Word: max
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...spent most school-day afternoons with Max and Erich, along with Kenny Williams, who as a bespectacled eighth-grader possessed an uncanny memory for sports trivia. He's now the business-affairs manager. There was Grant Wilson, whom we used to pick on cruelly when he was a freckly, stuttering weed of a 12-year-old, and Chris Root, who spent a year living with the Schaefers after transferring to our high school. They're game designers now. I can remember us all huddled in Erich's darkened bedroom, a Rush album blaring as we rolled 20-sided dice, hunched...
...games that made Erich and Max rich were derived from those that we played as kids. There's a natural flow to that, but it's irksome to think that if I had just kept playing Dungeons & Dragons with them, or Traveler, Squad Leader, Top Secret or any of a dozen other fantasy role-playing (FRP) games, then I too would have millions, get the high-roller treatment in Las Vegas and drive Porsches. And they're not even computer geeks. "We just design games we like to play," Erich says...
This is where I have to admit that Erich and Max were clever in persisting in what I abandoned. When the first computer games were unveiled, the FRP versions were about as exciting as doorbells. No action. There was, I concluded, no future in this. Especially as I was just discovering the opposite sex. Better roles; better fantasies. Erich and Max, sitting in front of their Apple II computer and its 32 K of memory, just didn't seem headed anywhere I wanted to go as a hormonally drenched 16-year...
Erich and Max metaphorically stayed in front of that Apple II as Moore's law morphed it into a faster, better computer. Then came the Net. And after nearly a decade of wandering the techie wilderness, dabbling in desktop publishing and then gradually shifting into game design, the Schaefers struck gold with Diablo, the game that could be described as Quake meets Dungeons & Dragons. Then, in typical Silly Valley fashion, their company was bought out by a bigger company, which was bought by an even larger company. You know the rest...
...things are supposed to be harder in life than to watch your friends become very successful. But when I visit Erich and Max, instead of being consumed by jealousy, I slip into the flow of discussion, debating what kind of weaponry a Paladin should wield or the advantages of the bec de corbin over a standard battle ax. The nuances of games come naturally to me. And spending time with them takes me back to those afternoons at play. That's what these guys do all day, play games. For a moment, I regret the path I took, of becoming...