March 30, 1989
Brian showed the game to the Star Chamber (aka Publishing Committee) – Gary, Bill, Harry, Ann Kronen, Ed Badasov, Richard Whittaker, Cathy, Dianne Drosnes, and Ed Auer (Doug, traveling in Japan, having already voted “yes”). He told me it “passed with flying colors.” So, green light to go ahead with packaging, scheduling, etc.
Doug talked to Bill and Bill talked to Latricia about the marketing situation. Latricia said she just wants to give Sophie a chance to handle a new project. Doug said firmly: “This is not an appropriate project for that. We’re counting on this to be our next big hit. It’s the only product we have in development that’s going to be a hit. We want to give it the biggest push we can.” (I got all this second hand, of course.)
So now Latricia’s going to oversee it and Sophie, basically, will do the gruntwork. Whew.
They’re desperate for an MS-DOS version. Jim St. Louis wants to do it, with a friend of his, Josh Scholar. I just don’t know if these guys are technically up to par.
April 2, 1989
Tomi advised me not to sign a contract with anyone but Doug Greene. Let him subcontract to these other guys. If he balks at that, I should take that as a sign.
I’m seeing them all tomorrow at Doug’s place, two hours north of Broderbund.
April 3, 1989
A gorgeous spring day. I drove like a maniac on narrow, winding country roads to Cazadero for the big meet with Doug Greene, Jim St. Louis, Josh Scholar, and Mike Larner.
I showed them POP and we went for a walk around Doug’s property, had a beer and smoked a joint (probably grown by one of his neighbors), broke out the yellow pads and discussed the technical challenges of the MS-DOS conversion while Doug’s wife cooked dinner.
After dinner Doug said he’d been chewing all day on the idea of subcontracting to the other guys and he just didn’t think he could do it. “See, if I took this on, I’d be putting my name on the line. I’ve done lots of conversions for Broderbund and I haven’t messed up once. And that’s an important thing to me. Now I’ve got this business thing taking up 80-90% of my time, and I just don’t know if I could handle the pressure of taking on a project this size.”
I said that in that case, I’d have to reconsider. There was a silence. “Whew! Doug said. “I didn’t realize it had come down to that.”
Doug drove the others down to their car (parked, like mine, at the stream that blocked Doug’s driveway and which only Doug’s Volkswagen bus could cross) while I stayed behind. After Doug came back, he and his wife and I sat and talked some more. He’s confident in Jim, but admitted he has his doubts about Josh and Mike.
We chatted for an hour about peripherally related topics. Broderbund, corporate America, the rat race, capitalism, freedom. I was seducing him. At the critical psychological moment, I remarked:
“You know, all my clipping is done on the byte boundaries.”
There was a pause.
“Well, that was a nice thing to say!” Doug exclaimed. He started stroking his beard and asking more questions. “Huh. This is starting to sound not so bad.” In the end he said he’d sleep on it.
April 4, 1989
Doug and Jim will do the port. Yeah! We spent the day hammering out a deal. Ended up at 7.5% royalty, to drop to 5% after 67,500 units, and $35,000 in advances.
First POP packaging meeting with the marketing department. I’ve never heard so many bad ideas proposed in such a short time (“We could package a bag of popcorn with the sneak previews!”) At least everyone was enthusiastic. Brian thought it had gone well.
April 7, 1989
Doug Greene called me to say he’d woken up with the night sweats and paced until dawn and finally came to the conclusion that he can’t do it after all. I talked him down and offered a six-week trial period, at the end of which he can decide whether or not to take on the whole job. That, he agreed to.
Shit. I’ve spent all week on this, and now all I’ve got is a “maybe.” I need to find a backup.
April 11, 1989
Packaging meeting #2 with Sophie and Brian. Latricia wasn’t there. Sophie was extremely nice to me. Nevertheless, she’s an idiot.
Worked on the in-game cosmetics. Tomi advised me to keep it strong and simple. The Byzantine latticework and intricate patterns should be inset, as part of doors and windows and so on. Good advice.
