Krondor Confidential - Part XVI
A Missed Rendezvous
In the days and weeks following the cancellation of Thief of Dreams, I began to feel as though I’d been trapped in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Every week I would come in and discover that another member of our team had been reassigned to another project, and another office in our Krondor archipelago of suites would be suddenly vacant. I’d send e-mails to our company CEO, Tony Reyneke, asking what they were planning to do with me, but he’d just reply with a simple message assuring me that everything was in hand and they had plans for me. As the team continued to evaporate, I couldn’t help but think of the haunting episode of Star Trek where Kirk found himself wandering the halls of a completely abandoned Enterprise. I had no project, no team, and no idea of what was going to happen to me moving forward. I was terrified about what might happen next, and honestly began to wonder about my own sanity.
By this point in my game design career, I’d been in the industry for four years, but I’d not entered it as a game designer. I’d started out simply as a writer. I didn’t have a folder full of game ideas to pitch to my superiors -- I’d never had the spare time to try to put anything down. Even if I’d had them, I wouldn’t have known exactly who my superiors were given all the management reshuffling that was going on at the time. Everything was in disarray. So, with no other options left to me, I did the only thing that a desperate madman with an office suite all to himself could do...I went to work cranking through one game design concept after another until the whiteboards of my suite at Dynamix began to look like the walls of an asylum.
Every day my routine during this phase was the same. I’d crawl in at 10 and stare at whatever madness I’d put up the previous day. I’d then scribble on the wall for a couple hours, pace, erase, and then write more. At noon I’d escape from the office and walk over to the Burger King to buy a bag of burgers, and feed french fries to the ducks on the Millrace while I babbled to myself. By afternoon I’d be back at the boards, squeezing story ideas alongside experimental game mechanics, trying anything that felt like it would be a game that I would want to play. Because I’d been given absolutely no directives of any kind by the higher ups -- other than be patient and wait -- I dug out every player fantasy I could come up with and scrawled it up with a dry-erase marker. Adventure games, strategy games, weirdo sports games, horror games, pretty much everything I could think of that wasn’t an RPG ended up on that wall (I reasoned that since they’d just CANCELLED an RPG -- and I wasn’t entirely clear on why they’d cancelled Thief -- it would be best to try something different.) This cycle would go on usually into early evening until my girlfriend would come to rescue me, or hunger demanded that I needed to put food in my stomach. From the outside it might have seemed like a romantic period -- cue the slow camera dissolves of the exhausted creative passionately exploring ideas -- but in reality it was nothing like that. For me it was days and days of working my butt off trying to show anyone who cared to come look that maybe I shouldn’t be fired.
In the midst of all this, I suddenly found myself on a phone call with Ray Feist. I can’t for the life of me remember if I’d initiated it, or if for some reason he’d called me, but whatever the case was, I just remember the phone call feeling very random, and out of the blue, and a very strange break from everything I’d been doing on my own. Whatever the case may be, I remember mentioning to him that Tony had promised me that they “had something for me,” but that they’d not told me what that thing was going to be, other than they’d need my combo of writing and game skills. As it turned out, Ray knew exactly what was going on above my head.
“Oh well I’ll tell you what they have, Neal. They’re negotiating for Rendezvous For Rama.” My heart stopped. Rama?! Arthur C. Clarke! Holy crap! “That’s what they’re not telling you about.”
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA - I had been well familiar with Rendezvous With Rama since childhood, along with most of Arthur C. Clarke’s works, and as a matter of fact, my RPG for New World Computing, Planet’s Edge, drew major inspiration from it for its beginning.
As soon as I put down the phone with Ray, I had to resist the urge not to scream with excitement. I’d been a fan of Arthur C. Clarke since junior high, and I’d cribbed Rama as the inspiration for the opening action of Planet’s Edge (an RPG I’d designed for New World Computing.) My head was spinning. We could do so many amazing things with the property, and the possibilities of using our 3Space engine to create that world set me on fire. Promptly I closed up shop at Dynamix for the day and hopped over to the local Barnes & Noble to pick up the entire Rama series. My plan was to be prepared, and to have a design proposal ready by the time management finally got around to telling me what was actually going on.
By the end of the week I’d read through all of the books, and had already compiled an extensive notebook full of ideas about how we’d approach the game, and what we could do with the story. Despite my initial plan to wait until management came to me, I decided to show a little initiative and call Tony Reyneke and let him know I was already at work on it. I played it cool, pretending like I’d been in on the Clarke negotiations it all along.
“So how are the Rama talks progressing?” I asked him. “Are we going to get started anytime soon? I have a few ideas.”
I could tell from his brief pause before answering that I’d caught him completely by surprise, but he played his part, and didn’t ask how I’d found out about it. “Oh, uh, fine. We’re still working on details.”
I assured Tony I was looking forward to officially rolling on things and invited him to come down to the suite so that I could show him a few suggestions I’d already worked on. He promised he’d come see me soon.
My whiteboards unfurled with diagrams of the worldship, ways to cut it up into playable levels, sketches of a potential U.I.. I had loved building the decidedly quirky Planet’s Edge, but now I’d have an opportunity to tackle one of the classics of science fiction, and potentially even get to consult with Clarke and Gentry Lee themselves. I was ecstatic.
Eventually, Tony did get around to coming down from his offices to see me, but the moment I saw his face, I knew I was in trouble.
“Unfortunately, Sierra wants to keep Rama in house. I know you’ve done a lot of work already, but that’s not going to work out.” he said. The hammer was coming. I felt it. He didn’t like what I’d done with the idea, or just didn’t have a place for me. I wondered if John Cutter might have a place for me at Starwave, i.e. the software company that had snapped him up after Tony had so hastily fired him. “But I don’t want you to worry because we have something else we want you to do. We want to go ahead and make Thief of Dreams, and we want you to be in charge of making it happen.”
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