Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

When someone at On-Line's booth gave Ken a copy of the new Softalk, he turnedimmediately to the Frogger review. Roberta read over his shoulder. They hadknown the review would be negative, and more or less expected some criticism ofthe game's graphics, though not in such scathing language. But they had no ideathat the review would go on to question whether the company, by releasing such agreat Atari version of Frogger and such a pitiful Apple version, had sold out theApple World. "Either Frogger is a mistake or a betrayal," the review concluded."You'll have to make up your own mind.""This goes way beyond what's fair," Ken said. For one thing, he said, Softalk didnot realize how difficult it was to do the game on the Apple as compared to theAtari. The Tommervicks had apparently chosen to attack the company all after theWilliamses had helped get the magazine off the ground when the Brotherhood wasjust forming. Roberta thought that this confrontation had been brewing for a while:for some reason Softalk seemed always to give On-Line short shrift. But everytime Roberta asked the Tommervicks if anything was wrong, they said things werefine."They don't want us in that magazine," Roberta told Ken. "We should pull ourads."It was another sign that the Brotherhood was not inviolate. Things were biggernow than personal friendships. Now that the companies of the Brotherhood weremore like Real World businesses, they were competing among themselves. TheWilliamses rarely spoke to people at Br0derbund or Sirius, and never swappedsecrets anymore. Jerry Jewell later summed it up: "We used to socialize a lot withBr0derbund and On-Line ... now the attitude is that if you invite competitors toparties, all they're going to do is dig up as much dirt about you as they can and tryto hire your programmers away. [Socializing] gets less and less possible as thebusiness gets more and more cutthroat. You want your competitors to know lessand less what you're doing." It was something you had to accept.Ken touched on this briefly when he ran into Doug Carlston on the show floor.Doug seemed to have changed the least he was as sincere and open as he alwayswas, the sanest in the Brotherhood. Both agreed that they should get togethermore, as they had in the old days, one year ago. They discussed new competition,including one new company which was entering the market with $8 million incapital. "That makes us look like toys," said Carlston. "We got a million [inventure capital]. You got ..." "A million two," said Ken. "You gave up more. Wegave up 25 percent." "No, we gave up 24."They talked about Sirius Software's no-show at the Applefest another indication