give me some good advice about how to spend my money while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. Like, buy a vintage ’58 Corvette convertible instead of an anonymous current-year Japanese car.
It’s only what Patrick’s been telling me all along. There’s this thing inside me that makes me hold back. That dry adult whisper that counsels prudence, caution, thrift… Why? I’m fighting it on the big stuff, but on the small stuff, it’s winning.
So I bought Mom a really nice sweater for Christmas, and I’m flying to LA on the spur of the moment to hang out with George.
And maybe, just maybe, the next time I see the girl of my dreams at a crosswalk in North Beach, I’ll have the balls to say hello before she crosses the street.
December 15, 1992
My last two days at Broderbund were even more jam-packed than usual. Brian got back from vacation and we put Prince 2 into QA. (It was the day of Brian’s twelve-year anniversary.) Now that it’s approaching completion, a lot of upper-management types want copies to take home to play over Christmas.
Prince 2 is going boringly smoothly. Everybody wants it to succeed, the work is going well, and it’s even on schedule. Hardly the stuff of drama.
Tomi is proving her worth as collaborator on the train game. We argue a lot, but what we end up with is really good. This story’s going to be better than any movie screenplay I’ve written.
I rented the Greenwich St. apartment. Tomi made me a set of keys for the office. It’ll all be waiting for me when I get back in January.
I went down and saw Roland and showed him Prince 2. He was impressed. But, he’s not ready to commit to the train game. I think he’s scared it will turn into a huge project that will consume years of his life and drive him mad. Also, he’s just started on KidCuts and it’s not the right psychological moment to think of the next project. I haven’t given up on him, but I do need to start thinking about who else I might get to do it if Roland doesn’t.
I’m really enjoying the research for the train game. So far I’ve read The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West and I’m in the middle of The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. It’s great to have an excuse to learn all this fascinating stuff. I have the greatest job in the world.
“…Unknown Spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,
And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.”
–Yeats, 1895
December 21, 1992
[Chappaqua] A day of cheerful puttering about amongst my stuff. Tallied up twelve months’ worth of credit-card statements, that sort of thing.
I’ve got so much money it hardly seems real. It’s so much more than I need. The awful thing is, now that I have it, I feel the urge to keep it.
It’s good that I’m doing this train game. I should spend the money and not worry about it. The conservative impulse, at this point, is not my friend. If I’m not prepared to roll the dice now, when I’m young and on top of the world and the cash is rolling in, when will I ever be?
I know myself well enough to know that whatever happens, it won’t be my excesses I’ll regret, it’ll be the things I held myself back from doing. In all my life I’ve never yet given a present so lavish, or made a gesture so expansive, or indulged a pleasure so recklessly that I regretted it later. Whereas there are so many things I look back on now and think: That was one of the high points, that moment will never come again, why did I hold back?
I know it’s possible to err in the other direction too, to screw up your life by not thinking of the future. I just don’t think I’m nearly there yet…
January 7, 1993
[SF] Brian came by at four and we got caught up on the last few weeks. It turned out I’d been invited to the MacUser awards as a last-minute replacement for John Baker. So we changed into our suits and ties in the office, and I sped us to the Galleria in my rented toy car (a blue Mazda Miata) just in time for the 7 o’clock dinner.
Man, that was a posh affair. Beat the Tilt d’Or all hollow, budget-wise. Oh, and I won the Eddy. That is, Prince did, and I got to accept the award and make a speech. Brian was thrilled. Susan Lee-Merrow got blasted on white wine and fell asleep in her chair. I was glad I went.
The next morning I picked up the keys and let myself into my new apartment. An auspicious start to my new life in SF.
January 10, 1993
Consumer Entertainment Show in Las Vegas was a hallucinatory experience. Three nights at the Excalibur. Have a royal day.
My roommate was an unhappy Ken Goldstein, having girlfriend trouble. I shared the Broderbund booth with Christa Beeson (demoing Carmen Space), Jessica, and Kathleen, and demoed Prince 2 for about a million journalists. Appointments every half hour. They flipped out, mostly. I think it’ll be a hit.
Saw Dany Boolauck (working for Delphine now), Jean-Michel Blottiere, Richard Garriott (very cool, very much the mogul), Gary Kasparov (I shook his hand! He doesn’t like video games, thinks they’re destructive and harmful to children), Muhammad Ali (signing autographs), Kyle Freeman, Fredrick Raynal (from Infogrames), Ron Martinez, John Kavanagh and Dominic from Domark (they loved Prince 2), Arnie Katz, and lots of other computer-magazine journalists, some of whom were fans from way back and were thrilled to meet me. One even brought along his copies of Prince 1 for me to autograph.
Met Brad Dourif, who was Piter de Vries in Dune and Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He got all excited when I offered to send him a copy of Prince. He gave me his home address and secret unlisted number. “Come hang out with us when you come to LA.” I asked him if he’d consider acting in a computer game. He said: “Sure!”
Had fun cruising the floor with Mike Estigoy, trying to talk to girls. I was doing my best to flirt with Lori from US Gold San Francisco when, in a miracle of perfect timing, an Italian guy named Pietro came up to us and said “Are you the Jordan Mechner? The famous Jordan Mechner? Or are you just some guy named Jordan Mechner?” When we got it straight, he practically fell to his knees and embraced me, he was so excited. It didn’t do me any good with Lori, though.
All in all, CES was a blast. It was, like, my first taste of public life.
Postscript
Designating a particular moment as the end of the story is basically arbitrary, because life just keeps going on (I think that’s what David Chase was getting at with the Sopranos finale)… but January 1993 seems like as good a point as any to stop.
From here on, my old journals are increasingly taken up with the saga of Smoking Car Productions and The Last Express. Which is a good story too, but for another time.
My thanks to all the readers who’ve followed the seven-and-a-half-year tale of how Prince of Persia came to be. It’s been fun for me, revisiting those days. I’ll leave all the old journal entries up on the site, and will continue to welcome your comments and questions as always.
– Los Angeles, November 2009
