From October to December 1990, they worked virtually nonstop to get Keen done for Scott by Christmas. And it wasn’t just one Keen; it was a trilogy called Invasion of the Vorticons. Trilogies were common in the games industry for the same reason they were common in books and films; they were the best way to build and expand a brand identity. Tom, who assumed the role of creative director, mapped out the game plan.
Mario, this was not. As a hero, an eight-year-old misfit who steals his dad’s Everclear for rocket fuel was more identifiable than a middle-aged Italian plumber. It was as if the gamers had followed that golden rule of writing about what they knew. Tom, as a kid, used to walk around in a Green Bay Packers helmet and red Converse sneakers, just like Billy Blaze. And, in a sense, they were all Billy Blazes, oddball kids who modified technology to create elaborate means of escape. Keen was a punk, a hacker. And he was saving the galaxy, just as countless hackers like Carmack and Romero used technology to save themselves.
The roles were set: Carmack and Romero were the programmers, and Tom the lead designer—the person in charge of coming up with the game play elements, from the story and setting to the characters and weapons. Carmack and Romero were happy to leave Tom to the creative work; they were too busy programming. Carmack was refining his engine, getting the smooth scrolling down to the point where Keen could move as fluidly left or right as he could up or down. Romero, meanwhile, was working the editor, the program that allows the developers to put together the graphics of the game—characters, rooms, monsters. It was essentially a game designer’s construction kit. Carmack and Romero were in sync.
Not everyone else gelled quite as well. Lane was now officially kicked out of the Keen development. Despite Romero’s fondness for him as a friend, he felt that Lane’s energy was lacking. Adrian was having problems of his own. Though he was recruited later to help them work on Keen, Adrian hated the project. It was too… cutesy. Tom had a target audience in mind: “kids,” he said, “or those who have kidlike mentalities like we do.” Adrian hated kiddie stuff. Even more, he hated cutesy. Worst of all was cutesy kiddie. And now here he was having to sit all night drawing pizza slices, soda pop, and candy. Tom came up with a little character called a Yorp with a big fat green body and one periscopelike eye over his head. Even the monsters were cute. In most games, when a character died, it would simply disappear, vanish. But Tom had other notions. He was eager to incorporate some “larger philosophical ideas,” as he said. He loosely based characters on ideas he’d read in Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents; a guard was made to represent an id. He wanted to teach kids that when people or even aliens die, they really die, they leave corpses. So he wanted the dead creatures in the game to just… remain: not graphic or bloody corpses, just dead Yorps. Cute dead Yorps.
The cuteness of the characters wasn’t the only thing bugging Adrian, it was the cuteness of their creator. Tom was getting on his nerves. He would run around the house, craning his neck and making sounds to show Adrian exactly what the alien creatures in the games were supposed to look like. Romero would usually crack up at these displays. Adrian took a liking to Romero, who shared his taste in heavy metal and his appreciation of sick humor; but Tom, in Adrian’s mind, was just plain annoying. To make matters worse, they had to share a desk, and Tom was so full of energy that he kept bobbing his knee up and down, inadvertently hitting the table when Adrian was trying to draw. But it was better than working at the last open space in the house, next to the litter box used for John Carmack’s cat, Mitzi. Tom had no idea how Adrian felt. He thought he was just quiet.
For the majority of the time, however, those late nights at the lake house were a perpetual programming party. With Iggy Pop or Dokken playing on the stereo, the guys all worked into the wee hours. Occasionally, they’d take a break to play Super Mario on the Nintendo or maybe a round of Dungeons and Dragons. Carmack had been building a large D&D campaign for the guys, and on Saturday nights they’d gather around a table and play into the early morning hours. With Carmack as Dungeon Master, the game took on depth and complexity. It was quickly becoming the longest and deepest D&D game he’d ever created. And there were no signs of it letting up.
Other times, they’d cruise the lake on the boat. Jay quickly became the designated driver; his impeccable focus gave him the ability to drive not only fast but steady. A couple times they let Romero drive, but he was having too much fun, steering the boat precipitously off course. Jay also fell comfortably into the role of manager or, in a sense, frat house president. While the guys worked, he would grill up ribs on the barbecue or restock the sodas. They were under the gun and needed all the help they could get.
They didn’t need any help getting motivated, however. Carmack, in particular, seemed almost inhumanly immune to distraction. One time, Jay tested Carmack’s resolve by popping a porno video into the VCR and cranking it to full volume. Romero and the others immediately heard the “oohs” and “aahs,” and turned around cracking up. Carmack, though, stayed glued to his monitor. Only after a minute or so did he acknowledge the increasingly active groans. His sole response was “Mmm.” Then he returned to the work at hand.
