Staying with Robert Cook in Huntington Beach. Beach party last night with his family and about 500 other people. We talked about computer games, movies, and our future.

Today we drove into Westwood and saw St. Elmo’s Fire. The first movie I’ve ever seen about people my age, i.e., just out of college. Usually it’s either the summer after high school, or freshman year in college. It’s refreshing to see these actors who’ve been playing 17-year-olds for the past five years get a chance to act their age.

Karateka is #2 on Billboard’s bestseller list.

Robert is all psyched up to do a new game now. My presence seems to have that effect on him. Me, I’ve been having serious doubts about doing another computer game.

On the one hand, if I live at home for much longer I’ll go stir-crazy. What I need is a place to go. Friends. Work. Moving to Marin and doing another game for Broderbund would give me that.

But it would take time away from screenwriting. In the time it’ll take me to do a new game, I could write three screenplays. And… the games business is drying up. Karateka may make me as little as $75,000 all told, and it’s at the top of the charts. There’s no guarantee the new game will be as successful. Or that there will even be a computer games market a couple of years from now.

It was fun walking into the Broderbund offices and seeing everybody.  Had lunch with Gene Portwood and spent a couple of hours sitting around his office with Lauren Elliott and Gary Carlston, talking about ideas for my new game.  David Snider showed me the Amiga — wow! — and Chris Jochumson showed me Mac Print Shop.

Broderbund’s doing well.  Print Shop is doing insanely well.  I’m almost convinced I want to move out here and do another game.

After I write my first screenplay.

Danny Gorlin took me to his house to show me Airheart, which, a year later, is now double hi-res.  He asked for feedback.

It had the same problem it did the last time I saw it.  Small detailed objects against a black background.  It should be cosmic, mind-boggling; people should look at it and say “I can’t believe I’m seeing this on an Apple II.”  But the truth is, right now, it doesn’t look especially impressive.

I said: “You’ve gone the honest, hard-to-program, hard-to-represent route at every step. You need to put in some cheap effects so people will notice the expensive ones.”  I offered a bunch of suggestions.  He was listening, but I could tell he really wanted to believe it was almost there and he could be finished in a month.

Danny’s sunk a lot of time and money into this. I’m worried. Technically, it’s a wonder, but the universe he’s chosen to represent with this awesome piece of programming is so exotic that I’m afraid people won’t respond to it.  It’s what Gene Portwood calls “an effect in search of a game.”