End of my second day at Broderbund. It’s going well.
I’m very popular all of a sudden. It’s like the return of the prodigal son. I carry about me the whiff of foreign places. Cannes, Greenwich Village, it’s all very glamorous.
Prince of Persia is suddenly popular, too. The old marketing department is gone and has been replaced by a new marketing department that thinks Prince got a raw deal and deserves to be repackaged and given the royal rollout for the Mac version. Amazing. I keep waiting for someone to pinch me and wake me up.
The Game Boy version is close to finished; the Super FamiCom version is going to be awesome; Prince has won a zillion awards in Europe and Japan; it’s nothing but good news on all fronts. Knock on wood – hope it lasts!
As for Prince 2, we’ve got a programmer (Jeff Charvat); we’ve got the attention of the sound and music department (Tom), who has hand-picked a composer (Jonelle); of the graphics department (Michelle and Leila), who have chosen a couple of artists (Daniel and Marcelle); and of the sales and marketing departments, who are waiting and eager to sell and market it as soon as it’s done. And, oh yeah, design services are eager to do the package design.
It really is a different world, doing a sequel. All the people who were no help at all on the original are now overflowing with enthusiasm, because it’s familiar, it’s a proven quantity. Broderbund is a company that was born to do sequels. They’re even good at it.
I have no illusions – it’s still the same company that almost buried Prince 1 – it’s just that now, I’m on the other side of the river. And loving it.
I foresee some arm-wrestling over budget and resources, but so far, Broderbund is giving it the best they have. And the reason is, truly, because of grass-roots enthusiasm for Prince of Persia that’s seeped up through the company from the bottom (tech support, QA, field reps) and through P.D., because of people taking the game home and playing it and watching their kids play it; and because of the good working relationships I established with Lance, Leila and Tom on IBM Prince 1.
Lance, Leila and Tom have now all been promoted to the point where they’re no longer actually doing programming, graphics and sound, but supervising their respective departments; they remember Prince as a high point of their creative careers, something they did their best work on and got recognition and satisfaction from, and they’re excited at the prospect of revisiting it. I’m bragging, but so what – I’m proud of Prince, but more than that, I’m proud of having pulled together such a good and enthusiastic team. If I can do this, I can direct a feature.
Brian and I took Leila to dinner at an expensive French restaurant that used to be a brick kiln. I blew a hundred and fifty bucks, but it was worth it. Leila deserves to have something nice done for her after all the work she did on the Mac Prince graphics – which Scott has yet to get running properly.
That’s the one fly in the ointment: Mac Prince is still far from finished. It’s way, way behind schedule. It’s my fault for not riding Scott harder, or for picking someone who would have done it faster.
The good news is, Scott’s taken so long that Apple has come out with a new computer (the LC) in the meantime and has sold a lot of them. As a result, the Mac market has now grown to the point where the sales department actually wants this version. So, Broderbund is going ahead and doing a new set of graphics for the LC version (i.e., small-screen but in color), and they’re paying for it themselves. A nice vote of confidence. A bit late, but nice.
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