Masters of Doom by David Kushner Read Free Book Online Page A

beloved in his bar and was even selected to teach Tom Cruise how to mix
     drinks in preparation for the bartender film
Cocktail.
Jay’s people skills led to him into restaurant management. Later at Uptime he was
     able to combine his skills: as a manager and as a game enthusiast. Now, at Softdisk,
     he was ready to soar even higher.
    By the time they hit Shreveport, Lane, Romero, and Jay felt like old friends. They
     had made an adventure of the trip down, stopping for a few days at Disney World. As
     they pulled up in Shreveport, however, they had no sense of their future or, for that
     matter, if they had even arrived. Baked into the northwest corner of Louisiana just
     a tobacco spit from Texas, Shreveport was in rough shape in 1989. A busted oil boom
     had left the area deflated and depressed. The air was thick with humidity, made thicker
     by the overgrown patches of swamps. Downtown crawled with homeless people escaping
     the heat in the shadows of run-down brick buildings—including the offices of Softdisk.
    Softdisk occupied two buildings in the downtown area. The administration office was built under a blacktop parking
     lot; the passing street sloped down a hill near the door. It was like working in an
     ant farm. As the gamers arrived, Al burst through the door with sparkling eyes, gushing
     about how quickly the company was growing and how eagerly he wanted their help. Romero
     and Lane showed him an Asteroids knockoff they’d made called Zappa Roids. Al was impressed,
     not only by their obvious programming abilities but by their youthful zeal.
    Romero made his ambition clear from the start—he had no interest in working on utility
     programs; he wanted only to make big commercial games. That was fine with Al, who
     explained how excited he was to get into the gaming world. Romero and Lane would be
     the first two employees in a new Special Projects division devoted solely to making
     games. On the way out, Al patted Romero on the back and said, “By the way, let me
     know if you boys need an apartment to rent. I’ve got some places in town; I’m a landlord
     too.”
    Romero, Lane, and Jay left Softdisk’s business office for the building where the programmers
     and “talent” worked. For a software company, it sure didn’t seem like fun. Squeezed
     between floors of insurance brokers, each programmer worked in a separate quiet office
     under bright fluorescent lights. There was no music, no revelry, no game playing.
     Life at Softdisk had become something of a pressure cooker, with several programs
     to get out the door every month.
    Romero introduced himself to a group of programmers. They asked whether Big Al had
     offered him a place to rent. When Romero said yes, they snickered. “Don’t do it,”
     one of the guys said. He told Romero how when he got hired he took Al up on the offer,
     only to find the apartment in a desperate state of squalor—a wooden shack in a bad
     part of town. When the guy lay on the couch, he saw a long worm poke its head up out
     of a patch of dirt on the floor.
    But nothing could get Romero down. He was back on track. The sun was shining. He had
     a job making games. His wife, Kelly, and toddlers, Michael and Steven, would be happy
     in the new environment. Now they could have a fresh start. He called and told Kelly
     to pack her bags; they were moving to Shreveport.
    Romero and Lane spent their first weeks living out their dream, working on games in the Special Projects
     division. Romero had another agenda too: to pull himself away from the Apple II and
     convert to the PC. Early on he told Al that he thought the Apple II was on the way
     out, especially because of the rise of clones of the IBM PC. By refusing to incorporate the new IBM software standard, Apple was rapidly diminishing as the personal computer
     of choice. What Romero didn’t tell Al was that he felt like he was missing the boat.
     His unbridled devotion to the Apple II, he thought, had put him