From Gamer to GameDev: Part II

The Way of the Geek

Before we trek once again through the wilds of my distant gaming past, I should advise you there’s been a slight change in our planned itinerary. Please don’t panic. I know you were promised a thrilling, chilling express tour through the war-torn lands of Risk, through the blood-spattered halls of Clue, through the sanity-blasting complexities of chess before being led on to the next set of games that pre-figured my career as a designer. But before I can get you to where we need voyage next — well, I’ve realized I can’t get you there from here. Not from where we left things last time. There was a gulf I had yet to cross to get to those games, ideas I had to grasp before I could understand and embrace those things that would alter my life’s trajectory thereafter. I had first to fully embrace the Way of the Geek.

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“Yes, play, Mr. Sulu. The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.”
— Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek (The Original Series), “Shore Leave”

On my first day of junior high, my father dropped me off by The Big Tree, a massive, ancient oak ringed by a low limestone retaining wall that doubled as outdoor seating. In the days and years ahead, The Big Tree would become the hub around which all life on campus revolved, a place to compare homework, to gossip, to flirt, to show off a sporty new outfit, or to flash one of those new-fangled, handheld electronic games that kids were going positively wild over. On this particular morning, however, an hour before the first bell, the area around The Big Tree was nearly deserted. It was just me, a janitor coming down the front steps, and a boy named James Day who was sporting a Bay City Rollers haircut, a puffy Mork from Ork jacket, and a book that hid most of his face.

Now if James had been reading almost anything else that morning, I never would have interrupted him, and wouldn’t have struck up the lengthy, enthusiastic conversation that followed. Even under the best of circumstances, I frequently suffer from a crippling degree of social anxiety, so approaching complete strangers is just not something I usually do. But on the morning in question, the book that James was holding was a provocation. Between its bright red cover and bold title, I had no choice but react. The book was called Spock Must Die!, and it was my first inkling that there were other Star Trek fans my age in Oklahoma.

My conversation with James that day was important not only because he would become my first new friend at a new school, but also because he would be the first of several junior high classmates who would have an important impact on my future career in games. What would initially connect me to all of them was the common lingua franca of Star Trek.

A Strange New Voyage - Spock Must Die! by author James Blish was the first Star Trek related novel aimed at an adult audience, and was published by Bantam Books in 1970. Released shortly after the cancellation of the original Star Trek series, Blish had hopes that the book would help revive interest in the television show and lead to a renewal, but unfortunately that was not to be. His book, however — along with his popular novelizations of original series episodes — would help tide Star Trek fandom over during the agonizingly long years between Star Trek: The Animated Series and the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

If you learn anything about me here aside from the fact that I’m a writer, you need to understand that positively everything in my imaginative life began thanks to Star Trek. I was born just a month after the premiere of the original series, and gurgled at those first three seasons while sitting on the lap of my older brother, Gene. As I grew older, I remember my tiny fingers being prized apart to form the Vulcan Live Long & Prosper hand salute until I could do it on my own. Before my sixth birthday, I was capable of arching my eyebrows just like Leonard Nimoy and it was a skill that I took great pride in. Even after the series had been cancelled, my brother would drill me about the important differences between Klingons and Romulans, make sure that I understood the Federation’s Prime Directive, and most importantly of all, he taught me about the Vulcan belief in IDIC — Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations — a moral guideline that is nearly as deeply rooted in my psyche as my belief in the golden rule. For me the show was about more than the adventures of the crew of the starship Enterprise. It became an important lifeline during the difficult early years of my childhood.

Agent Provocateur - Throughout my early childhood, my older brother Gene (pictured on the right, circa 1969) exerted a great deal of influence over my interests and hobbies. Even to this day, a lot of who I am came from Gene either nudging me — or forcefully kicking — in a particular direction.

It didn’t take long for my family to realize that I wasn’t like other kids my age. From birth I’d been plagued with a variety of health issues, and between a number of severe respiratory allergies and full-blown asthma, I spent a significant amount of time bouncing between my bed and a doctor’s office. My rough and tumble games of army with my neighbor David Guthridge would sometimes end with me passing out or slinking home to recover in my room with only a wheezing humidifier for company. I often spent long hours of my childhood absolutely alone. It was something that divided me from other kids at my elementary school, something even the teachers there had little sympathy for when I didn’t get up and run around on the playground in hundred-degree Oklahoma weather while the hay fever seasons raged. My teachers wrote me up as “antisocial” and treated me as though I had some deep-seated psychological problem just because I tended to draw monsters and spaceships while the other kids were busy being hyperkinetic. What a strange, strange child I was for not wanting to die from an asthma attack brought on by playing kickball on the playground.

It was difficult to spend so much time isolated because of my health, but harder still to be shunned by other kids because I couldn’t play the way they did. My mother, while well intentioned, made things even worse by trying to shield me from other kids who might drive me into an asthma attack, or worse, morally corrupt me. As I was shut away behind walls both physical and psychological, my sole salvation lay in the strange new worlds offered in books and movies, and overwhelmingly I turned towards Star Trek. Unsurprisingly, I tended to identify with aliens and monsters who were grossly misunderstood, and almost no one embodied this idea more than Mr. Spock who struggled to find his way in a crew ruled by illogical humans. Although he was physically stronger than Kirk — or anyone else aboard the Enterprise — he relied on his intelligence and the mastery of his oftentimes raging emotions to win the day against the many threats arrayed against the Federation. He was a hero I could relate to, and one that I could attempt to emulate.

At my elementary school, I had almost no one that I could talk to about the show. I was already a social pariah because of my health issues, but being a Trekkie in the 70s meant having an even smaller circle of people with whom I could share my interest. Unlike today when virtually everyone feels free to talk about their favorite shows or books or games or whatever, admitting you were a fan of Star Trek was regarded with only slightly less suspicion than telling someone you were a cow molester. It was too weird, too different. The longest conversation I ever had at Twin Cities Elementary about Star Trek was with a fourth-grade teacher who innocently asked me the differences between Vulcans and Romulans because of a recently aired, late-night rerun of the episode “Balance of Terror.” I excitedly met his question with a very earnest and detailed explanation with all the salient facts that I could muster — and thereafter, no one dared ask me anything ever again, fearing that I’d drown them in more information than they really cared to know.

Space Cadet - A year before my fateful first meeting with James Day at Central Junior High, my sixth-grade class took a trip to the Omniplex science museum in Oklahoma City. Included among the many cool things to see were a set of Apollo era replica space helmets, and naturally I took the opportunity to get a suitably fashionable photo snapped of me in one.

My promotion from Twin Cities Elementary up to the junior high meant more than just a change of scenery. Thanks to a bizarre neighborhood aberration in the birth rate the year I was born, I’d never been in a class with more than twelve agemates at Twin Cities. At Central, I would find myself in what felt like comparatively enormous classes, and positively surrounded by a sea of strange faces. I could no longer rely on the crutch of friendships based solely on shared history, but instead had the opportunity to seek out others like James Day who shared my love for all things space and science and particularly Star Trek. Initially I’d been anxious that I’d still find myself on the outside, still not measure up somehow, but I soon learned that while being a Trekkie had set me apart in elementary school, at Central Junior High it set me on a collision course with the person who nearly a decade later would throw open the door to my future career.

The story of our friendship begins with my decision in eighth grade to take art as an elective. As mentioned previously, I liked to draw things I’d seen in movies and TV shows, and I hoped that with formal instruction I might be able to become a book illustrator someday — or at the very least do like my father and draw house plans as a side hustle. The art class at Central was instructed by “Charlie” Brown, a mild mannered and friendly teacher who was unfailingly kind in his critiques of my “work.” Every week he would post the best creations by his students on his classroom bulletin board, and I aspired to have one of my deformed sketches of the Enterprise or maybe a death star posted up there amid the usual paintings of flowers, and horses, and still life portraits of sneakers. One day when I approached the board to scope out the competition however, my jaw dropped at the sight of an incredibly well-rendered sketch of a starship being refueled at a very futuristic looking starport. It was absolutely, one hundred percent professional, and far beyond anything I thought I’d ever be able to do myself. I felt the urge to rush to my desk, break all my pencils, burn my sketchpad, and never curse the world with my pathetic efforts ever again. The illustration was signed only with a highly stylized KLM glyph in the bottom righthand corner of the image. When I asked Mr. Brown who was responsible for this outrage, he smiled with pride. “Oh that’s by Kenneth Mayfield. He’s a freshman this year.”

As it happened, I already knew Kenneth. He’d been one of several Trekkie friends that I’d got to know hanging around The Big Tree, but I had no idea that he was an artist, and certainly not that he was so disgustingly talented. Throughout the rest of junior high, he would continue to hone his craft, and I’d include several of his illustrations in VORTEX, a science fiction anthology magazine that I published at Charles Page High School. By the time I got to Tulsa Junior College, Ken was already a celebrated artist in the local science fiction convention scene and getting his illustrations in gaming magazines. We remained close friends, and as Ken’s career successes continued to pile up, I was always enthusiastic to see what new publications he was landing in. His biggest break would happen while I was in my final year at the University of Oklahoma. His work on Starfleet Battles — a strategic ship to ship strategy game set in the Star Trek universe — would net him an offer to come and work as the art director of New World Computing, a computer gaming company which at the time was based in Van Nuys, California. Just six months after that I’d follow him and his new bride Anji to the west coast, but the full story about that will have to wait until another time.

The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria - This early example of Kenneth Mayfield’s artwork appeared inside the first volume of VORTEX, a science and science fiction anthology magazine that I published through the journalism department at Charles Page High School. Kenneth’s work graced the covers of volumes I & II, and both issues carried stories and articles contributed by friends I’d made while hanging around the Big Tree at Central Junior High.