The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993

by Jordan Mechner

  Best of all, we’d be building a company—an asset that, years down the line, could actually be sold for real money. Better than royalties.

  Prince 2 is coming along nicely. No worries.

  October 30, 1992

  Here I am again in that state of international limbo, an airport. I’ve got a 486 computer and a new leather jacket to prove I was here.

  It was a fun week. It’s really satisfying watching Prince 2 come together. The last few days have been somewhat marred by controversy over the subtitle. I got Brian and Bruce and the whole art department excited about “The Shadow and the Flame,” we were all ready to go ahead, and then Ken Goldstein shot it down. Now, thanks to Ken, everybody is all agitated about it.

  Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame

  Prince of Persia 2: City of the Dead

  Prince of Persia 2: The City of Souls

  I’m so burned out now, I don’t even care which one they use.

  Pitched the train story to Ken. He said: “Do you really need a partner? Can’t you write it yourself?” For some reason the mention of Tomi got him all riled up. (As Brian said afterwards, “I thought he was going to blow a gasket.”)

  Also pitched the company idea to Robert and Corey. This could really happen. (Gulp!)

  November 1, 1992

  [Paris] A last look at the film, a last chance to make sweeping architectural changes, and now it’s done. Aarón will implement the few minor cuts we discussed today, and by tomorrow afternoon we should be image-locked. Tuesday he’ll work on sound and get ready for the mix, which could be as early as Thursday.

  It’s got a new title: “Waiting for Dark” (or maybe “Waiting for Night”): Esperando la noche. Havana 1992.

  I like this film. Aarón says he does too. I don’t care if anybody else does. Lie.

  Cast my vote for Clinton.

  November 5, 1992

  I couldn’t get Sophie or Anna or Frédérique to go to the Tilt d’Or awards with me, so I went alone. As if that weren’t bad enough, I won another Tilt d’Or (this time for Mac Prince) and had to get up on the podium and accept the award and say a few words into the mike. Saying it in French was the easy part; the hard part was keeping my leg from shaking – I was as nervous as I’ve ever been in my life. I thought I’d outgrown stage fright, but guess not. It’s going to be on TV, so I hope I didn’t make a total fool of myself.

  Met some new people, including Frederick Raynal, author of Alone in the Dark; Eric Chahi, author of Out of This World (aka Another World); and Paul Cuisset, Eric’s successor at Delphine Software, who’s responsible for their new game Flashback. Eric’s left Delphine and is very upset about Flashback — not only because they stole his “look and feel” but because they’ve used it (he feels) to rip off Prince of Persia, which offends his sense of ethics.

  Dany’s left Tilt. He’s in Thailand now trying to win over the parents of his Thai bride-to-be. When he gets back he’s going to work for — you guessed it — Delphine.

  Dany’s successor is Guillaume, the guy who invited me to the awards ceremony. He’s brought on board as a fledgling staff member his boyhood pal Julien, who is a nice guy and gave me a lift home.

  Julien said: “Of all the people who accepted awards tonight, you were the best, but you were the most modest.” The whole night was that way, with people coming up and saying staggeringly nice things to me. According to them, I’m one of the three best-known game authors in France, the other two being Eric Chahi and Frederick Raynal; and they were both so star-struck to meet me, I hardly knew what to say. Everyone here remembers Karateka. It’s really surprising.

  Aarón and I finished cutting the film. (That is, I left Aarón at Atria, still working at 7pm, while I went to the Tilt awards.) We mix tomorrow morning at 9 am.

  November 6, 1992

  Mixed from 9:30 to 2:00 but the nice young girl mixer only charged us for three hours. We went back to Atria and packed up our stuff and out of there. Finished.

  Anabel at Atria saw me on TV last night.

  Enlisted Patrick in the “Train to Berlin” adventure game concept. We agreed that the chapeau is essential.

  November 13, 1992

  Stayed up till 4 am last night working on the interface for the train adventure game while Sandrine read comic books and Patrick played Sherlock Holmes.

  Oh, and yesterday I had lunch with Delphine Software. All of it. They were like a litter of puppies and Paul and his wife/assistant were the mom and dad. They showed me their new game-in-progress Flashback, had me autograph a copy of Prince of Persia, and took me to lunch. Flashback rips off Prince shamelessly, but it isn’t bad.

  I’ve got a half a mind to steal their vector-graphics system for the train game. Why not; they ripped it off from Eric Chahi. But I’ve got this obsessive need to be original, so I probably won’t.

  November 17, 1992

  I’m tired of being a foreigner. I’m tired of people asking me where I come from and what I’m doing here, and making little jokes about me being an American and when I do something normal they say “Aha, he’s becoming a real Parisian.” I know they don’t mean any harm, but I’m tired of it.

  Oh hell, might as well admit it, it’s the same thing (only different) when I go to the U.S. I’ve chosen a life that’s so different from everybody else’s that it cuts me off from them. Practically everybody I know treats me like a guest celebrity. Of course it’s my own fault. I feel so damn alone sometimes, I feel like I could just float away into the stratosphere and everybody would stand there looking up at me and not one would haul me back down to earth. No ropes.

  November 18, 1992

  Spent the day with Patrick doing research for the train game. There was a metro strike, it was raining, traffic was jammed all through Paris.

  Over coffee at Chatelet I brought Patrick up to date on my latest romantic travails. He said: “There’s something I don’t understand. Here you are, you’ve got this great life, you’re so free, and yet you act so conservative. You act like you and Sophie work in the same job and you don’t want to have any bad feelings in the office. What are you trying to protect? Why not just act like a child? Napoleon, Charles de Gaulle, they all acted like children. They saw something and they wanted it. You’re like that when you talk about your computer games. You have a dream and you’re going to make it happen. Children are tyrants, they don’t care who they hurt to get what they want. Why are you such an adult when it comes to love?”

  November 19, 1992

  Big day. Plumber came and installed a kitchenette. Cooked my first dinner for Patrick and Yo. Box of pasta, bottle of wine, open the windows to clear out the smoke.

  November 23, 1992

  Over dinner with Anna I sawed a piece off my steak and somehow caused French fries to explode across the restaurant. “Oops,” I said.

  “I love it when you do maladroit things. I don’t like people who are too perfect.”

  I cheerfully assured her that she would not have that problem with me.

  She showed me how to hold a fork the right way.

  San Francisco

  November 30, 1992

  [NY] Been here a week. Robert flew in from L.A., I picked him up at the airport (and drove him to a restaurant in Brighton Beach where Emily and her friends Marina and Alex awaited us… but that’s another story and, anyway, I now suspect that that entire restaurant was a hallucination).

  The next morning I showed him all the work I’d done on Train. He liked it, but said that if he’s going to go back to making computer games, he’d have to be in charge of his own project, not just carry out mine. Makes sense. Corey or Roland would be a more natural choice, because they have no aspirations as game designers themselves.

  Now, finally, it’s clear to me that I should just go ahead and start the project on
my own. If it takes $20,000 or $50,000 of my own money, fine. Then, when it’s time to bring on a programmer, I can offer a royalty of 5% or 7%, and still be left with enough to justify either publishing through Broderbund or starting an affiliated label, and retain ownership. Gulp.

  December 1, 1992

  Morris Silver came over and we plotted my destiny. He advised me to start an S corporation to bear the development costs of Train. Fun and games.

  We had lunch at the little French café on the corner, the one run by the grey-bearded Tunisian. Morris intuited that my globe-hopping lifestyle is making me lonely, and predicted that I would find happiness in San Francisco.

  December 3, 1992

  I need a name for the S corporation. Wagon-Lit Productions? Night Train Productions?

  Doug has scheduled a meeting of the Broderbund “storytelling/adventure committee task force” and wants me to come in and pitch Train.

  What do I want from Broderbund, anyway? A development deal like Prince 2? Broderbund programmers, Broderbund artists, Broderbund schedules and Broderbund bureaucracy, me coming in every day to beg, plead and cajole the project toward completion? All for an 8% royalty, and when it’s done they own the code, the system, everything?

  If I spent an extra $200,000 and got someone like Roland to program it for a 7% royalty, I could do it my way, and end up owning the damn thing myself.

  I don’t want to out-Sierra Sierra. Sierra to me means big, expensive, ugly, unwieldy productions with mediocre graphics, mediocre stories, and some fine stuff that you have to wade through the whole mess to get to. Electronic Arts put their heads together and came out with Sherlock Holmes, which is pretty much the same thing. I could help Broderbund do the same thing yet again, with slightly better graphics and a better story, and they’d probably do just as well with it as Electronic Arts has with Sherlock Holmes.

  But I want to do something different. A game that’ll be smaller than a Sierra game but on a completely different level in terms of the quality of the graphics and story, and with a sense of style and economy that’ll make the whole thing come together and work even for people who don’t like adventure games. It’ll be to adventure games what Prince of Persia was to running-jumping games. That’s not something you can do by making a committee and throwing money at it. It’s something that can only be done by one author with a clear vision of the product who can supervise it at all levels: programming, story, graphics, sound, music, everything. It’s a work of art, and it’ll only be as good as the artist who makes it.

  What to do, what to do?

  December 4, 1992

  Called Roland. He’s the first person I’ll see Monday eve when I get in. I tried to get him excited about the adventure game.

  “The best thing you said was that you don’t like adventure games, and you want to do an adventure game,” he said. He’s intrigued, but I think it’ll take more than that to get him to commit.

  December 8, 1992

  [SF] Doug and Tomi arm-wrestled over which of them would get to have dinner with me and Margo to talk about adventure game plans, but they couldn’t agree, so Margo and I ended up having dinner alone, which was a waste of time, of course.

  I told Margo what I want to do and explained my reservations about the Storytelling Committee. She said she hopes Doug will talk me into coming on board, but she understood my side of it, I think, better than her job allows her to admit.

  (Rehearsing what to say to Doug)

  “I’m sure this Storytelling Committee would be fun and all… but here’s another idea: I’m really excited about this train game. I’ve played all the other adventure games out there and I think here’s a chance to make something that will blow them all away – not just in terms of story, although that’s a big part of it, but also in the graphic look, sound, music, interface, the way it all fits together – the whole package. I’m talking about a game that will really be a work of art. The first adventure game to have a story and graphics that can stand on their own merits, not just by adventure-game standards.

  “And I’m thinking beyond just this one game. The train game will take maybe two years to develop, and if it’s the hit I think it will be, there’ll be a major opportunity to follow it up with other games with the same interface, the same special ‘look and feel.’ I want this to be a whole line of games. I’ve been working on this for weeks and I’m so convinced it’s worth it, that I’d be ready to go out and do it on my own as an independent project, if I need to.

  “Look, I’ve spent the last two years traveling and making movies, and learning a lot, but basically goofing off. I wouldn’t mind really throwing myself into something for a change. I’d like to risk something. So emotionally, I’m up for it. I’ve already started looking for an apartment in the city. I want to do this game.

  “My original plan was to turn Prince of Persia into a franchise so I could live off the royalties and write screenplays and make movies. I’ve done that. I know if I went to L.A. now, I could get into that business. But I’ve changed my mind, because now that I’ve seen the movie business, I think this is actually more interesting. There’s a lot of people out there making movies. But if I don’t do this adventure game, no one will. It’s a chance to change the course of a whole new art form.

  “I don’t even like adventure games. But I’m going to like this one. This will be the first adventure game since Scott Adams that I’ll actually like.”

  I can write these things. But can I say them? To Doug, in his office, with Margo there and both of them looking at me?

  December 10, 1992

  Dinner with Doug last night. I said basically what I’d planned. So, that’s that. The Committee will go on without me.

  Doug wasn’t mad. He understood, even said he might want to invest if it weren’t for his divorce situation. So… I’m on my own. Gulp.

  Spent today apartment-hunting on Telegraph Hill. Found one for $850 that’s got a garage and the right kind of faded San Francisco charm. Conveniently (too conveniently?), it’s half a block away from Tomi and Pete’s office at 725 Greenwich. I’m pretty sure I’m going to take it.

  I’m beginning a new life. It hardly seems to register.

  December 12, 1992

  Tomi and Pete and I came up with a name: Smoking Car Productions. They’re eager for me to move into their office. Tomi and I spent the afternoon working on the train game.

  Now I’m listening to the Gainsbourg album I bought last night, and killing time until the Broderbund Christmas party.

  December 13, 1992

  Had a surprisingly good time at the Broderbund Christmas party. Michael Baisuck and I had a drunken man-to-man in the parking lot after they kicked us out. “You know why I hate you?” he said. “It’s so goddamned easy for you. You’re rich, you’re creative, you’re good-looking, you speak five fucking languages, you can dance, and you’re not arrogant! If I had your life, I’d be having such a good time… But you don’t even seem to be enjoying it!” He proceeded to give me some good advice about how to spend my money while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. Like, buy a vintage ’58 Corvette convertible instead of an anonymous current-year Japanese car.

  It’s only what Patrick’s been telling me all along. There’s this thing inside me that makes me hold back. That dry adult whisper that counsels prudence, caution, thrift… Why? I’m fighting it on the big stuff, but on the small stuff, it’s winning.

  So I bought Mom a really nice sweater for Christmas, and I’m flying to LA on the spur of the moment to hang out with George.

  And maybe, just maybe, the next time I see the girl of my dreams at a crosswalk in North Beach, I’ll have the balls to say hello before she crosses the street.

  December 15, 1992

  My last two days at Broderbund were even more jam-packed than usual. Brian got back from vacation and w
e put Prince 2 into QA. (It was the day of Brian’s twelve-year anniversary.) Now that it’s approaching completion, a lot of upper-management types want copies to take home to play over Christmas.

  Prince 2 is going boringly smoothly. Everybody wants it to succeed, the work is going well, and it’s even on schedule. Hardly the stuff of drama.

  Tomi is proving her worth as collaborator on the train game. We argue a lot, but what we end up with is really good. This story’s going to be better than any movie screenplay I’ve written.

  I rented the Greenwich St. apartment. Tomi made me a set of keys for the office. It’ll all be waiting for me when I get back in January.

  I went down and saw Roland and showed him Prince 2. He was impressed. But, he’s not ready to commit to the train game. I think he’s scared it will turn into a huge project that will consume years of his life and drive him mad. Also, he’s just started on KidCuts and it’s not the right psychological moment to think of the next project. I haven’t given up on him, but I do need to start thinking about who else I might get to do it if Roland doesn’t.

  I’m really enjoying the research for the train game. So far I’ve read The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West and I’m in the middle of The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. It’s great to have an excuse to learn all this fascinating stuff. I have the greatest job in the world.

  “…Unknown Spears

  Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

  And then the clash of fallen horsemen and the cries

  Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.”

  – Yeats, 1895

  December 20, 1992

  “When a great war or great revolution breaks out it is because a great people, a great race, needs to break out, because it has had enough, particularly of peace. It always means that a great mass feels and experiences a violent need, a mysterious need for a great movement… a sudden need for glory, for war, for history, which causes an explosion, an eruption…” – Charles Peguy, 1910