I’m starting to get old. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind getting old. What I do mind is the inevitable. And, honestly, I never thought I’d be ready for it.
Recently, I wrote an article about my roommate in college who passed away. Tom was a good friend of mine, and he was always my greatest advocate.
Bill was also a great friend of mine. But he and I had kind of simmered on our friendship for the only reason that I now lived in Texas, and he lived in California. However, whenever I got the opportunity to travel back to California, he and I returned to our friendship almost as if we had never parted. A short while ago, I received a message that he had passed away, too.
One of my recent plans had been to make it back to California so he and I could hang out again. Now, I don’t have a single reason why I would make the trip. Bill’s no longer there.
So, let me tell you about Bill. He used to work for a bunch of computer gaming companies. When I was working for Maxis (and then EA), he would be working for companies like LucasArts and Microprose. He was an actual pilot, so when those companies were designing flight sims (like Xwing, Tie Fighter and F-15 Eagle) he was always there testing out those types of games.
One of my favorite stories was when he was testing X-Wing, and the producer had told him that it was impossible to destroy the Imperial Star Destroyer that was producing all the enemies in the game, he spent days flying missions against it until he turned off the damage on his own vessel and finally destroyed the Imperial Star Destroyer. After a couple of days, the developers indicated that it was impossible to destroy the Imperial Star Destroyer.
Having felt like he had laid down the law, the developer thought nothing of it as Bill spent days flying endless sorties against the Star Destroyer, and then he destroyed it again. But this time on the hardest level.
The developers, after discussing it amongst themselves, decided to add a readme file on the main disk indicating that “if you destroy the Star Destroyer, you might not be able to finish the game.”
One of my other favorite stories of his exploits was the origin of his ecology degree from UC Berkeley where he had gone to college after his time in the Army as an Army pilot. He was on the original GI Bill, and the way it used to be structured was you could continue your education until you graduated, and then it was over. So, Bill being like Bill was, continued until he was about finished with one degree and then he would change his degree to something else. He did this for a very long time until the Department of the Army sat down with Berkeley, and an offer was made that he could choose several degrees (of his choosing), and they would confer it upon him. So, the ecology degree ended up being one of the ones he chose, just cause it sounded kind of cool.
My other favorite story was one that everyone wished they had done themselves, and it involved the pettiness of a ticket he received from the city that was for several hundred dollars. And add to it that they had sent him a threatening letter if he didn’t pay it immediately.
So Bill took the train to downtown and walked in to pay his bill. And he brought a handful of dollar bills to pay it.
So, the clerk took the money, counted it and determined there were several dollars missing. Bill swore there was an exact amount, so the clerk spent quite a while counting it again. This time, she came up with a different amount, but not the amount that was supposed to be there.
So, this went on for several more rounds until a supervisor came over, grabbed the money and counted it himself. He came up with a number far below the amount required. So he told Bill he’d have to get the proper amount and return.
Bill swore the amount was correct. He’d counted it a bunch of times before coming in.
The boss started counting again, got about a third of the way through and then just shoved the money into a drawer, saying: “Fine. He paid the right amount. Give him a receipt.”
So Bill walked out of their with a happy grin.
Now, these are all stories told to me by Bill over the years, and the one reason I believe him on each story is because he told me these stories over and over, thinking he was telling me them for the first time. So, if they didn’t really happen, at least he believed in them. And that was all I needed.
Bill was one of those people who had brilliant ideas that were completely out of left field. I remember when I had a theory about how gravity was a physical property, not just an action on something else. I thought it was completely original, but the second I told it to Bill, he started analyzing how my theory might actually exist and exactly how we could test it. Unfortunately, neither of us had an actual spacecraft needed to test it, but we discussed it late into the night, throwing theories back and forth.
The point being: A guy with his degree from Berkeley in various disciplines was capable of going toe to toe with a guy with a physics degree from West Point. And his analysis was good.
We’re a couple of months away from the actual release of Starfield, and as much as I long to play it, I really wish it would have come out earlier, because this is the type of game Bill would have loved. And he would have found a way to break it, too, cause that’s what he did.
And no one did it better.