A great interview. Jeff's mention of how the game grew "organically" from feedback given by his friends sounds very familiar to a lot of us that grew up in the BASIC era.
It's too bad that such design methodologies can't be used for modern software... gotta to it the boring way of plotting it all out on paper first. Most of us liked slamming out some working code, then adding a little at a time, backtracking, adding a bit more, getting some opinions... good times.
As for piracy, it doesn't surprise me that's how the game got around. My brother had a Color Computer, and he got most of his software (tapes usually) from a friend of his who also had one. We were kids, so we didn't see it as theft.
When I went to a computer store in Everett called Bits N' Chips, I was able to make copies of software they had on archived disks for free. It didn't occur to me at the time, but what I was doing was essentially piracy, since they were selling me commercial software for a few bucks. :S Later I amended myself by purchasing the actual software titles, if for no other reason than to get the manuals.
But in an orphaned community, every dollar counts, so I saw a few years after that the companies I had tried to support fail, one after another. Most of that was probably due to the support faltering for an orphaned system, but I also saw how piracy could affect things at the small-scale side. Why would an indie developer continue to write anything if his work is stolen by people who fail to recognize the effort that goes into development?
So, my tolerance level for software pirates these days is absolute zero. For most vintage software I'll grant a pass... there's no money there to be had. But anything you could buy in a store or online somewhere, there is NO excuse.
A great interview. Jeff's mention of how the game grew "organically" from feedback given by his friends sounds very familiar to a lot of us that grew up in the BASIC era.
It's too bad that such design methodologies can't be used for modern software... gotta to it the boring way of plotting it all out on paper first. Most of us liked slamming out some working code, then adding a little at a time, backtracking, adding a bit more, getting some opinions... good times.
As for piracy, it doesn't surprise me that's how the game got around. My brother had a Color Computer, and he got most of his software (tapes usually) from a friend of his who also had one. We were kids, so we didn't see it as theft.
When I went to a computer store in Everett called Bits N' Chips, I was able to make copies of software they had on archived disks for free. It didn't occur to me at the time, but what I was doing was essentially piracy, since they were selling me commercial software for a few bucks. :S Later I amended myself by purchasing the actual software titles, if for no other reason than to get the manuals.
But in an orphaned community, every dollar counts, so I saw a few years after that the companies I had tried to support fail, one after another. Most of that was probably due to the support faltering for an orphaned system, but I also saw how piracy could affect things at the small-scale side. Why would an indie developer continue to write anything if his work is stolen by people who fail to recognize the effort that goes into development?
So, my tolerance level for software pirates these days is absolute zero. For most vintage software I'll grant a pass... there's no money there to be had. But anything you could buy in a store or online somewhere, there is NO excuse.
Adamantyr