September 7, 1988
Ed Badasov is no longer my product manager. He’s been replaced by Brian Eheler. Brian has been lobbying both me and Ed for some time to get Prince of Persia, and finally prevailed. It’s fine with me. Better than fine.
September 24, 1988
Brian Eheler and I had our big meeting yesterday. He took out his notebook and asked me so many questions about Prince of Persia – How many disks? How much memory? What kind of documentation? – that by the end of it, I was all jazzed up and adrenalized.
It made me feel like the project is real, that it’s really going to ship in four or five months, and I’d better get cracking. I promised Brian I’d have a preliminary version ready for QA in eight weeks – the first concrete promise I’ve made to anyone. Usually I just say something like “It should be ready by January… 1999. Ha ha.”
The meeting erased any doubts I might have had about Brian’s effectiveness as a product manager. This is what I needed all along: someone to push me. He blows Ed out of the water. Anyway, I’m revved up to work on POP.
October 5, 1988
Had lunch with Don Daglow, head of Broderbund’s Entertainment Group. Don got his B.A. in playwriting, so he was interested in hearing about the screenwriting stuff. He’s eager to publish Prince of Persia and would like to start on an MS-DOS conversion as soon as possible.
October 9, 1988
Tomi and Doug got to be present at the historic unveiling of Steve Jobs’ new computer, the “Next,” at the San Francisco Symphony.
October 13, 1988
Larry Turman informed my agents that he’s throwing in the towel on Birthstone.
October 20, 1988
Deep in programming mode. Nine hours today trying to integrate the new game code with the old builder code I haven’t touched in six months. It’s like going in with a wrecking ball and bashing the building to the ground, then saying “Now, can we use any of these timbers? Oh, here’s a nice chair we can save! Let’s put it over here!” A nightmare.
