I'm a nice guy. Sometimes people think I'm a little bit too nice. 

My old Cinemaware boss, Bob Jacob, thought I was way too accommodating. He wanted me to be tough-as-nails but that's just not my personality, especially when it comes to dealing with customers.

It was a Tuesday night and we were trying to get out of the office so we could drive to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Bob was in a big hurry and he wasn't happy when a customer called and I stopped to answer the phone.

The customer had just read a magazine article about our new game "Rocket Ranger" and he was super excited until he found out that the game would require 512K of RAM. His Amiga only had 256K and he was PISSED.

While Bob grew more and more impatient I politely tried to explain that "Rocket Ranger" was a large and complex game and it was impossible to get it to work in 256K, but it was clear that I was getting nowhere with this guy.

After several minutes Bob started tapping on his watch and he hissed, "John, this guy is a jerk. Come on! Hang up the damn phone.  We have to GO!"

So Bob is hissing in one ear, the irate customer is yelling in my other ear (telling me he is NEVER going to buy another one of our games, he is the President of a huge User Group and they are going to BOYCOTT Cinemaware!).  I'm trying to tell this guy that we attempted to make it work in 256K and then, all of a sudden, he just hangs up on me!

Now, I almost NEVER get angry, but when I do it occasionally explodes out of me.

"!%$* YOU!!!!" I shouted, and I slammed the phone down.

When I looked up, I swear Bob had a little tear in his eye. He said, "John... I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!"

I never had the courage to tell him the customer had already hung up the phone...

A couple of my daughter's friends (they were all about 17) heard that we had an Xbox 360, so a few days before Christmas, after a non-trivial amount of begging and pleading on their parts, we invited everyone to come over and check it out.  I powered up our 52" HDTV, cranked the surround sound, and then loaded up the system seller: "Call of Duty 2".  While they played I went upstairs to do some work on the computer.  It was great fun to hear the shouts and exclamations: "HOLY SHIT!"  "Look at that!"  "Oh my god, that smoke is amazing!!!"  "Okay, that does it.  I'm gettin' one of these..." 

Then, they fired up a horror game called "Condemned." 

Now, I'm not sure what was going on down there but this game scared the CRAP out of these guys.  I mean, it totally freaked them out.  My wife was reading a book in the living room and when she started to laugh I came out of the office and stood at the top of the stairs to listen.   

They were actually getting angry with each other.  "Dude, I TOLD you there was a guy over there.  Why didn't you taser him???"  "I hit the wrong button, okay?  Shut up you're making me nervous."  As I stood there listening something caught my eye.  It was one of my daughter's old textbooks... just sitting there on the bookcase.  It was about four inches thick.  Hardcover.  I picked it up and glanced over the bannister at our hardwood floor far below.  A devilish grin spread across my face.  My wife shot me one of her patented "don't even THINK about it" looks, but my mind was made up. 

I held the book over the railing, perfectly parallel to the floor... and then I waited.  It was a good five minutes before I heard the following exchange: 

"Now be careful, dude.  You only have one more bullet left." 
"I know!  Stop talking and let me concentrate." 
"I think there's someone up there...  I'm not kidding... I think I saw someone.  Go slow, dude..." 

Then it got real quiet.  I thought to myself, "... wait for it... wait for it... wait for it... NOW..."  I dropped the book. 

The thick hardbacked tome hit the floor with a mortar-like WHOMP and instantly I heard a gunshot, followed by three terrified screams and one fear-induced bout of Tourettes, "SHEEZUH FUCK SHIT!"  I waited a couple of second and then yelled down, "Oops." 

I felt kind of bad for making the kid fire his last bullet into a brick wall, but it was about time for them to go home anyway.  ;-)  (My daughter later confirmed, between bouts of laughter as she remembered the looks on their faces, that my timing had been absolutely perfect.) 

One of the first games I ever worked on was called "Star Rank Boxing" for the C-64. The gameplay was pretty simple: you could punch high (head) or low (body), and defensively you could push up or down on the stick to defend against head or body shots. 

As we were getting ready to implement the computer AI, I read an article about some Russian scientists who were experimenting with coin flip predictions. They tested hundreds of people and discovered an "optimal" pattern of results that was the most difficult for people to predict. I decided we should use this pattern for the computer's decisions to punch to the head or body. 

I'm not sure how much impact this actually had on gameplay, but I have to publicly admit that I implemented the feature so we could include this text on the box:

Players are a lot smarter now. You can't really get away with stuff like that today.  ;-)

One very hot summer day, when our daughter was probably 6 or 7 years old, we opened all the windows in the house and fired up "Bomberman" for a few multiplayer games. As there were only three of us playing, the computer controlled the black bomberman... And he was winning many of our games.

Frustrated, we formed a new strategy: get rid of the computer player first. We had a blast with this little game-within-a-game until I suddenly realized, an hour or so later, that our windows were wide open, there were neighbors out in their yards and walking by, and our precious baby girl had been repeatedly screaming at the top of her lungs, "KILL THE BLACK GUY!  KILL THE BLACK GUY!"

Like many games from that era, especially RPGs, you couldn't just save any time or place you wanted. After killing a bunch of monsters and gathering a backpack full of loot, players were required to backtrack through the dungeon so they could save their progress and loot in the tavern.

It was a Saturday, about lunchtime.  My wife had been playing Apshai all morning and she was on an epic run.  I've never seen so much loot and I told her (nay, begged her) to leave the dungeon and save her progress. She kept telling me, "No, I'm good. I can do this."

I couldn't watch anymore, so I ran down to the store to pick up some lunch. When I got back 30 or so minutes later she was STILL in the dungeon.

"Look what I got in the last room!!!"  (I don't remember the item, but I do remember that it was incredible.)  Then she uttered the now infamous, "I'm going to do just ONE more room, and then I'm going to save."

I'm sure you can guess what happened next.  Giant spiders... and a dragon.  She begged the game gods, she pleaded with them, tears running down her cheeks as she tried to run away.  "No, don't kill me!!  Please!  No!  You can't.  NOOOOooooooo!"

She still plays RPGs, but I think that was her last visit to the "Temple of Apshai".

Many years ago I learned how to write VBA code for Excel and other Microsoft programs.  I can't begin to tell you how valuable this knowledge has been over the years.  Almost every project I work on as a designer involves some sort of mind numbing data entry that can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days... or even weeks.  Now, I just pull out Excel, write a bit of code and voila!  I push a button and the work is done.  It's like inventing a robot to do my work for me!  And not only is it faster, it's more accurate, as well... because computers don't make typos. 

I used to get pretty frustrated when I was learning how to program.  I'd change something in one part of my code and something would break in a completely unrelated part.  I once told my wife that programming a computer is like changing the windshield wiper in the car... and suddenly the engine won't start.

I have to say, though, that while I'm a pretty awful coder I absolutely LOVE it.  Programming is like solving little puzzles, and I love being able to play and tweak the stuff I write.

When I got started in the business over 30 years ago, I taught myself how to program a Commodore 64 in 6502 assembly language. At first, I only learned a few basic commands, but my limited vocabulary really put a damper on what I could do -- then I started to learn other commands and each one was like discovering I had a new superpower.

I remember how excited I was to show off my first assembly language game to an actual programmer. (An "Asteroids" style shooter, as I recall.) He said, "Not bad for a first effort. What Assembler did you use?"

I said, "Sorry... Assembler?  What's that?"

With a strange look on his face he replied, "It's a utility program that allows you to write machine language code with labels, line numbers, etc.  If you didn't use an Assembler how on earth did you write this?"

Feeling kind of stupid now I said, "I, um, used a machine language monitor". (This is a tool programmers use to change memory locations in the computer to either code or graphics.)

A couple of years ago Electronic Arts set up a focus test for a GBA "Lord of the Rings" game.  A friend of mine was the Designer/Producer and he was invited to watch the test from one of those special rooms with the double mirrors.  There were 8 to 10 kids in the test, with an adult standing behind each one taking notes.  The adults had been instructed NOT to provide any help or assistance. 

The test starts and my friend is watching the closest participant, a cute little girl roughly 9 years old.  To his dismay, he IMMEDIATELY realizes that there is a problem with the current build of the game -- a last minute change has caused the monster database to wrap around.  So the cute harmless little monster at the start of the game has the actual stats of the final END BOSS!  The EA Producer, in an attempt to cover his ass and salvage *something* useful out of the test, decides to let it continue. 

The girl, an excited smile on her face, runs cute little Frodo up to harmless looking little starter monster and hits her Attack button:  <dink>  The creature turns around and ANNIHILATES Frodo with a single blow.   

The girl looks rather startled.  Hmmm.   

The girl restarts the game and tries again, this time repeatedly tapping her Attack button:  <dink dink dink dink>  Again Frodo is smashed into the ground with a single hit. 

"Geeeez", the girl must have been thinking, "This game is kind of hard."   

On her next attempt the girl tries to combine a jump with her assault <jump dink jump dink jum-- SMMMAASHHHH! GAME OVER!> Confused and frustrated she turns around to ask for help, but the adult just shakes his head.  He's not allowed to say anything. 

Tears start to well up in her eyes but she keeps at it.  She tries running, she tries mashing multiple buttons, she tries dodging left and right:  <dink run CRRRUNCH>  <dinkdinkdinkdi-- SMOOOOSH>  Now the tears are flowing down her cheeks.  <jump run dink CRAAACK!> <dink dodge run jum-- SMAAACK!>  She tries to hide it but before long her body is wracked by heaving sobs.   

Mercifully, someone finally sees her and they stop the test. 

After hearing this story a team member jokingly suggested that EA should adopt the slogan: "We make little kids cry".