My brief brush with greatness
My friends know this story, but I don't think I've told it here, so here goes:

A few years back (wow, it must have been about 4 years or so) I was sent to E3 as an emissary for the Microprose game "Gunship!" The setup was pretty simple: there were two of us in the booth. One would play the game, while the other talked about how great the game was to whoever seemed to be interested in it. Occasionally, one of us would take a break and walk around the floor, while the other one manned the station.

Now, at the time, you could tell just what Atari thought of Microprose, by how much floor space they gave us. Atari had one large cylinder of space, separated into pie wedges, and you could tell how popular you were by how big your companies wedge was. The corporate dealmakers section took up 50% of the pie, Hasbro Interactive (for kids) took up another 25%, Atari took up 15%, which left Microprose . . . cramped.

To add to that, we had a 12-foot tall statue of a MechWarrior in the center of our little pie wedge, and half a dozen games to display.

I guess what I'm getting at is, that it felt really crowded. It was especially crowded at one point where my demo partner decided to take a break. He was off walking the floor, while I played the game and answered questions about it. It was getting pretty close in there, and I scooted my seat forward to let traffic by, when over my shoulder, I saw a gaggle coming toward us.

It was a clump of people so big, that I could only judge the size of it by where the boom mikes and light stands were set up at it's perimeter. The gaggle moved slowly, inexorably, toward our station, and I thought to myself "Okay, this is our big break. Some TV show's going to be recording this section, so I gotta keep my mind on the game and show off how cool it is."

People pressed into our section, pushing me so close to the computer that I tilted the keyboard up to rest on my chest. I still didn't turn around to look, I just kept blowing things up, and demoing the targetting system, and generally making the game look as graphically intensive as possible. Suddenly, there was a furry head in my peripheral vision, so close to me that I thought it was resting on my shoulder. The man with the glasses and scruffy beard said, "Wow, this looks really good. You guys have done some good work."

I had to stop myself from recoiling. I mean, it was totally unexpected, and I was so intent on making the game look good, I hadn't even noticed this hanger-on watching the game. So, I did my best to seem cordial, saying, "Um. Thanks. Well, we're doing our best."

The furry man patted my shoulder, and moved on. About a minute later, the rest of the gaggle moved on. I turned to one of the booth babes in the Kids area (yes, Hasbro really did hire a sexy blonde to sell kids stuff in a short skirt and shorter apron) and asked her what that crowd was all about. She said to me, wide-eyed, "You don't know? That was Steven Spielberg!"

I was beating myself up about that for the rest of the day. Did I shake his hand, no. Did I introduce myself, no. In fact, when he said we were doing great work, did I say, "Oh, yeah. Well, you did a good job on Indiana Jones." No. At the time, the best I could do was to keep from recoiling.

Later, I found out that Spielberg is a huge fan of European Air War, another project I had worked on. So, I had something I could have chatted with him about, if I had just thought of it. Ach. I can't believe I'm still beating myself up about that four years later.

According to one news article, Spielberg said that he was introduced to European Air War by Robin Williams, who he referred to as his "digital pimp". Somehow, the idea of Steven Spielberg and Robin Williams sitting down to play a game that I made . . . I don't know. . . it just seems so freakin' cool. Sort of like the way Upton Sinclair must have felt when he found out that Theodore Roosevelt was reading "The Jungle". Okay, that's an obscure reference, but surprisingly apt.
- posted by BrandG @ 7:50 AM