Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

would have taken his objections directly to Ken Williams. But John Harris couldnot bring himself to talk to Ken about how close he was to leaving On-Line. He nolonger trusted Ken. When John would try to explain why he felt cheated by On-Line, Ken would talk about all the money John was making. At one point, Kentold a reporter from People that John was making $300,000 a year, and whenHarris had tried to correct that figure, Ken had embarrassed him by giving John hismost recent royalty check. The four-month check (Harris was paid monthly, butsometimes would not get around to picking it up for a while) was for $160,000.But that wasn't the point; Ken never talked about the money On-Line was makingfrom John Harris' work. Instead of telling Ken this, though, John would just agreewith whatever Ken proposed. He didn't know if it was shyness or insecurity orwhat.So he did not talk to Ken Williams. He visited his new girlfriend and he worked ona new assembler for the Atari and visited the local arcade (setting a high score onthe Stargate machine) and thought up ideas for his next game. And talked to thepeople at Synapse Software, a company which took the Atari 800 seriously.In fact, Synapse was almost exclusively an Atari Home Computer softwarecompany, though it was planning to do conversions to other systems. The gamesSynapse produced were full of action, explosions, shooting, and brilliantlyconceived graphics. John Harris considered them awesome. When he went to visitthem in Berkeley, he was impressed that the programmers were catered to, thatthey swapped utilities and communicated by a company-run computer bulletinboard. When John Harris found out from a Synapse programmer that part of asound routine on one Synapse game had been literally lifted out of the object codefrom a copy of the Frogger disk stolen from John at the Software Expo that theftwhich had plunged John into his deep and painful depression he was less angry atthe violation than he was delighted that a Synapse hacker had gone through hiscode and found something worth appropriating. Synapse promised John that hewould get all the technical support he needed; he could join their community ofprogrammers. And they offered a straight 25 percent royalty. In short, Synapseoffered everything to an Atari hacker that On-Line did not.John agreed to do his next project for Synapse. On-Line's software superstar wasgone.John was sitting in his house wondering how to tell Ken Williams when the phonerang. "Earth," John answered, as usual. It was Ken. John was flustered. "I'mprogramming for Synapse now," he blurted out, in a tone that Ken took to beinsufferably cocky. Ken asked why, and John told him because they were offering25 percent royalty instead of Ken's 20 percent. "That was kind of stupid," Kensaid. But John had many things to say. In a rush, he began to finally say all the