Quotes from David Kushner

He was doing what he had always wanted to do: code games. And he was happy, in the moment as always, not thinking at all about what would come next. If he could be here working on games with enough money for food and shelter, that was good enough for him. As he told the other guys on one of his very first days, put him in a closet with a computer, a pizza, and some Diet Cokes, and he would be fine.

The appeal was primal. "In Dungeons and Dragons," Gygax said, "the average person gets a call to glory and becomes a hero and undergoes change. In the real world, children, especially, have no power; they must answer to everyone, they don't direct their own lives, but in this game, they become super powerful and affect everything.

Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important" -John Carmack

Rumors began circulating that Magic cards were so valuable that drug dealers were using them to launder cash.

When Kevin came to work with a bloody wound on his knee, they scanned that in too, to use as a wall texture

Every man and woman should play the noblest games and be of another mind from what they are at present.

After hearing the kids at the Ground discuss the Pro Tour, Finkel burned to compete. But the event was invite only. And who was going to invite a total unknown? Rather than sit by the side, he picked up the phone and called Wizards. "My name is Jon Finkel," he loudly declared, "and I was wondering if I could come to the Pro Tour." What the hell, the staff at Wizards thought, if the kid had the balls to call up and ask for an invitation, how could they say no? Careful

One night in 1987, Carmack saw the ultimate game. It occurred in the opening episode of a new television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the captain visited the ship's Holodeck

Created in 1972 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, two friends in their early twenties, Dungeons and Dragons was an underground phenomenon, particularly on college campuses, thanks to word of mouth and controversy. It achieved urban legend status when a student named James Dallas Egbert III disappeared in the steam tunnels underneath Michigan State University while reportedly reenacting the game; a Tom Hanks movie called Mazes and Monsters was loosely based on the event.

A few thousand miles away, Nine Inch Nails' rock star Trent Reznor sauntered off a concert stage as the crowd roared. Security guards rushed to his side. Screaming groupies pushed backstage. Trent nodded and waved, heading back through the crowd. He didn't have time for this. There were more important things waiting. He stepped onto his tour bus, forsaking the drugs, the beer, the women, for the computer awaiting him. It was time again for Doom.

If we can get this done," Romero said, "this is going to be the fucking coolest game that the planet Earth has ever fucking seen in its entire history!

but I'm going to need a team: an artist, a couple programmers, and a manager, because I don't want to sit there interfacing with management all day; I want to program.

Doom deathmatch was taking over lives: fans hijacked their office networks to play all weekend, threw their kids out of their basements to wire together their own arenas, and put off so many trips to the bathroom that at least one player (who had been consuming Ding Dong cupcakes during a marathon match) explosively defecated in his pants midgame.

Carmack wasn't worried that there was suddenly going to be some secret link exposed between games and murder; disturbed people are disturbed people, pure and simple.

Even though Paul Steed had never worked with him, he was beginning to think that firing Romero had been a terrible mistake. "Romero is chaos and Carmack is order," he said. "Together they made the ultimate mix. But when you take them away from each other, what's left?

The situation is so much better for programmers today -- a cheap used PC, a Linux CD, and an Internet account, and you have all the tools and resources necessary to work your way to any level of programming skills you want to shoot for.

Everything is bullshit! he thought. Why did I hire these people? It shouldn't have been this big. This was too many people, too much money. It should have been just me and Tom and a small team of people with a common goal. It should have been like the way it was when we weren't biz guys. We were just gamers.

Carmack was building the guitar that Romero would bring to life. But their friendship was not traditional. They didn't discuss their lives, their hopes, their dreams. Sometimes, late at night, hey would sit side by side, playing a hovercraft racing game called F-Zero. For the most part, though, their friendship was in their work, their unbridled pursuit of the game.

If deathmatch was a release from stress, work, family, and drudgery, it was a release that Carmack didn't need or, for that matter, understand. In fact, he had never really gotten the appeal most people found in hapless diversions. He would see things on television about drunken spring break beach weekends, and none of it would compute.

What happens to this kind of business when the data superhighway arrives? . . . No sales force, no inventory costs, no royalties to Nintendo or Sega, no marketing costs, no advertising costs, no executive parking spaces. This is a new and exciting business model, not just for games, and not even just for software, but for a host of products and services that can be sold or delivered via an electronic underground.

Story in a game," he said, "is like a story in a porn movie; it's expected to be there, but it's not that important.

It is almost painful for me to watch some of the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in the end, there isn't anything to show for it. Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it!

The best way to sell yourself is to sow what you have produced, rater than tell people what you know, what you want to do, or what degrees you have. You want to be able to go to your prospective employer and say "There is a community of then thousand people actively playing a mod that I wrote in my spare time. Give me a job and I will be able to devote all of my energy to gaming, and produce something vastly superior.

Carmack quickly distinguished himself. In second grade, only seven years old, he scored nearly perfect on every standardized test, placing himself at a ninth-grade comprehension level.