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.