Robert is all psyched up to do a new game now. My presence seems to have that effect on him. Me, I’ve been having serious doubts about doing another computer game.

On the one hand, if I live at home for much longer I’ll go stir-crazy. What I need is a place to go. Friends. Work. Moving to Marin and doing another game for Broderbund would give me that.

But it would take time away from screenwriting. In the time it’ll take me to do a new game, I could write three screenplays. And… the games business is drying up. Karateka may make me as little as $75,000 all told, and it’s at the top of the charts. There’s no guarantee the new game will be as successful. Or that there will even be a computer games market a couple of years from now.

Jordan Mechner has posted the contents of the journals he kept while creating the original Prince of Persia. To say this is a fascinating glimpse into what it was like to be a semi-indie game developer in the age when Electronic Arts was one of the good guys (no really!) doesn’t really get at how precious this is. Read it now. It is your homework for the weekend.