The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993

by Jordan Mechner

  It was melancholy, being there at night with an empty desk and all those ghosts. Tomi was there too, sifting through the wreckage of Sensei. I called Robert in L.A. to ask him what I should do with his stuff, and we fell to reminiscing. It wasn’t such a bad year-and-a-half. Actually, I remember it quite warmly. But thank God it’s over.

  Driving away, I felt strangely light, as if throwing away all those papers had set me free. I felt ready for the next thing, and oddly happy. I told Tomi this and she said: “I guess you’re more optimistic because you’re younger. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s your basic personality.”

  I’m never going to have an office at Broderbund again. It was fun but now it’s done.

  June 11, 1990

  I sent Prof. Charles Milne at NYU a Fed Ex box containing a sheaf of game reviews, copies of POP and Karateka, and a letter begging him to let me in.

  Spent Friday at Broderbund. The conversions are moving ahead (Danny is at beta, Scott is at alpha). Francesca and Jessica reported from CES that all kinds of reviewers and journalists came up to them, unsolicited, and praised Prince to the skies. But IBM Prince still isn’t selling. The reasons most often cited are: (1) it’s a conversion (the Apple original having done virtually nothing, the IBM version is left to twist in the wind), and (2) the box stinks (it’s an old-fashioned flip-top, and stores don’t like those).

  Maybe word of mouth and favorable reviews will rescue it in time for Christmas. But I’m worried.

  Prince’s chances of becoming a hit and my chances of getting into NYU both seem a lot slimmer than they did a month ago.

  June 18, 1990

  Meeting with Don and Alan to renegotiate the royalty terms for Nintendo and GameBoy Prince. Ed Bernstein was absent, even though he’d asked for the meeting, so all Don and Alan could say was that they’d talk to Ed and get back to me.

  In a nutshell: My contract (negotiated in 1986 with then-director-of-product-development Ed Bernstein) gives me 10%. Now they want to add a clause allowing them to deduct the cost of goods, which would effectively bring the royalty rate down to 5%. If I don’t agree, Broderbund probably won’t do Nintendo versions. So I’ll probably end up having to swallow it.

  June 20, 1990

  Just found out something interesting from Alan Weiss. He says SunSoft is interested in licensing Prince for up to four formats (NES, GameBoy, and in Japan NEC and Genesis). But they’ve been told to wait while Broderbund New Ventures considers doing it themselves.

  This puts things in a new light. If you look at the bottom line (as opposed to what strategically benefits New Ventures), both Broderbund and I would actually make out better if they take the SunSoft deal.

  In a continuing effort to gather meaningless statistics about my own life, I figured out that I’ve spent about 3,800 hours, or the equivalent of two years’ honest work, on Prince of Persia over the past four years.

  July 3, 1990

  Prince sold 500 units last month on the IBM, 38 on the Apple. That’s about as dead as can be.

  July 6, 1990

  Charles Milne called to say this year’s NYU class is overfull and there is nothing he could do for me even if he wanted to. So that’s that.

  July 15, 1990

  Broderbund Picnic Friday. Corey showed up for it. Six years since my first one.

  Robert submitted D-Generation to both Broderbund and EA. EA called him almost immediately and said it was “really hot.” Way to go ‘Bert!

  It’s agonizing watching Prince fight for life.

  I can’t walk through the halls at Broderbund without getting congratulated by people from QA and Tech Support I’ve never met before, telling me what a great game it is. Denis Friedman says it’s getting great press in France. I even got a call at home from some kids in Columbus, Ohio, who were stuck on level 12. But when are stores going to start stocking it? When are people going to start buying it? AAARGHH!

  I don’t care if Prince does die. I’ll bounce back. Sure, I could use the money, and it would be nice to be vindicated for the last four years of work; but I’m young. Most people my age have no savings at all and have never had a success like Karateka – or even In the Dark, such as it was. And some of them are going to become successful screenwriters and directors. So I have just as good a chance as they do. *sigh*

  Failure really does weigh on the heart. Even the shadow of failure weighs, a little bit.

  I hadn’t realized how spoiled I was by Karateka’s success. If I’m going to survive as a filmmaker over the long haul, I’d better learn to deal with failure a lot better than this. Maybe I need to care less about commercial success and concentrate more on fulfilling my own artistic goals. Spending a year hanging out with impoverished intellectuals in NY might be a good thing.

  Clinging to Life

  July 18, 1990

  Dinner with Tomi and Florence in Mill Valley. Florence thinks Prince is going to be a big hit in Europe. And some rather startling news (from Doug): NEC Prince has already shipped 10,000 units in Japan. Could that be?? It’s only sold 7,000 units each on Apple and IBM in the U.S. to date.

  July 20, 1990

  After Spanish class I drove to Forest Knolls to see Danny, who’s just about finished with Amiga Prince. Then, back at Broderbund, sat around Brian’s office for a companiable three hours drinking champagne and beer with a group that eventually dwindled to Brian, Rob, Lance and myself.

  “I’m tired of hearing about the good old days of Broderbund,” Rob said, when we went out for Mexican food. “I think of the ‘good old days’ as when Robert was here.” It was just how I felt.

  A new review came out in PC Resource magazine that calls Prince “one of the three or four best PC games ever.”

  Meanwhile, the new Broderbund entertainment catalog relegates it to half a page towards the back, between Centauri Alliance and Joan of Arc.

  I’ve got to start learning deep-breathing meditation exercises, or something.

  Karateka was a gift from the gods, a windfall. Without it, I couldn’t have done any of this. I’d have had to get a job like everyone else I know. The question that nags at me is: have I made good use of this opportunity? Or have I blown it?

  I feel like if Prince fails, I’ll be a failure.

  No point looking back. What can I do now? I can do what I can to help speed the Mac version of Prince, and try to encourage Broderbund to:

  license it for Nintendo and GameBoy

  bundle it with SoundBlaster

  change the packaging

  advertise it

  and, in general, try to galvanize the powers-that-be into giving it the attention and promotion it deserves.

  July 21, 1990

  Pink Floyd is tearing down the wall in Berlin. I want to be there.

  Basically, I want to be young and European. Or even young and Central American.

  July 27, 1990

  Since its release in Sept. 1989, Prince has sold 9,741 units. In the same period, Karateka – a five-year-old game – sold 9,645 units. That’s pretty sad.

  More irritating facts:

  I walked into Wherehouse Records the other day and they’d never heard of Prince of Persia. Wings of Fury they had, Wolf Pack they had, but not Prince.

  Ten months after its release, Prince has yet to be licensed to Nintendo, Game Boy, or any other game machine. In short, we’ve missed a year. If it gets licensed now, it’ll be as a Christmas 1991 title. This delay is solely attributable to Broderbund’s waffling.

  The other day at the PD25 Xerox machine, I happened to see the tossed-out first page of a letter to U.S. News and World Report, presumably from someone in marketing or PR, saying “Enclosed is some information about Broderbund’s new games…” and listing four or five, including Wolf Pack, but not mentioning Prince. I learned this o
ut of turn, so I can’t very well complain, but this says a lot.

  Prince gets only half a page in the new entertainment catalog, sandwiched between acknowledged duds.

  Encouraging facts:

  Reviews are uniformly raves.

  Tandy has ordered 12,500 units.

  SoundBlaster is interested in bundling Prince with its sound cards.

  Tomi and Florence reported that Egghead Software was sold out of Prince, and that the salesman said: “It’s moving.”

  NEC pre-orders of 8,000 units in Japan.

  I’ve decided to move to NY anyway. I don’t need NYU. I can spend all my money and go into debt making a couple of crappy short films all by myself without their help.

  Matthew Patrick’s Graffiti was awesome. It sustains my faith in the short film as a worthwhile medium. It was better than most of the features that came out of Hollywood this summer.

  July 28, 1990

  Robert called yesterday. He’s being courted by two publishers and has just sent D-Gen off to a third. (Broderbund turned it down, in the person of Ann Kronen, who proclaimed sweetly: “We don’t do action games any more.” Ha ha.) Good for Robert.

  I can’t help wishing I’d had the good luck to have Prince rejected by Broderbund so I could have taken it to a publisher who might have actually marketed it… No, I’m not that cynical. Yet.

  Broderbund has done two conversions, IBM and NEC, better than I had a right to expect. And EA probably would not have offered me an 8% royalty on the IBM version. If Prince takes off now, I’ll have no cause for complaint.

  But these last four months have made me bitter.

  July 31, 1990

  NEC POP sales are up to 9,000.

  Latricia is pursuing the SoundBlaster bundling opportunity. She’s hoping to get $8/unit.

  Sophie has put in a request for advertising funds.

  IBM POP sold 1,350 units in July – four digits!

  Henry says there’s a lot of interest in Japan in doing a sequel.

  Tom Marcus says the Japan sales have raised interest in licensing. He’s already gotten a call from Dianne Drosnes (who’s now at Sega).

  Maybe there’s hope.

  August 3, 1990

  Brian showed me a LAN message from a sales rep saying “Prince is the hottest thing in Phoenix! Prince of Persia fever is spreading! Do we have any more games coming up by Jordan Mechner?”

  Also got a fan letter from Malaysia.

  Please God, maybe it’ll be a hit after all.

  August 6, 1990

  Scott came in with the new version of Mac Prince. We’re not going to make Christmas, but at least it showed some tangible improvement. We decided to use the NEC graphics.

  Lunch with Doug. He was sorry about the letter of recommendation, and that Prince isn’t doing better. I told him it wasn’t his fault. He’s excited for me that I’m going off to make films in New York.

  August 7, 1990

  Latricia’s resigned as director of marketing. I learned this at lunch today with her and Sophie. The instant she said it, I felt a sudden flow of good will toward her for whom my heart had hitherto held only hatred, and for the rest of the lunch I was cheerful and charming.

  It’s true her departure will leave a void in marketing that will probably mean that nothing gets done for the next six months; but still, better incompetence than malevolence.

  A two-page spread on Prince in PC Computer Gamer’s Strategy Magazine. Sophie and I read it together. It was a rave. It was also one of the most thoughtful reviews I’d read. It was clear the writer had played the game all the way through. He appreciated the things most reviewers tend to overlook in favor of the great graphics. Maybe this will inspire Sophie to do some marketing.

  August 8, 1990

  A pleasant lunch with Ed Bernstein.

  August 10, 1990

  Went to lunch with Robert and Presage – Dane, Scott, Steve Ohmert, Ed and Chris – in Richmond. Got Scott all jazzed up about Mac Prince.

  August 24, 1990

  [Back from New York] My first day back and I’m already desperate to get out of here.

  Checking in with Broderbund was, as usual, infuriating. Another great review. A bunch of fan mail. And the chilling news that one major chain, Electronics Boutique, has recalled the title due to lack of sales. (“It’s a great game, but the box was horrible,” explained the saleswoman in the mall.) I don’t know how much more of this I can take before I throw a fit in Doug’s office.

  August 31, 1990

  Another pleasant lunch with Ed Bernstein. I cheered him up about his career prospects.

  Virgin Mastertronics wants to license Prince for NES and GameBoy in the U.S. Virgin’s not a big force in the Nintendo market, but that’s still the best news I’ve heard in a long while. Both Alan and Ed Bernstein have pledged their assistance. This time, I’m not going to sit by and let the deal fall apart through lack of (Broderbund) interest as happened with SunSoft six months ago. I need the money!

  Broderbund’s also had an offer from Japan – two offers, actually – for the Sega rights there. Things are finally starting to look up.

  Also, the Tandy order shipped: 12,000 units, doubling in one stroke the IBM sales to date.

  The bad news: It’s true. EB has de-listed and recalled Prince in all formats.

  September 20, 1990

  I’m writing this, believe it or not, in the cab of a Ryder rent-a-truck going 65 mph down I-80, driven by Roland Gustafsson. We’ve just crossed into Nebraska and are determined to make Omaha tonight.

  Back up a few days…

  I caught Doug before I left and expressed my concerns about Prince’s marketing. He was surprisingly sympathetic. Before I’d even had a chance to complain much, he agreed with everything, and right then and there put out a message to Sophie K. on E-mail suggesting that they redo Prince as a candy box. “I can’t really lean on her any harder than that,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry – I feel so powerless.”

  I dropped by Sophie’s office too, and expressed some of the same concerns I’d expressed to Doug. She was infuriatingly unsympathetic. She was happy to chit-chat about my trip to New York, my life there, etc., but when it came to Prince – forget it. I left her office with steam coming out of my ears and my face hardened into a pleasant smile.

  She didn’t even have the decency to commiserate, to say “Gee, it’s too bad this game isn’t selling better.” She as much as told me that 1,000 units a month is all this product deserves to be selling. And this is the product’s marketing manager speaking.

  After that I had an even more upsetting meeting with Brian, of all people. He told me that Ann had offered to pay $2,500 of the (estimated $15,000) cost of the Mac POP graphics, not a penny more, and I’d have to pay the rest out of my pocket. I gave him all the arguments as to why Broderbund should pay half the cost, at least. We argued for a while and then he said, in the heat of argument: “We just can’t justify spending that much money on a product that we don’t even know for sure there’s going to be a market for.”

  I almost blew up, but then I saw the expression on Brian’s face looked so miserable, I couldn’t bear to continue. I knew he was just repeating what Ann had told him. Prince has no better champion than Brian. He’s been fighting for a year. He’s powerless, that’s all.

  So we agreed to continue the discussion later, and I went to lunch with Rob. My last Broderbund lunch.

  Today, from a pay phone at a Wyoming truck stop, I got Ann to agree to pay a third of the graphics cost and Presage to agree to pay a third. My share will be deducted from my royalties (cross-collateralized, at Ann’s insistence). Fine, as long as it gets done. I just hope Leila can do it all without me there to guide her, and without going over budget.

  Br
ian says they’re desperate for Prince in Europe. Domark showed it unofficially at CES in England and it made quite a stir. I hope they can get their respective acts together and release it sometime soon. It’s already been pirated on the Amiga.

  September 21, 1990

  Brian said: “You know what? Sophie walked into my office this morning and said ‘What would you think about reprinting the Prince box as a candy box?’ Of course, I said ‘Why yes, I think it’s a fine idea!’ I’ve only been begging her to make it a candy box for the past twelve months. Something must have happened to make her change her mind. Maybe because Latricia left, now she’s finally starting to make decisions on her own.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  I guess Doug still has a little bit of pull around Broderbund.

  New York

  September 23, 1990

  We did it. Thanks to Robert and Roland, I’m in my new apartment, surrounded by all my stuff. It’s like a dream – to be in New York City, and to be home, at the same time. The city is lying out there waiting to be conquered. I’m so happy to be here.

  I’d write more, but I have to get up at 4:30 am to report to Kevin’s for the first day of shooting. I’d feel better about it if I weren’t already about 19 hours short on sleep and every muscle in my body weren’t already sore.

  September 25, 1990

  First day of shooting. After this past week, I suppose it’s only fitting that my job as “production coordinator” should turn out to consist largely of carrying boxes and equipment up and down stairs, loading and unloading vans and trucks, and driving them around the city in heavy traffic. Such is fate.

  It’ll be character-building. One week of this, I can handle. And if my goal was to meet NYU film students, I’m certainly meeting a lot of them.

  My boss is Deborah, Kevin’s girlfriend and production manager. Then there’s Rick (assistant director), Nick (D.P.), Steve (assistant camera), Rob (gaffer), Paul (gaffer and Kevin’s roommate), Mark (sound), and Marcy (boom). And the actors.