character was hired because his friend already worked there, and he can
program in a competent fashion, but he doubts he (and even the company) is really good enough. So how did they know what was good enough? How did they know what gamers wanted? And did they even like games? The nearest we see is the graphics guy, Jim, enjoying Pole Position and Arkanoid.

That said, this warts-and-all book doesn't just show a world cut-off from gamers, because although it sounds like a serious documentary, it has dark humour that increases as it goes along. It almost revels in how rubbish things were! Well, what is there ever to laugh at when everything's hunky-dory?! Their failures and lifestyles are the butt of gags-

Living out in the margins of an
advisable diet has brought us to
the discovery that cigarettes and
fizzy drinks are a two-part formula
for a dental adhesive. Maybe our
disgust at this kept the
realisation of it under wraps as a
shameful secret? Now it's out,
we're liberated - no, fixated: we
give each other demonstrations of
how sticky our teeth are. We go up
to each other, press our top and
bottom sets together and try to get
the loudest unsticking sound from
pulling them apart. It's almost
competitive. It could be a level in
our mega-game. Get your teeth as
sticky as you can from fags and
fizz without killing yourself in
the process. It's a bit like those
zoo elephants you hear about who
eventually starve once they've lost
enough teeth. A game of competitive
self-annihilation.

Isn't this about reflecting the times? If it had portrayed 17 year-olds who didn't swear and question management, then maybe that wouldn't paint the correct picture, and you'd end up with a distorted image of how things were, something most people like to paint when they write these sort of 'I was a retro programmer' books. Of course, when companies were going out of business faster than titles were emerging, the next title that flopped could lose you your job, so the pressure to cut corners must have been immense. There are parts about the team members' feelings towards their peers and their bosses. But there is also talk about how the bosses had to cope with managing a team
of teenagers that mucked around.

The guys have incredibly long days at work. They help with setting up shows, loading display stands into the back of vans; they blag customers with demos
of titles not written yet, and it's all part of being a jack of all trades. At the end of the month they at least get a reliable if modest wage, and then argue about royalties. If you're lucky you could earn something from a title that sells well. And if you're a freelancer, you don't know where the next penny will come from, if at all. Freelancers only took a commission and a
small one at that: remember everyone had to take a cut: cover artists, duplication processes and marketing all sucked earnings away from the games creator. Here's a hopeful freelancer visiting-

For the second time today Morris
asks me to abandon my machine to
accommodate a freelance we've found
on Compunet. The guy stands behind
Morris, fanning the air in front of
him with a 5 1/4" disk, looking
slightly lost. Freelances' nerves
are so acute with self-management
that they typically employ a
bravado act that in-housers with
the security of full-time jobs
don't need. The act is possibly
revved up by the schadenfreude in
their seeing a friend or two
getting thank-you but no thank-you
letters or just plain silence for
their submissions. This guy's one
of the lucky few: he's already
proved himself if we've invited him
in. He hasn't figured this out yet,
so for now, the cockiness and
bravado mask his quaking soul.

It's towards the end of the book that more freelancers appear who aren't quite what they seem. One of them in particular confirms what you might have already heard about the scams that happened in the industry at the time. Then, when this software house is under the pressure of closure, their dream of a mega-game turns into a nightmare of considering putting out something so bad and hyped that it would be a true 'hype game'. All this and the affectionate portrayal of the cast of characters had me wondering all along which software house it's about. It got me thinking on other things too!


*************************************
REMEMBERING THE PAST
The Hype Game Reflected
*************************************

Why was The Hype Game put out? And why now? Is it there to ask how we should remember the past? If The Hype Game was turned into a movie, then it would be all loose cars and fast women (maybe that's the other way round, but I never found any fast women, only loose ones!). There would be cool computers and slick gameplay meticulously engineered by computer scientists in white suits all rolled up in a Hollywood blockbuster. The programmers would be Hollywood heartthrobs. And don't forget the ecstatic customers clambering and cheering for the next release of a bug-free, expertly designed, meticulously engineered software title. Then fast forward to the present day with middle-aged men fondly reminiscing about how games were all better in the old days, how the gameplay was king, and how the graphics, although blocky, were far more advanced than the photorealistic animations of today. Oh how great life was back when everything worked, looked and played better!

WAS IT ALL GOOD?

Do you remember the games you used to play? How many were actually really
good? And how many were just utter tripe or worse still, a copy of a game you already had. How many copies of space invaders can a machine really have
before the whole thing is totally and utter stale? Isn't one platform game
just the same as another, albeit with differing graphics and sound track? How long can you sit in front of a datasette and keep totally calm when you
realise the computer has crashed for the 3rd time in a row? How long is it going to take to do a tape alignment and hope the thing won't crash again? Why is the disk drive dancing all over the table as it loads a game with
super-high copy protection?

Should the past be remembered with rose-tinted spectacles; or should the past be remembered for what it really was: kids coding under enormous pressure from management to create another money-spinner for the company? The early days would have seen pioneers of programming emerge, but as business took off, the inevitable happened, and the software creations were just another saleable commodity. Of course we do have exceptions to the rule, the unique games that still emerged; just look at Llamasoft (although even some of Minter's games
can be linked to copies of other titles). If you found something strange and playable, then it was usually Llamasoft's.

So was it actually all hype? Were any games at all ever any good or did we
just play them because we had been marketed into buying them? Did we simply justify buying them, maybe even to ourselves, so that we didn't feel as though we'd wasted our pocket money on a marketing ploy? Were we just lapping up anything that was slickly marketed; or, on the other hand, was there truly a digital revelation, a time we should embrace with affection? How many of what

--- CrashWrite 2.0
* Origin: --:)-- Dragon's Lair BBS --(:- (39:901/281)