I remember playing this game decades ago. And being blown away by the graphics and game design. It was a nice reminiscence to find this interview on YouTube.
Two brothers made this. On slow Macs, slow CD-ROM drives, relatively basic software, and generally untested tech and market. Creating a groundbreaking game was perfectly possible with a whole lot of passion, hard work, and chutzpah.
The key conditions for their success seem to be:
- Clarity of purpose. They were taken with the possibility of technology. They wanted to design a game. And they just did it. They began, And presumably found a way to keep their doubts and reservations at bay.
- Clever problem-solving. They worked with what they had to work with. Perhaps they wished the tech were better. But they did not let the “if-onlys” stop them. They applied their ingenuity to make the best of what they had to work with.
- Hard work. They sounded like they worked damn hard at it. They didn’t need a big team. Nor a huge budget in the millions of dollars.
- Naiveté. They were somehow able to avoid worrying about too much, beyond the problem at hand. They worked even when we didn’t have all the pieces, know how, or a clear vision of how every step was going to work out.
- Luck. As with so many things in life, luck (or the perfect timing) played a significant part. They met the right people, saw the right software that inspired them, had access to enough technology, at the right affordable price point, in the right innovation-enabling culture, etc., to do the work.
With the plethora of cheap fast computers and powerful (even free) software we have today, why is such revolution not repeated more frequently today?
