Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

software for the Apple that he did in his consulting for on-line computer firms. Ken went to a friendand asked him to be On-Line's first outside programmer. In return for eventual royalties, the frienddid a simple black-and-white shoot-one-dot-with-another-dot game called "Skeet Shoot." Theyprinted up some advertising fliers and documentation sheets unwilling to pay the one-hundreddollartypesetting fee, Roberta cut the individual letters out of magazines and got that "master"printed by a local copy shop. It came back with little lines that betrayed its cut-and-paste origin, butthey had already spent five hundred dollars. Anyway, that form of packaging was state of the art atthat time. This was the computer world, where the packaging didn't matter. What mattered was themagic that happened when all those binary connections were made. Marketing was second tosubstance.Mystery House, or "Hi-Res Adventure #l," was priced at $24.95. Ken and Roberta, in a fit ofoptimism, had bought a box of one hundred blank disks at the nearby Rainbow Computing store,and once the fliers were sent to computer stores and the ad placed for a reluctantly paid twohundred-dollarfee in the May 1980 issue of a small magazine called MICRO, they waited. Thephone rang, on that first day in May, and then there was a break and then it rang again. And fromthen on, it would be a long time before Ken and Roberta could count on their phone not ringing.Ken and Roberta made eleven thousand dollars that May. In June, they made twenty thousanddollars. July was thirty thousand. Their Simi Valley house was becoming a money machine. Kenwould go off to work at Financial Decisions, where he was now programming for around forty-twothousand a year, and Roberta would copy disks and put the disks, along with the fliers and inserts,into a Ziploc bag. She would also take care of the kids and put the programs in boxes and keep thehouse clean and send programs out by U.P.S. At night Roberta was designing a longer and betteradventure game based on the world of fairy tales.Every few minutes the phone would ring and it would most likely be someone ready to absolutelydie unless they got a hint to unstick them from a seemingly hopeless situation in Mystery House.People who called the number shown on the flier included in the Ziploc bag with the floppy diskwere under the impression that On-Line was some big conglomerate, and they couldn't believe theirluck in somehow connecting with the actual author of the program. "I'm talking to the person whowrote the game?" Yeah, in her kitchen. Roberta would give them a hint never a straight answer: partof the fun was working it out for yourself and chat with them a while. The energy level wascontagious. People were going looney over playing with computers.Ken Williams was carrying a full work load at Financial Decisions, developing a complicatedfinance system and heading the data processing department. At night, he would work on the Apple,hacking a new machine-language system for Roberta's new adventure game. On weekends. Kenwould make the rounds of the computer stores. It was clear that the software business required hisfull time.Roberta thought that as long as Ken was thinking of quitting, they might as well live out theirlongtime dream of moving to the woods. Her parents lived near Yosemite, above the town ofOakhurst, and it was even more rural and quiet than the place Roberta grew up in and stillremembered fondly. It would be perfect for the kids. So they did it. "I'm going to move to the mountains," he told an astounded Dick Sunderland at a party in mid-1980. Dick and Ken were in a rooma bit away from the party noise, and Ken said, "Here I am, twenty-five years old, and the AppleComputer has enabled me to fulfill my dream: living in the woods and living in a log cabin andwriting software."