Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

He will keep working on a project for two months after anyone else would havestopped. He likes the ego satisfaction of having something out that's better thananything else in the marketplace." Bad enough, but the fact that John was notworking at all now, just because he suffered a setback, drove Ken wild. "He wouldsay his heart wasn't in it," Ken recalled. "Then I would find him in the arcade,working for tokens!"In front of John's friends, Ken would make nasty remarks about how late Froggerwas. Ken made John too nervous to think of pithy rejoinders right on the spot.Only away from Ken could John Harris realize he should have said that he was notKen's employee, he was a free-lance programmer. He had not guaranteed Ken anydelivery date. John could do whatever he wanted. That was what he should havesaid. Instead, John Harris felt bad.It was torture, but finally John dragged himself to the Atari and began to rewritethe program. Eventually he re-created his earlier work, with a few extraembellishments as well. Forty-four colors, the player-missile graphic routines fullyredefined, and a couple of neat tricks that managed to make the eight bits of theAtari 6502 chip emulate ten bits. John's friend in San Diego had even made someimprovement on the three-voice concurrent sound track. All in all, John Harris'version looked even better than the arcade game, an astounding feat since arcadegames used custom-designed chips for high speed and solid-color graphics, andwere almost never approximated by the less powerful (though more versatile)home computers. Even experienced programmers like Jeff Stephen-son wereimpressed.The dark period was over, but something had changed in the relationship betweenKen and John. It was emblematic of the way that On-Line was changing, into moreof a bureaucracy than a hacker Summer Camp. Whereas the procedure forreleasing John's previous games had been impromptu testing on-site ("Hey! Wegot a game to play today! If everyone likes it, let's ship it!"), now Ken had aseparate department to test games before release. To John, it seemed that it nowtook about fifty exchanges of interoffice memos before anyone got around tosaying that he liked a game. There were also logjams in packaging, marketing, andcopy protection. No one quite knew how, but it took over two more months twomonths after John had turned in his fully completed Frogger for the game to bereleased.When it was finally on the market, everyone recognized that Frogger was a terrificconversion from arcade to home computer. John's check for the first month'sroyalties was for thirty-six thousand dollars, and the program went to number oneon Softsel Distributors' new "Hot List". of programs (which was compiled weekly