The idea of doing an interview with some people from Williams was
something I was mulling about in the back of my head for a while. A lot of
it had to do with the ease of being able to type to them on IRC (Internet
Relay Chat) and because I thought it would be interesting and fun to ask
them things related to their involvement with the pinball industry that
others might like to read about too. I imagined a small discussion with a
bunch of questions that I had prepared ahead of time and maybe some
occasional off-topic rambling. Of course, things didn't turn out as I
expected them to, and probably for the better. The text below is what came
about. Both Ted Estes and Greg Dunlap were kind enough to share their
stories about how they started and arrived at where they are today.
Ted has been at Williams for a seven years and is currently a Software
Manager in the Casino Gaming division. Greg was hired by Williams
relatively recently and is a software engineer in the Casino Gaming division.
The following "interview" occurred on January 12, 1999 on IRC. It has
been edited for the most part to make sense and random IRC fluff has been
filtered out. Glaring spelling/grammatical errors were somewhat corrected.
Much thanks to the other frequenters of #pinball who were also there as it
happened and gave advice/suggestions regarding the stories below. All
editor comments are in [brackets].
roya: Did you grow up or live in Chicago before working for Williams?
GDD: Which one of us?
roya: Whoever!
GDD: Yeah I did.
GDD: I've lived in the Chicago area all my life.
Tedster: I moved to the Chicago area when I was 16. The first time I
played pinball was in a friend's basement in 9th grade. His family
had some ancient game with all the paint worn off the playfield.
They had marked the shooter gauge so that you could launch the
ball and pick the rollover lane at the top of playfield. I remember
thinking at the time that it might be neat some day to have a pinball
of my own. But this was from a purely technical perspective, as I
had inclinations toward Electrical Engineering.
GDD: I first started playing pinball in about 1980 when Black
Knight came out. I remember playing BK an insane amount, and also
playing Firepower and Gorgar. A guy down the street bought a
Black Knight and I played the crap out of it. I remember he had
it in his garage because there was no room in his house. After
that I moved away from games for a while, until a girl I was
dating set me down in front of a Twilight Zone, which started my
second infatuation.
Tedster: I thought it would be more fun to fix up than play, actually.
Later, I got into video games. Starting with Space Invaders, then
Pac-Man, then Tempest (my all time favorite vid).
GDD: I played videos quite a bit during that era too, but never
became nearly as obsessed with them.
Tedster: My sophomore year in college, I discovered Black Knight. Also,
Firepower and Xenon.
GDD: I remember liking Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Elevator Action
quite a bit.
Tedster: But I spent most of my money on Black Knight. That game blew
me away.
GDD: Then Marble Madness later, and after that no vid ever
really did it for me.
Yes, I too remember being significantly affected by Black Knight. I
won my first ever pinball related contest on a Black Knight. I
must have been like 12.
Tedster: I couldn't get enough of it. I didn't even play that well.
GDD: I distinctly remember not having any concept of rules back
then too, just keep batting it around as long as you could.
roya: Were you guys interested in ever working on the manufacturing/programming
end? I mean, was that a serious consideration ever.
GDD: Not back then, it never even occurred to me. I mean, I was 12.
roya: As your pinball addictions flourished. Say, in college or
a little later.
GDD: Later it seemed like it would be fun, but I fought it for
a long long time, not wanting to see involvement with the industry
ruin my love for the game, which had happened when I got a job in
the music industry.
Tedster: During my junior year at college, I got a part-time job with
the Electrical Engineering department at Purdue. I worked
for ECN (Engineering Computing Network). I worked for Tom Uban
[currently a pinball software engineer at Williams], and it was
my job to PM the printers on the network.
roya: PM?
Tedster: PM = preventive maintenance.
Another guy who worked at ECN (full time) bought a Black Knight
new. He had it in his office, and I would play it there, but not much.
roya: How did you find out about jobs at Williams or become interested
in applying?
GDD: For me it was reading rec.games.pinball.
Tedster: I'm not done with my story....
GDD: I suddenly realized that people make these things.
roya: (sorry, heh)
GDD: oh sorry
Tedster: Later, Tom bought a Tempest of his own from an operator. That
started me thinking again about owning my own pinball to fixup. Then,
years later (1988), Tom and I were talking on the phone, and he
mentions that this *other* guy who worked at ECN had bought the
first guy's BK for his kid, but was tired of it and wanted to
sell it. That was the first game I bought.
That was winter of 1988. The first Expo I attended was 1989, but I
only poked around for a couple of hours.
GDD: I bought my first game (also a BK) as a deal with an old boss.
He wanted to give me a bonus for some work I had done, but he didn't
want me to be taxed on cash. So he gave me a money amount and told me
to buy something. Then he wrote off the expense. I bought my BK sight
unseen from a guy in Portland. From an ad in Pingame Journal.
Tedster: I bought a Firepower not long after the BK. I went to the
Pheasant Run show in Spring 1989, and I ran into Jon Norris [pinball
designer for Premier at the time, now employed by Sega Pinball]. He
thought he knew me from somewhere, and said "hi". Of course, I
wasn't who he thought I was, but as luck would have it, I had met
my first pinball designer!
We talked a while, and I mentioned I had a BK and FP. Also, that
I was looking for a nice playfield for a FP. He had a game that he had
bought at auction, only to open it up and find it had no electronics.
He would sell it to me for $125. I said I would think about it.
Anyway, Jon says "Oh, you like Steve Ritchie games. You should see
his new one. It's on test."
roya: So did having some exposure to the manufacturers and such
prompt you to have some interest in working in the same field?
Tedster: Actually, the strange thing is that all that time playing
vids and pins in college, and I never thought about someone doing
it for a living. It didn't seem like a real job.
GDD: No neither did I.
Tedster: After the Pheasant Run show, I drove down the street to Gala
West [arcade/bowling alley in western suburbs of Chicago], and played
Black Knight 2000, prototype # 1.
As far as actually wanted to work on pinball games, that's an
interesting aside...
My dad worked for Motorola when I was in HS and college. In HS, he
brought home an evaluation kit for the MC6800 microprocessor. It
had a 6-digit display and keypad. It had 2 x 128 byte RAM chips,
and a serial port for saving/loading programs to a cassette player.
It also had a dual parallel port, which I hooked up to a speaker
and some LEDs, and I made musical light shows with it.
Years later, I discovered that the very first solid state pinball
machines had almost exactly that same hardware. MC6800, 256 bytes
RAM, several parallel ports, plus other stuff. I probably could have
gotten a job at Williams or Bally right out of school, but it never
occurred to me. Anyway, even with all my collecting, I never thought
about doing pinballs for a living. I was working on a real career
at AT&T.
Before I saw Black Knight 2000, my only exposure to pinballs had been
games from 1979/1980. I actually considered building my own pinball
machine, and had started sketching out a playfield. I was going to
use an 80186-based controller board that I was using at AT&T. (My
motivation being that I had all the programming tools available.)
After I saw BK2000, I thought "Wow. There's been a lot of progress
in 9 years. I give up." Anyway, I'm still collecting and rebuilding
games, but I'm not too discriminate at that point. Even though
Jon Norris had identified my liking for Steve Ritchie games, I still
thought that a pinball was a pinball. I just wanted it to talk and have
multiball. I didn't care about the manufacturer.
I bought a Centaur. And I needed some drop targets. I advertised in
the Pinball Trader, I think, and a guy answered my ad. He traded me a
few "rare" drop targets for a Stern CPU-200. I thought it was a
good deal, because I had picked up a bunch of games for real
cheap, and then sold a few of them for a profit. I had the CPU
extra. I asked him if he knew where I could get the rest of the drop
targets I needed. He said he knew this guy named Nick Cochis in
Boston who might have them. I called Nick, and we ended talking for
a couple of hours. He had a box full of Centaur drop targets and sold
me a set for real cheap. He also told me that the CPU I had traded was
worth about $125, so I had gotten ripped off. Anyway, Nick and I
ended up talking fairly frequently. He eventually talked me into
becoming a "Williams collector", as he was a "Bally collector"
and then we wouldn't be competing with each other.
I visited Tom Uban and his wife in Boston one year, and took Nick
up on his offer to stop by and see his stuff. Tom and I ended up
spending hours over there. Nick has an impressive collection. Nick
also prompted me to go into the pinball circuit board repair business.
I made a bunch of money to buy games that way. He and I used to
split the cost of full page ads in Pinball Trader. He's the Bally guy,
I'm the Williams one.
Nick introduced me to Jack Simonton (also a Williams collector back
then). Jack eventually took over publication of the Pinball
Trader. He was in Chicago in August of 1991 for a training
seminar. (He worked for Apple at the time.) He had called
Joe Kaminkow [president of engineering at Data East Pinball]
and Larry DeMar [pinball software engineer for Williams then, now
head of engineering at Wiliams Electronics pinball
division] to ask if he could get factory tours while he was
in town. (Since he was "press", he felt he could ask for the
special favor.) Jack asked if I wanted to tag along for the
tours. (I had been a contributor to Pinball Trader, so he figured
I was "staff".)
This was the first time I had met Joe Kaminkow. He was a most
gracious host and went out of his way to show us stuff at Data
East. He showed us Star Trek 25th Anniversary Edition, which was
in whitewood stage at the time. He also showed us the funky ramp from
Hook, and a mockup of the dinosaur from Jurassic Park. "You've read
Jurassic Park, right? By the same guy who wrote Andromeda Strain."
Joe asked. Well, I hadn't but I bought a copy the next week. I
remember that while we were there a vendor came in to show Joe the
"transporter" backbox artwork and materials. I was very impressed
to see actual game development going on right before me.
The next stop is Williams, but time for a side story....
I knew who Larry was, as I had attended the "Making of Funhouse"
seminar at Expo the year before. I didn't even want to go, but
Nick insisted, as he had bought a Funhouse. (I thought at the
time "But you're a Bally collector!".) He had bought it NIB [New
In Box]. Anyway, I had been thinking about my Firepower, and how I
would sometimes roll the score, since it has only 6-digit
scoring. And I thought, "Hey. The 1's digit is always 0. If I
could divide all the scores by 10, then it would score into the
millions!" I tried disassembling code, but gave up quickly.
So, I was on a quest to find the source code. I never got to ask
Larry, though. He was always busy at Expo. (I would find out later
that there was no way I would have gotten source code, as that
sort of thing is a closely-held secret.) Anyway, I was reading some
news group on Netnews, and someone had posted a microprocessor simulator
that ran on the PC. I think it was for the MC6800. That got me thinking.
What if I put the pinball I/O [input/output, e.g. switches, lamps,
coils] into that simulator, and simulated a pinball game?
I actually programmed the simulator from scratch, as I didn't like
the guy's code. I programmed in all sorts of breakpointing and a 1000
instruction backtrace, including memory store/fetches. I reverse
engineered the scoring code in FP, and modified it to divide all
the scores by 10.
OK, back to the Willliams tour... I wanted to impress Larry, so I
brought along my pinball simulator. He, too, gave us a really nice
tour of the factory, but he couldn't show us anything currently
in development. And then he needed to find a PC to run my simulator on.
He couldn't take us "upstairs" into pinball engineering, but Eugene
Jarvis' [video game software engineer at Williams at the time, now
working at Midway] office in the video game department (which was
downstairs at the time) was pretty close to the door. He could get
me in there without our seeing any secret stuff.
So, we fire up my pinball simulator, and I show Eugene how you
can play Firepower on his PC. (Eugene was the programmer for FP.)
"Look, here's the lane change switch."
"OK, I just completed F-I-R-E."
"Here, watch the drop target coil fire when I hit all 3 targets in
the standup bank."
Then I show him the change for the 7-digit scoring. Both he and
Larry were impressed. I think a bunch of other pinball programmers
were there also.
Anyway, Larry invited Jack and me over to his place for pizza. He
had 2 condos in Chicago. One was completely filled with pinballs
and related junk. I remember seeing his Banzai Run "crystal" on
an end table, and I was very impressed. It's a wooden-based
thingy. The crystal part is a slab of glass, approx 6"x8" that
stands vertically. Banzai Run artwork and title, along with the
name of the design team are etched in the glass. There is a light
from below.
Sometime during the night, Larry says "You know? You should be
working with me." I mumble something about it sounding fun. But I'm
thinking "Yeah, right. I have a real job." Besides, I'm thinking,
once you've programmed one pinball game, what fun is the next one?
They can't be that different.
However, the idea is sticking in my head. My wife is asking me
how much do I think I could make at Williams. I'm thinking that
I'm overpaid as it is at AT&T, so I would probably take a big
cut anywhere else. As fate would have it, though, AT&T sold my
division to Memorex-Telex. M-T started phasing out my project.
And I was getting more and more bored/frustrated at my job.
One day in November 1991, I decided that I was going to go to work
and type up my resume and send it to Larry. That same day, Memorex-Telex
announced that it was closing down the Chicago office.
I didn't necessarily have my heart set on working at Williams, but
now I *needed* a job; staying at M-T wasn't an option. I actually
spent a lot of time feeling out my other options, so I didn't just
jump at a Williams job. Memorex-Telex put in incentives for me to
hang around until 2/28/92.
I interviewed at Williams, and Larry DeMar was very impressed with
my background. Larry really had to go to bat for me to get Wally
[Wally Smolucha -- Director of Engineering] to extend an offer.
He even made up a project for me to work on. I felt pretty bad about
all the work Larry did for me, because I knew he was working feverishly
on Addams Family, which was in development at the time. I ended up taking
a severe cut in pay. (But the M-T incentives made up for the difference
in the 1st year's salary.) Anyway, 2/28 was my last day at M-T. I started
at Williams the next Monday, 3/3.
Anyway, I arrived at work, and they did't have an office for
me. Standard operating procedure at Williams, I later discovered.
Larry stuck me in Pat's office, and handed me a stack of manuals.
"There will be a quiz later." I took the books home and read them
that night. Larry showed me how to do a "blank" game and load it on
the The Addam's Family in Pat's office. He told me to do the equivalent
of "hello, world" on a pinball game. Then I did some other stuff, and
I was off and running. Eventually, that TAF ended up in my office,
and I did a lot of programming on it. So, I started looking into
this project that Larry has slated me for, and tried to get up to speed
on pinball programming.
Sometime early on, I met Mark Ritchie [pinball designer at Williams,
now at Innovative Technologies] and saw him working on concepts
for a Jurassic Park pinball. Now, Joe Kaminkow hadn't told me not
to say anything about what he showed us, but I figured it was only
polite to keep quiet about any of the future stuff that I saw.
On the other hand, here was Mark working on Jurassic Park, and I
saw it under development at Data East. I decided that I should
say something to Mark. His response was "Well. We don't have the
license locked up yet, but we will surely get it." Of course,
Data East ended up with the license, and Jurassic Park went on
to be a top seller for them.
Somewhere in the beginning of April, I got informed that I would be
working on Pat's next game. Larry hadn't decided at that point if
he was going to work on the game or not. Larry was pretty
burned out from Addams Family, and he had some other family obligations,
so he wasn't sure if he was up for another intense game schedule.
Eventually, Larry decided to do the game, and I would be 2nd
banana. He and I worked amazing hours on it.
Later, Larry commented that he kept working so hard to keep up
with me. I was running to keep up with Larry! Also, I was trying
to prove my worth. With all of Wally's waffling on hiring me, I wanted
to show everyone how good I was. During that time, I became
"backup" for Larry on support of the pinball core Operating System.
Previously, he wouldn't let anyone touch it directly. All changes
were filtered through him.
From Thanksgiving weekend 1993 through Easter weekend 1994, I
took 2 days off work. Christmas and New Years. 7 days a week.
I would leave at about 6 in the morning, get to work at 7,
work until 9, get home at 10, repeat.
Anyway, to wrap it up. Larry bought a bunch of Twilight Zone
crystals, and presented one to me. Expo 1994, I was on the panel
for "The Making of TZ". I eventually became manager of the department
and I hired Tom Uban. In fact, as manager of the department, I have
been responsible, in some way, for hiring almost everyone who is now
programming pinball games at Williams.
And that's my story.
Sorry, Greg. I got on a roll.
GDD: Oh it was fun to hear. It reminded me of stories I can
tell.
Like I said before, I had a girlfriend who had started getting
into pinball and reading rec.games.pinball. There was a bar
across the street from where I worked at the time, and occasionally
we would go there and play. I remember them having a Bride of
Pinbot and Fish Tales. I remember being irritated because the
Fish Tales would launch balls SDTM [Straight Down The Middle]
and the face on Bride of Pinbot was fucked up so it was never
positioned right.
One day me and this girl (her name is Liz) wanted to see this
band Bailter Space play, and she was going to interview them for
her fanzine. Anyways, they had already played Chicago so we
drove to West Lafayette, Indiana to see them. There is the first
of many Ted connections in this story.
So we got there early and we were bored so we drove around to
find someplace to play some pinball. First we stopped at this
laundromat and played a RollerGames. I remember thinking this
was the stupidest piece of shit I had ever seen. I didn't know
anything about designers or anything at that point. But I knew
when I had fun and when I didn't. And the soundtrack on that
game really annoyed me.
Anyways, that was no fun, so we found another laundromat near
the club. We walk in there, and it has a huge arcade with
about 25 pinballs. It's still there. All pretty much modern too.
I poked around playing some games, I remember playing WhiteWater.
Anyways she grabbed me and dragged me over to Twilight Zone and
sat me down in front of it, where I remained for about three
hours. I became completely obsessed with TZ.
One of the test sites we had back then, Times Square, was around the
corner from where I worked and I began going there every day to
play TZ. Around this time I also got my first net connection and
Liz introduced me to news and I started reading rec.games.pinball.
Just what I needed, a nice way to fuel my newfound freakishness.
Anyways since I was around the corner from Times Square I started
seeing the test games as they came in. I didn't know about test
games until later, probably around the time ST:TNG and Popeye
showed up I realized I was seeing games nobody else was seeing,
and noticing the beta boy posts from Louis and Don.
Around that same time I also went to my first Expo, with all the
members of Buzzmuscle [his former band]. I remember I just
went on Saturday and wandered around in awe. I had no idea what
was going on. Anyways, I remember I was wandering around and I
bought a Twilight Zone flier from someone to take to the autograph
session and Pat and John signed it. I didn't know anything about
Ted at that point, I was mostly paying attention to designers
and I particularly knew about Pat because of my TZ infatuation.
The TZ got taken out and ST:TNG and Popeye showed up right
around the same time. ST:TNG was probably around when I first
started paying attention to programmers because of all the Dwight
posts. I remember being mad because I still hadn't LITZd [Lost
In The Zone] when they took out the TZ. Sometime the next year
[World Cup] Soccer got put on test at Dennis' Place For Games on
Belmont.
Anyways, I met Matt around then too since he was also working on
Soccer, and he told me about the IFPA tournament. I wasn't going
to go because I didn't think I was very good, but Matt kinda
cajoled me into it.
Anyways, at that tournament they had World Cup Soccer, Demo Man,
WWF and Rescue 911. I went lose, win, lose, which was fine with
me as long as I didn't go two and out. Before the tournament,
Ted was doing a rules demo for Demo Man. And I was watching
and I had played it quite a bit to that point, since they had it
at Times Square. And I remember him saying that to start
multiball, you shoot around the loop and into the little hole,
and I remember snidely saying, "Yeah, if the ball goes in there"
and Ted shooting me a dirty look. I didn't even know who he was,
I though he was just some tech or something.
The bigger thing about that tournament was I met Bowen, Keith,
Noel, Louis, Jason, Dan Wilson, Don, Dave Hegge, and who knows
who else there. Like I met everyone I know.
Road Show went on test in about September. That same year. I
remember driving all the way out to Gala North just to play it.
And I remember getting really pissed off because the stupid ball
would drain after missing a skill shot and there was no ball
saver. Then they got it at Times Square and the same thing was
happening. I was just so angry. I also didn't like that the
bulldozer, which is an integral part of the game, was such a
drainfest. If you get a ball caught under the left flipper you
cant save it.
So anyways, I was frustrated and annoyed, so I wrote this
horrible flaming post to rec.games.pinball and I titled it
"R**d Sh*w". Nobody really devowels games anymore, but it was at
the time saved for the most truly awful games. Dr*c*l* and
P*p*y* were the biggest. So it caused a firestorm of posting, to
devowel a Lawlor game, the horror!
Also around then, Louis started doing the Expo 94 website, and
planning the first rec.games.pinball party. I had begun exchanging
email with the Chicago folks and some others, and I went to the
party.
Oh wait. First, was the Pre-Expo Schieve party, which was the
first time I went to Rick's.
Tedster: There's a picture of me at that party talking to Orin and
drinking a beer.
GDD: I remember that Ted was there, and I was embarrassed everytime
I was around him and kept trying to hide my nametag. So at the party, I
was talking to Larry for a while.
Oh crap. I'm getting this all screwed up
OK, first was the Schieve party where I avoided Ted. Then was Expo.
This was the first time I was really going to do up Expo, since I
had only visited briefly the year before. I remember really wanting
to see the Lawlor show, but I couldn't get off work So I didn't
go, and around 6:00 I walk into the Expo hall, and this girl Leah
who was a local pingeek comes running up to me. "GREG! GREG! You
missed it!"
"Uh....what?"
"Pat Lawlor was giving his speech and he talked about the internet
and said, 'This is how you spell Road Show on the internet' and
took a piece of chalk and wrote R-*-*-D S-H-*-W on the blackboard."
Anyways, now I'm even more embarrassed to be alive. However, before I
left I bought one of those audio tapes of the Lawlor show, which I
still have. Anyways that whole thing happened. The next night was
the big party. I remember that this was to be a rec.games.pinball
elitist party only. It was in a room at the Travelodge but we didn't
know what room number we were getting. So the signal was that Louis
put a fake ad up on the bulletin board that said "P*p*y* For Sale:
Call xxx-yyyy" and yyyy was the room number. So we go over there
and the place is packed and the tub is filled with beer. I hang out
with Louis, who is doing live updates to the Expo 94 website with
Steve Baumgarten. Steve had a digital camera and they were posting
party pictures.
I start talking to Larry. I start telling Larry how I'm feeling
bad about the whole R**d Sh*w fiasco. Larry tells me that after
that post went up, Ted and Pat went like...suicidal. Ted was so
depressed, he thought they had another Popeye on their hands, he
thought everyone was going to despise the game, they were going
to sell 10 units. Pat wanted to jump out a window.
Tedster: I was very stressed at the time.
GDD: Now I just feel like a complete asshole. Plus Ted is at
this party which makes it even worse. So to counteract the feeling of
guilt, I get kinda drunk (I was still drinking around then).
This conversation with Larry was also noteworthy in that it was
the first time I heard him talk about the future of pinball.
I distinctly remember Larry telling me that pinball had been on the
decline since ST:TNG. As we all know in hindsight that decline
has continued to today.
Anyways, that's the Expo story. After that I actually ended up
meeting Ted a couple times at a Schieve party and at least being
able to be civil. I think I apologized once or twice for being
such a dork.
At the next year's Expo, Ted asked Don Coons if he wanted a tour
of the factory, and told Don he could bring someone if he wanted.
Tedster: I think Don asked me.
GDD: Well, whatever
Tedster: And asked if he could bring someone.
GDD: Me and Don were rooming together, and Don asked me if I
wanted to come. Now I'm starting to wonder if this was all some
cruel joke on Don's part. Anyways, Don asked me and of course i
say yes, but I'm a little nervous because Ted is giving the tour.
At Expo the day before our tour, Ted is telling us that he's
going to show us Congo but we have to keep our mouths shut.
Tedster: (I had to get permission from Larry to bring them in.)
GDD: And I distinctly remember him saying, "You know, I
wouldn't be taking you guys inside if I didn't think you were
cool, even though Greg flamed my game."
So we met Ted and he took us around. The factory was still
making pinballs back then, and they were making Johnny. Although
there was already some slot production going on. Then he took us
to play Congo.
Tedster: Congo was the last pinball made in Chicago.
GDD: I remember looking up the stairs, wanting to go up so
bad. It was probably right around then that I started thinking
about actually working in pinball.
Tedster: Note that we delayed testing of Congo 'til after Expo.
GDD: I also remember not liking Congo much and not wanting to
say anything because of my previous experience. Somewhere in
there Louis had also gotten hired, which had put the idea in my
mind that someone among the mere mortals could actually get a job
on the inside.
Tedster: Louis must have gotten hired the year before. He accepted
at Expo.
GDD: That Expo I also hung around with Orin and Steve Jonke
quite a bit, and Orin got me into Sega several times. That was cool to
see, even though I never liked their games. And Joey always gave
me the creeps, he was just too damn nice.
Tedster: Oh. We unveiled Whodunnit at that Expo. Thus, we delayed
Congo testing.
The thing that Greg doesn't know about that visit is...
GDD: uh oh
Tedster: Attack From Mars had also been at the bottom of the stairs,
right next to Congo.
GDD: And you moved it???
Tedster: I had to drag it around the corner into the buildup room
so that I could show Congo to Don and him.
GDD: Wow.
I was noticing on the WMS list that AfM was being developed
right above my head while I was there.
Tedster: Then I had to drag it back.
It was on "alpha" test when you visited.
GDD: Anyways, there was some talk with Orin at one point about
a job at Sega, but I really really didn't want to work there, and
their money wasn't up to snuff.
Time went on, I kept playing pinball, I got the job at
InstallShield, I met more and more people. Finally I was getting
fed up with my job at IS and wanted to move on. I was at the
point where I was sick of being slightly happy and getting paid
like shit. If i was going to be paid like shit I wanted to be
totally happy. Otherwise I wanted to be paid monstrously.
I asked Ted about gaming openings. Keith had interviewed in
gaming at the Expo prior, and had put forth the opinion that it
looked a lot more interesting than he initially had thought, so I
figured I would check it out. The last straw, btw, at InstallShield,
was I had asked for a large raise, and they told me no. This becomes
noteworthy later.
So I set up my interview with Ted, it was on a Tuesday. On the
Monday prior, our CFO calls me into his office. He had heard I
was jobhunting and decided that he was going to give me my raise
after all. I'm like...thanks. Tuesday I go in to interview. It
was quite exciting because I got to go upstairs. I don't know if
they hid any games. I remember Ted was late and I was sitting in
the foyer and Larry walked in and took me upstairs. Then I talked
with Larry for a while. Larry always intimidated me, and I always
vaguely had the feeling he didn't like me. Like I was just another
one of those annoying net geeks.
But the interview went well, then I met with Ted. Which was
interview for about 15 or 20 minutes and chatting the rest. Then
I went back to work. I had seen Ted and Larry both many many
times over the years and we all knew each other.
That night Ted called me back and gave me an offer. I remember
sweating out what to do, because I had a bright and extremely
profitable future in front of me as a microsoft geek. However I
really wanted to get into real software development and work on
something people would actually used, rather than being involved
in IS. Plus the money offered me was less than the salary I had
before the spontaneous raise.
Anyways I took it, and was extremely pleased to tell my former
bosses that their raise was too late and they could get fucked.
After I got hired Louis invited me to the boats with Pat and Bill
Grupp. I was extremely nervous about this. Even after all the
years I had never spoken to Pat, and I pictured him bearing this
huge grudge towards me ever since The Incident. I didn't know
if Louis had alerted him as to who I really was or not. But I
went and everything was fine.
So I started, and poked around for a while until finally Larry
put me on the Monopoly project, which was a lot of fun. There are
not a lot of feelings which can describe the first time I saw one
being played at the Rio. That was pretty fucking cool.
GDD: After Monopoly was finished, Larry was fired from his post
as head of gaming/pinball and moved to being only pinball to
supervise Pin2K. John Giobbi was put in his place as head of
gaming. I was working on (censored) with Scott Slomiany and we
were pretty upset. As was everyone in the pinball crowd who
worked in gaming.
Eventually it was becoming obvious that nobody in the new regime
was interested in (censored), which was even more disheartening.
Scott eventually went back to pinball, me and Bill moved into
Ted's group. Eric, who did sound for Monopoly went to do pinball.
Jack Liddon who did dots for the other Monopoly went to pinball.
Keith and Duncan went to pinball. So it is worth noting that of
the eight or so people who worked on the two spinning reel
Monopoly games, only one is still actively making slots for
gaming. And here I am.