Masters of Doom by David Kushner Read Free Book Online

II. Business went well,
     and the company soon expanded with programs for both Apple and Commodore computers.
     In 1986 the company launched a subscription disk for the IBM personal computer and its burgeoning clones , machines that could run the same operating systems. Personal computers at long last
     were plummeting into affordability. As a result, a world of new computer users—sometimes
     called “newbies”—opened up. By 1987 Softdisk had 100,000 subscribers who were paying
     $9.95 per month to get the disks. Al was voted Shreveport’s businessman of the year.
    The good times brought challenges. Al was soon running a $12 million company with
     120 employees and feeling overwhelmed. Competition followed, including a company in
     New Hampshire called Uptime. In the winter of 1989, Al phoned Jay Wilbur, an Uptime
     editor he had met at a gaming convention, and asked him if he wanted to come down
     and help. Jay, who was growing tired of the cold and feeling underappreciated by the
     Uptime owner, agreed to run Softdisk’s Apple II department. He also mentioned that
     he knew two game programmers, John Romero and Lane Roathe—a former Uptime programmer—who
     were looking for work too.
    Al was thrilled. Though he had occasionally been including games on his disks, he
     sensed an opportunity to expand into the emerging PC entertainment marketplace. He
     could see other successful companies like Sierra On-Line, Broderbund, and Origin doing
     well in games. There was no reason that Softdisk couldn’t have a larger piece of that
     pie as well. He told Jay to bring the gamers down too.
    For Romero, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. He had just been through a series of disappointments,
     from the unrelenting winters of New Hampshire to his faulty gamble to leave his dream
     job at Origin for his boss’s ill-fated start-up. His wife and kids were clear across
     the country, waiting to see how his fortune would turn. Despite his early successes,
     a family life was once again slipping to the wayside. He hoped a new life down south
     would turn things around.
    The road trip from New Hampshire to Shreveport that summer of 1989 was just the prescription.
     Along the way, he bonded with his fellow gamers, Lane and Jay. Lane, with whom Romero
     had lived for a month, was very much a kindred spirit. Five years older than Romero,
     Lane came from a similar background. He’d grown up in Colorado, not far from where
     Romero was born, raised on heavy metal, underground comics, and computer games. Easygoing,
     with long hair wrapped in a bandanna, Lane got along perfectly with Romero. Though
     he didn’t share Romero’s insurmountable energy or ambition, he too loved the nuances,
     tricks, and thrills of Apple II programming. And, like Romero, all he wanted to do
     was make games. While in New Hampshire, the two even decided to merge their one-man-band
     companies—Romero’s Capitol Ideas and Lane’s Blue Mountain Micro—under one roof as
     Ideas from the Deep.
    Jay was an Apple II guy as well, but of a different nature. By his own admission,
     he wasn’t much of a programmer. But he had two important qualities that Romero respected:
     a genuine understanding of Apple II code and an intense passion for games. Seven years
     older than Romero, the thirty-year-old Jay grew up in Rhode Island as the son of an
     insurance adjuster and a gift card saleswoman. In high school Jay was tall but not
     skilled in sports. Instead he had a way with machines, whether racking up high scores
     in Asteroids or dismantling his motorcycle. He used the money he received from insurance
     after a motorcycle accident in his early twenties to buy his first Apple II.
    It didn’t take long for Jay to realize that his predisposition was not for the solitary
     lifestyle of code. He was much more suited for the world of schmoozing and good times,
     a world he excelled in as a bartender at a neighborhood T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant.
     He became