DonkKong
Frogger.
There's Sadie,
Yes.
This?
The things people find amusing.
This is what time travel is.
Solution.
not playing
Solution?
Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Street Fighter.
Solution.
was<
A great deal of latitude
Teen
You would look good in this hat.
No one wears hats like that in Los Angeles! This is why you don't have any friends, Sadie Green!
I'm already sick,
do
would
The Phantom Tollbooth
Press That Button!
The Price Is Right;
Seventeen
Oregon Trail
Super Mario Bros.
Oregon Trail?
is
make me
Duck Hunt?
Donkey Kong
what?
Donkey Kong
What?
told
are
Dysentery
Here it is,
I know you won't hurt me, even though you can.
Kotaku
hug and
from
My review: like Marx's rad name. I like Marx ordering enough take out food for the both of them. ew: I like when Sadie's Mum says "It isn't fair,". I like how at first you don't know if the boy Sadie is talking to in the games room of the hospital is Sam or not. I like Sam saying "There is no more intimate act than play, even sex." and I like the metaphor of a dog rolling on its back-I know you won't hurt me, even though you can-, It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love. I like Sadies grandmother saying "Friendship is friendship, and charity is charity,". Although, it is never possible to receive charity from a friend, I did not realise that until reading this. I like this part: "Sadie Green liked being praised, and Sam Masur was the best friend she had ever had."
Commander Keen
Doom,
Dead Sea
Dead Sea
before
because
Dead Sea
Respect
how
Dead Sea?
Dead Sea?
I'm not like those other ones.
Dungeons + Dragons
Super Mario,
Dead Sea.
honest.
dishonest.
EmilyBlaster.
queef?
Space Invaders,
EmilyBlaster,
Tetris,
Tetris
Solution
Dear Sadie, I played your "game," and I honestly don't know what to say. It is disgusting and offensive, and you are a sick person. I'm cc'ing Dov on this email. I'm not sure if I will be able to attend class, because I'm too disturbed. This class is no longer a safe space for me. -- Hannah
Dear Hannah, I'm not entirely sorry that you were disturbed by my game. The game is meant to be disturbing, and as I mentioned in class, it was inspired by my grandmother.
Fuck you, Sadie.
Sadie, Haven't played yet. Looking forward, Dov.
Solution
Genius.
genius.
Solution
Congratulations, Nazi! You have helped lead the Third Reich to Victory! You are a true Master of Efficiency.
Solution
Dead Sea,
Dead Sea,
Solution.
Her.
Solution.
Solution.
your boyfriend
was
Misress,
are
know
King's Quest IV.
Zelda
KQIV?
Maybe
You
she
cunt,
README
I'M SORRY SAM
Hi Dov, Started playing Chrono Trigger. Some interesting elements there.
I've already played it. We should talk, though. Do you want to come over tonight?
Walk up close, and back away. Let your eyes relax.
I'm brave,
Dead Sea II.
Be cool,
be cool.
Life is very long,
unless it is not.
Had she?
Dead Sea
Until he tells me, it's not my business.
Metal Gear III?
Metal Gear III.
Metal Gear Solid.
Metal Gears
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid
stealth
Metal Gear Solid
cool
that cool.
Metal Gear Solid.
Metal Gear Solid
My review: I like all the seminarians saying what they liked about each other’s games. I agree that female applicants to MIT might have held themselves to higher standards than male applicants. I like the Solution game. It’s honest. And how it’s about complicity. I now see why it is not possible to receive charity from a friend. I also like how Sadie’s EmilyBlaster game incorporates poetry. I like how we find out that Dovs wife is in Isreal after finding out about the Nazi game. Imperialism. Ulterior motives. I like the way Sadie doesn’t know if she hadn’t asked the right or enough questions because she hadn’t wanted to know the answers. I like Sadie being impatient with her twenty-year-old brain and the quality of its ideas. I don’t want to be an arrogant fool like Marx. I like how Gabrielle included Sadie being conditioned to ignore things sexist as it wasn’t cool to point out. I like Gabrielle including a description of what is cool to a 20 year old. ⁂
Hello Stranger, I've played your game twice now, and I want to talk to you about it! Let's get together when you're back from the holidays. Say Hi to our old friend California for me. --S.A.M P.S I'm glad we ran into each other.
Solution
Solution,
sounds, delays, mechanics, prose, graphics, pacing, HUD, controls, general ludic thoughts.
Solution,
Solution,
Solution
Solution.
real
EmilyBlaster.
Mr. Samson A. Masur,
Sharyn Friedman-Green and Steven Green invite you to the Bat Mitzvah of their daughter, Sadie Miranda . . . Service at 10, followed by lunch . . . Your response requested . . .
Love
Solution,
single.
liked
still
Yes, you were right. Sadie had liked the gift.
Galatea 2.2,
Donkey Kong
Click on this word,
and you will find links to everything it means. Because you are my oldest friend. Because once, when I was at my lowest, you saved me. Because I might have died without you or ended up in a children's psychiatric hospital. Because I owe you. Because, selfishly, I see a future where we make fantastic games together, if you can manage to get out of bed.
EmilyBlaster?
I cordially invite you to join in this matter that I find amusing.
Page 55
Sadie wondered if most gamers would be turned on by this. She often had to put herself into a male point of view to even understand a game at all. As Dov was fond of saying to her, "You aren't just a gamer when you play anymore. You're a builder of worlds, and if you're a builder of worlds, your feelings are not as important as what your gamers are feeling. You must imagine them at all times. There is no artist more empathetic than the game designer." Sadie the gamer found this scene sexist and strange. At the same time, Sadie the world builder accepted that the game was made by one of the most creative minds in gaming. And in those days, girls like Sadie were conditioned to ignore the sexist generally, not just in gaming— it wasn't cool to point such things out. If you wanted to play with the boys, they couldn't be afraid of saying things around you. If someone said the sound effect in your game sounded like a queef, it was your job to laugh. But on this evening, Sadie wasn't in the mood to laugh.
Page 154
When he'd gone to speak to Unfair about his grand plan for selling tobigo, Dov had one question: "So, Ichigois a boy, right?" "We didn't see them that way," Sam said. "Them?" Dov said. "What Sam thought, and I agree, is that gender doesn't matter at that age. So, we never identify Ichigo's gender," Sadie explained. "That's clever," Dov said, "and it absolutely will not work. You want to sell this game in Walmart, right? You want to sell this game to people in the heartland. Marx, you're practical, what do you think?" "I'm completely down with what Sadie and Sam are doing," Marx said carefully, loyally. "And it didn't affect my play at all. I'm a guy and I saw Ichigo as a boy." "There!" Dov said. "That's exactly it. That's exactly my point. Ichigo should be a boy. Guys, I admire your creativity, but why put yourselves at a disadvantage for some bullshit Harvard thesis idea that no one will ever notice anyway?" "Dov, why is Ichigo definitely a boy? Why can't Ichigo be a girl?" Sadie said. "You know perfectly well that games with female main characters sell fewer copies," Dov said. "But Dead Sea has a girl MC," Sadie protested. "And it's sold, what? A million copies?" "Worldwide, yes, more than that even. But in the States, only about 750K." "That's an enormous hit," Sadie said. "It would have sold twice that if I hadn't made the Wraith a girl. But I didn't have me as an adviser." Sadie was shredding a piece of notebook paper into a tidy pile. Dov put his hand over her hand to stop her. "Listen guys, it's not my game. It's up to you. It's just my advice. If the 'them' thing is important to you, leave it. If you want Ichigo to be a girl, fine. The great thing for you is, it's a brilliant game and you have all the options. We can table this issue until the publishers weigh in, if you want." Ichigo's top two offers were from Cellar Door Games, where Sadie had been an undistinguished intern, and Opus Interactive, the gaming division of the Austin, Texas-based PC company, Opus Computers. Cellar Door didn't see Ichiga's gender as an issue. Cellar Door was a young company, run by recent MIT grads, and they thought the genderless Ichigo was "edgy and cool."
Page 161
When Sam was asked a question, he turned it into a nov-ella. The story could go on for fifteen minutes and take an extended detour into childhood without anyone ever seeming the slightest bit bored. "On the day I met Sadie, I hadn't spoken to anyone for six weeks, literally six weeks. But that's a whole other story. I'll tell you some other time when we're better friends. But the main thing you need to know is, Sadie couldn't get Mario on top of the flagpole. This was before the internet. You couldn't just cheat. You had to know someone who knew .."The crowd leaned forward when he spoke, laughed at his jokes, spontaneously broke into applause. They loved him. He was more handsome in front of a crowd; his limp, less apparent; his voice, warm and authoritative. It was as if all these years Sam had been waiting for an audience. Sadie marveled at his transformation. Where had her introverted partner gone? Who was this raconteur? Who was this clown? • And next to him, Sadie felt herself diminish.
Page 163
Sam stood up, wincing. "Are you all right?" Marx asked. "Just tired," Sam said. "Sadie, you don't get to determine by yourself what we do next. If we aren't going to make Ichigo III, which I think we should, you have to give us some idea of what it is you'd like to do instead."
My review: I like this book because it illuminates the ways in which women have to work twice as hard as men to get to the same place. As a man this is important, I can see that even though that Sadie comes from money. This rule still applies to her.
Page 335
In 2005, people from the U.S. sent, on average, four hundred sixty text messages a year. Texts were treated and written more like telegrams than like conversations. The brevity lent these early texts an almost poetry.
Page 339
You are flying.
Below, a checkerboard of country life. A pair of Jersey cows graze in a lavender field, tails swatting at imaginary flies. A woman in a chambray dress rides a bicycle over a stone bridge. She hums the second movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, and as she passes, a man in a Breton cap begins whistling the tune. From a hive you cannot see, the susurrus of bees. In the valley below the bridge, an ink-haired boy feeds a sugar cube to a horse with a wild look in her eyes. A grove of apple trees waits patiently for fall. Unobserved, a graying man watches two teenagers swim in a pond. You can smell the man's longing, stronger than lavender, and you think, Humans want so much. I am glad to be a bird. In a field of strawberry plants, waxy berries companionably mingle among white flowers. You have never been one to resist a strawberry, so you descend.
Your wing is flapping. You choose to interpret this as an attempt at flight, and not an involuntary death spasm. Some hours later, you become aware of someone holding your hand, which means you have a hand, which means you are not a bird, which means you must be on some pretty terrific drugs, like LSD, which you have never done even though Zoe always wanted you guys to do LSD together, said she knew the perfect guide. For a second, you experience competing melancholies: sadness that you cannot fly, sadness that you didn't do LSD with Zoe, sadness that You are dying.
Page 453
"You've got a kid?" Destiny said. "That's cool. I didn't think anyone in games had kids, because of the crunch hours." "Some of that's changing a little," Sadie said. "And I've always owned the company, so ..." "So, like, all you have to do is own your own company?" "Right. Then the men have to do what you want," Sadie said.