Book Review Game Quest: A Novel Author: Leopold McGinnis Publisher: Underground Uprising Press Release Date: February 2006 Pages: 496 Book Review by Al Giovetti July 13, 2006

Written on a serialized Game Quest website, refined by various members of the website and eventually published in paper form, Game Quest is Leopold McGinnis’ first novel, four years in the making. The book cover is illustrated with 8-bit graphics from the games it describes. The book is a fictional biography of a game company called Madre, a thinly disguised pseudonym for the Sierra On-Line company, which had its headquarters in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

The main characters are Will and Kendra Roberts (another thinly disguised reference, to Ken and Roberta Williams, the founders of Sierra), who are the founders of Madre games. Also featured is Art, creator of the Swarthy Victor Quests for Chicks soft-porn game about a bungling hero in search of multiple heroines (a.k.a. Al Lowe and his signature creation Leisure Suit Larry Laffer and the Land of the Lounge Lizards). Also featured are Tim and Geoff, creators of the award winning Sci-Fi Quest games (referring to Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy, from Andromeda, who created a series of six Space Quest games featuring Roger Wilco, a hapless space janitor who saves the universe). Other characters include Heather Roberts, the daughter of Will and Kendra, who forms a female online game team to play the new action games and show the boys that the girls can play. This part of the game …er, book …drags in Dan Destroyem (a.k.a. Duke Nukem), Heather Hooterguns and Crypt Destroyer (a.k.a. Lara Croft and Tomb Raider), and Gloom, created by Adam Clayburn (Doom, created by John Carmack). Similar parodies continue throughout the book.

The book even manages to lampoon Starbucks, through the similar logo of Che’s Coffee Revolution. The "coffee wars" plot parallels the plot of the takeover of Madre (Sierra) by a large conglomerate. This takeover results in the eventual firing of every creative person employed there, and the company becomes a publishing house for games developed outside the company under contract. The company is ultimately destroyed in a battle for stock control. (One thing you do not want to do when you go public is to let more than 50% of your stock out of your control. Another, wealthier, company can come along and buy up more than 50%, and your company is no longer yours. This type of hostile takeover has happened to many companies, in all types of industries.)

The book was entertaining and worth the read. The only part of the book that haunts me is whether some of the smaller details about the demise of Sierra and the rise of ID software were actually known to the author and put into this barely disguised company biography. Some of the details of the drama (with which this author is familiar) are inaccurate. However, the inaccuracies are not important, because in the end the book is enjoyable on its own. I have known many of the real-life equivalents to the books’ cast of characters and I enjoyed the time that I had with them at company picnics, computer game shows (such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3)). Game Quest extended my personal experience to a fictional if somewhat accurate detailed account that simulated working at Sierra in its heyday.

If you want to know what it is like to work in a high tech game company such as Sierra, one of the founders of the industry, you might want to pick up this book and read it. It has the flavor, the suspense, and the excitement of this most unique and interesting industry.

In the words of Leopold McGinnis on page 496: “Congratulations on completing Game Quest! We hope you had as much fun reading it as we had making it – Madre Programming Staff. Total estimated reading time: 9 hours; Pages 496. Restore? Restart? Quit?” Did I mention that the book has its own sense of humor? Every good game has a sense of humor. Good books also benefit from a sense of humor.