Starting Early

I didn’t set out to create a game.
I was just learning.

I was learning about computers,
playing around on the Apple ] we bought at the flea market.
Learning about physics—Stephen Hawking’s book about black holes
was in my backpack.

I was learning new words, and what they meant.
Playing around with what a thousand GOTO statements
and some user input logic could do.
Seeing if I could make the [turtle<!– BROKEN LINK: [` we bought at the flea market.
Learning about physics—Stephen Hawking’s book about black holes
was in my backpack.

I was learning new words, and what they meant.
Playing around with what a thousand GOTO statements
and some user input logic could do.
Seeing if I could make the turtle –> draw cool shapes on the screen.

Spaghettification was the new word of the day—
maybe of the year.
All choices in the game eventually led you to being spaghettified.

When I started the fourth grade that year,
the classroom also had an Apple.
So I made a copy of the disk and brought it to school,
letting other classmates play with it.

One of the teachers saw it
and encouraged me to post it on the network between schools.
The school network was called Prodigy at the time,
which later became Prodigy Internet as it grew.

They—Prodigy—ended up reaching out to the school,
who connected them to my parents.
They wanted to license the game from me
so they could incorporate it into their small playable game library.

I never knew the details of the deal. And aside from being allowed to buy a new 286 Tandy computer,
I never directly saw any of the money.

It all went to my parents.