Read Online Masters of Doom by David Kushner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Kushner
Tags: Fiction
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sausages for a local food company—died
suddenly of a heart attack. Adrian, already quiet and sensitive, fell deeper into
withdrawal. While his mother, a loan officer, and two younger sisters tried to cope,
Adrian spent more time illustrating. Not surprisingly for a teenage boy with a pet
scorpion, the ideas and subject matter that most compelled him were dark. In college
the inspiration turned grimly real.
To earn money for school, Adrian worked as an aide in the medical communications department
of a local hospital. His job was to photocopy pictures taken of patients in the emergency
room, the most graphic images of fatality and disease. He saw bedsores so terrible
the skin was falling from the bone. He saw gunshot wounds, severed limbs. One time
a farmer came in with a wooden fence post driven through his groin. The pictures took
on an almost fetishistic quality, as Adrian traded them with his friends.
His artwork became not only darker but more skillful. His college art mentor, Lemoins
Batan, recognized Adrian’s talents, his ability to draw with precise and seemingly
effortless detail. When Lemoins asked Adrian what he wanted to do, his student told
him that he’d like to work in fine art. In the meantime, he was looking for experience.
His teacher had heard through the grapevine of somewhere he might start: Softdisk.
When Adrian found out that the company was looking for people to do art for computer
software, he was less than intrigued. He was partial to pencil and paper, not keyboard
and printer. But the Softdisk internship paid better than the hospital, so he agreed,
laboring at the innocuous work until one day he returned to find his boss arguing
loudly with two young programmers. One of the other artists came over to Adrian and
said, “You know what’s going on?”
“No,” Adrian replied quietly, “I have no idea.”
“They’re talking about you.”
“Oh shit, man, I’m toast.” Adrian assumed something was wrong, that he was being fired.
The two young programmers came up to him when they were through and introduced themselves
as Carmack and Romero, his partners at Gamer’s Edge.
For the next Gamer’s Edge disk, they were going to make only one game. Al agreed to that plan, letting Romero and
Carmack pursue their vision of making one big commercial game from scratch every two
months—still a considerable feat. But with their roles in place—Carmack doing the
engine; Romero, the software tools and game design; Adrian, the art; Lane, the management
and miscellaneous coding—it seemed within their reach.
The idea for the next game came from Carmack, who was experimenting with a breakthrough
bit of programming that created an illusion of movement beyond the confines of the
screen. It was called scrolling. Again, arcade games were the model. At first, the
action of arcade games all took place within one static screen: in Pong, players controlled
paddles that could move only from the bottom to the top of the screen as they hit
a ball back and forth; in Pac-Man, the character would chomp dots as he cruised within
a confined maze; in Space Invaders, players controlled a ship at the bottom of the
screen that would shoot at descending alien ships. There was never a sense of broad
movement, as though the players or enemies were actually progressing outside the box.
All this changed in 1980, when Williams Electronics released Defender , the first arcade game to popularize the idea of scrolling beyond the scope of the
screen. In this sci-fi shoot-’em-up, players controlled a spaceship that moved horizontally
above a planet surface, shooting down aliens and rescuing people along the way. A
tiny map on the screen would show the player the entire scope of the world, which,
if stretched out, would be the equivalent of about three and a half screens. Compared
with the other games in the arcade, Defender felt big, as if the player
suddenly of a heart attack. Adrian, already quiet and sensitive, fell deeper into
withdrawal. While his mother, a loan officer, and two younger sisters tried to cope,
Adrian spent more time illustrating. Not surprisingly for a teenage boy with a pet
scorpion, the ideas and subject matter that most compelled him were dark. In college
the inspiration turned grimly real.
To earn money for school, Adrian worked as an aide in the medical communications department
of a local hospital. His job was to photocopy pictures taken of patients in the emergency
room, the most graphic images of fatality and disease. He saw bedsores so terrible
the skin was falling from the bone. He saw gunshot wounds, severed limbs. One time
a farmer came in with a wooden fence post driven through his groin. The pictures took
on an almost fetishistic quality, as Adrian traded them with his friends.
His artwork became not only darker but more skillful. His college art mentor, Lemoins
Batan, recognized Adrian’s talents, his ability to draw with precise and seemingly
effortless detail. When Lemoins asked Adrian what he wanted to do, his student told
him that he’d like to work in fine art. In the meantime, he was looking for experience.
His teacher had heard through the grapevine of somewhere he might start: Softdisk.
When Adrian found out that the company was looking for people to do art for computer
software, he was less than intrigued. He was partial to pencil and paper, not keyboard
and printer. But the Softdisk internship paid better than the hospital, so he agreed,
laboring at the innocuous work until one day he returned to find his boss arguing
loudly with two young programmers. One of the other artists came over to Adrian and
said, “You know what’s going on?”
“No,” Adrian replied quietly, “I have no idea.”
“They’re talking about you.”
“Oh shit, man, I’m toast.” Adrian assumed something was wrong, that he was being fired.
The two young programmers came up to him when they were through and introduced themselves
as Carmack and Romero, his partners at Gamer’s Edge.
For the next Gamer’s Edge disk, they were going to make only one game. Al agreed to that plan, letting Romero and
Carmack pursue their vision of making one big commercial game from scratch every two
months—still a considerable feat. But with their roles in place—Carmack doing the
engine; Romero, the software tools and game design; Adrian, the art; Lane, the management
and miscellaneous coding—it seemed within their reach.
The idea for the next game came from Carmack, who was experimenting with a breakthrough
bit of programming that created an illusion of movement beyond the confines of the
screen. It was called scrolling. Again, arcade games were the model. At first, the
action of arcade games all took place within one static screen: in Pong, players controlled
paddles that could move only from the bottom to the top of the screen as they hit
a ball back and forth; in Pac-Man, the character would chomp dots as he cruised within
a confined maze; in Space Invaders, players controlled a ship at the bottom of the
screen that would shoot at descending alien ships. There was never a sense of broad
movement, as though the players or enemies were actually progressing outside the box.
All this changed in 1980, when Williams Electronics released Defender , the first arcade game to popularize the idea of scrolling beyond the scope of the
screen. In this sci-fi shoot-’em-up, players controlled a spaceship that moved horizontally
above a planet surface, shooting down aliens and rescuing people along the way. A
tiny map on the screen would show the player the entire scope of the world, which,
if stretched out, would be the equivalent of about three and a half screens. Compared
with the other games in the arcade, Defender felt big, as if the player
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