On July 13, 2013, Brenda called me while I was meeting with a client in New York.
“The house is flooded,” she said.
Thinking of the brownstone where we were staying in Manhattan, I wondered how on earth that might flood, and so I answered simply with, “What?”
“The house. In California. Michael went to check on it and …”
She meant our new house in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the one we’d just filled full of boxes and furniture before heading off on our trip. The one that contained all my games, career notebooks, floppy disks, and id Software archives. Flooding and landslides are always a possibility in the Santa Cruz Mountains. My mind started to race. Was anyone hurt? What state was the house in? What state were our archives in? Unless you’ve experienced this nightmare, it’s impossible to convey the emotions.
So many things you think you might care about are forgotten in an instant: All I could think of was the collection of boxes stored in a secret room on the bottom floor of the house. To access the room, one needed to go into a small auxiliary closet in our bedroom. On the back wall, there was a hidden half-height sliding panel that revealed the entrance to the room. It was the only way in, and to us it was one of the selling points of the house. We felt secure putting our archives there, knowing that any successful burglar first needed to bypass the alarm system and then develop an unnatural interest in the back wall of a closet to reveal the secret panel. I suppose any fan of id’s FPS games might have looked for a push wall, but I wasn’t expecting any of you to break in.
Those boxes, probably twenty of them, contained my entire archives, everything from 5.25" Apple II floppy disks to the letters I wrote to magazines as a kid hoping to get my games published. In one box, there was the original Dangerous Dave in “Copyright Infringement” disk Carmack and Tom had left on my desk at Softdisk, as well as the original drawings of the DOOM logo, the original DOOM bible, hand-drawn screen perspective tests for DOOM, and the only videotape in existence of our Quake design meetings. Really, these items just scratch the surface. With the exception of one small box that someone lifted twenty years prior, every single piece of paper and every line of code I wrote in my entire career was in that room. In addition to my personal archives, hundreds of boxed games were there, too—sealed games from id Software as well as dozens of mint-condition early Apple II games that I treasured, some of them signed by Nasir Gebelli.
In a flash, I imagined that room in one of two states: waterlogged with boxes floating around or pancaked in a flattened house that I feared had taken a slow ride down the steep hillside to the creek below. Most of our things were in plastic bins, but water finds a way. I feared the worst.
“What happened?” I asked Brenda.
“Michael was going to check the house. He couldn’t get the back door open. So, he pushed and pushed, and finally, he got it open enough so that he could squeeze through. The floors were all warped and wet. He said it was like a sauna in there. He went downstairs and the ceiling in our bedroom was collapsed.”
“Collapsed?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“The ceiling is on the floor. There’s water everywhere.”
Our bedroom was the room next to the secret room.
“Do you know where it’s coming from?”
“Yes, it’s the fridge. The line that goes to the ice maker and water dispenser,” she said.
The house was built on a hill, and our bedroom was on the lower level of the house directly underneath the kitchen.
“Michael said he heard something that sounded like it was hissing coming from behind the fridge. So, he pulled the fridge out some, and there it was.”
“That’s a tiny hose!”
“Give it three weeks, and it’s enough to wreck the house.”
“Do you know whether—”
I didn’t need to finish my question. “No, I don’t know if the water got to the archives,” she said. “I called David to see if he could come over to figure out where the shut-off valve is.”
David was the real estate agent who’d sold us the house. Since we were there only five days before heading east to New York, we didn’t have time to meet any of our neighbors. David was the only person we knew in the whole of the Santa Cruz mountains. Fortunately, he came right over and showed Michael where the valve was. That evening, as we sat in New York talking to David and then to Michael in California, we learned the full extent of the damage.
The house was likely going to be condemned, David told us, and within a week, signs to that effect were placed on the doors. David kindly connected us with everyone we needed in order to deal with the situation.
“Should I come back to California?” Brenda asked. “John has a month or so before he’s finished up, but I can come back.”
“There’s no point. You don’t have anywhere to live.” The words hit us like bricks. “It’s best to let the remediation experts handle it from here,” he added.
Over FaceTime, Michael walked through the house to show us the damage. Every room was wrecked. The wood floors were warped, the ceilings were collapsed, and the sheetrock walls on the ground floor and lower level were soaked.
“Can you go in the closet in our bedroom and check that room?” I asked.
Michael pushed the clothing aside, found the secret wall, and poked the phone and a flashlight inside.
Expecting the worst, we couldn’t believe our eyes. The secret room had escaped the disaster. Unbelievably, everything in that room survived. The ceiling and walls were intact. I still can’t believe our luck. We directed Michael to the most critical boxes, and he took those home with him that night.
This near-fatal brush to my archives brought me face-to-face with its historic value, and shortly thereafter I donated and continue to donate parts of it to the Strong National Museum of Play. Today, the collection that remains in my possession is stored in fire- and waterproof containers in an offsite location that is itself monitored against all forms of calamity. It doesn’t have push walls. I’ve also talked with many other game developers, encouraging them to donate or at least make available their materials to museums like the Strong or to universities so they can be copied or preserved for future generations and researchers.
In the weeks that followed our home’s destruction, we stayed in New York. We were fortunate that the insurance company covered all our losses and the cost of reconstruction. Sometimes, we had interesting conversations with the insurance adjusters over the value of the few game items that didn’t escape the water, things like a ruined, original DOOM “Wrote It” T-shirt, a shirt made exclusively for members of the development team that is now a rare collectable. The insurance company appraised it as “Tee shirt, $3.” An original Commander Keen: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! box that had been left out on my desk was valued as “Old software, $10.” Fortunately, I had another shirt and a duplicate game.
Finally back into our home, the kids settled into a normal routine for the first time in months. I worked on some personal projects, like cataloging my archives, learning new programming languages, and catching up on recent research. I became interested in the Lua programming language again, largely because it was accessible and easy to learn, and I thought it would be perfect for students at the college level but also for kids at the high school and grade school levels, too.
Donovan, who was just nine, became curious about Lua and asked me to teach it to him. I don’t remember a time when Donovan wasn’t all about games. From when he was a little boy, he talked a nonstop stream of games and game design. My coding lessons with Donovan always started the same way:
“What game do you want to make today?”
Granted, we weren’t going to make a full game, but at least it gave him something to wrap his head around while I taught him Lua.
“Gunman Taco Truck,” he said.
“Yes!” I laughed at the sound of it and the possibilities it brought to my imagination.
We spent an entire Saturday working on code, getting a taco truck up on the screen, getting the truck moving, and mounting a gun to its roof. That night, as Brenda and I were hanging out, Donovan came bounding into our room.
“Mommy, Mommy. I know what the game is about.”
Like a proud game-dev parent, Brenda grabbed her phone, told him to wait, and started recording.
“You’re this Mexican gunslinger who runs a taco truck,” he began. “You’re trying to get through the wasteland to kill all the mutant animals, and once you do that, you finally get to the resisting safe bases. Every time you get to a resisting safe base, you get more money for selling tacos!”
“So you go to the bases and you serve tacos with your truck?” I asked.
“Yes. Randomly generated. There’s just … infinity, so it’s an endless game.”
I wanted to make sure I had it right. The kid had a solid core loop.
Brenda posted the video on Facebook. Donovan made her promise to add that players were able to purchase upgrades with income earned from their taco truck. He was quite serious about it. By morning, a few of our friends were excited about it, too. George Broussard, a longtime friend and a cofounder of Apogee Software, gave Donovan an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“Even wasteland bandits need tacos! Best idea ever. Good job, Donovan!”
I decided to make the game with him. I’d help him with the code, but the design needed to be all his.
As Donovan and I kicked off our project, Brenda was finalizing the details of what would become a life-changing adventure: a three-month research trip to Ireland, the result of Brenda winning a Fulbright Specialist award. A prestigious United States government program designed for cultural and academic exchange, the Fulbright agenda took her all over Ireland to visit universities and meet with game developers and government ministers.
For Brenda, it was a no-brainer and a fantastic opportunity. I thought I might like to come along, too. Although I’d lived in England as a teen, my family never crossed the Irish Sea. Brenda, whose ancestors came from Ireland, had also never been. Since neither of us were tied down to a commercial game-dev project, the runway was clear.
Donovan and I met for one last game jam before our trip. He didn’t want Gunman Taco Truck to sit idle while I was away, and neither did I. I had a plan.
“Let’s focus some on the design and the art assets for the game. Players can upgrade their truck, right?”
“Yes. They can purchase better guns and rockets and more ammo! And more trucks.”
“Exactly. So here’s what I want you to work on.”
I put four stacks of paper on the table, each with ten sheets. Each had a place to write a name, an area for drawing, and an area for a description.
Pointing to the first pile, I said, “On these pages, I want you to draw the different trucks. Name them and tell me exactly what their properties are. Then, move on to the mutant animals, the truck upgrades, and finally, you can figure out what the tacos are.”
It was a lot of work for Donovan to do in that time, but if he had it all done when we came home, we would be in a good place to begin development of his game.
We arrived in Dublin on August 20, 2014, and Brenda started her Fulbright. It’s true what they say about Ireland—it’s embarrassingly beautiful and lush, particularly to someone like me who comes from the desert. In the countryside, especially in Counties Kerry and Donegal, the sights are breathtaking: tiny roads carved through lush, green mountain passes unlike anything I’d ever seen. Irish people are as friendly, welcoming, and funny as they are said to be, and we felt at home everywhere we went. On the weekends, when Brenda didn’t have responsibilities tied to the Fulbright, we traveled as much as we could. The more we traveled, the more I felt similarities to my family’s Mexican culture: All gatherings were about fun, food, and music. In fact, you’ll see it on pub signs everywhere: “Craic agus Ceol,” Irish for fun and music.
Three months were over before we knew it. Back in our home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, we couldn’t wait to see the kids, and we shared the goodies we collected for them and talked about how amazing the trip was. Though we hadn’t said anything to each other, I think we knew even then that we were going to move to Ireland.
Donovan was glad to receive his gifts, of course, but what he really wanted to talk about was Gunman Taco Truck. He handed me a binder.
“It’s all done,” he said.
Michael, now twenty-six, happened to be at the house, too, and we looked over Donovan’s drawings with a mix of admiration and affection.
Everything was just what I asked for. I was so proud of him in that moment, of both of them, really. Michael’s career in the game industry was taking off. He was now working with Tom Hall as a programmer, and every job he was in, he worked hard and delivered constantly shippable code.
“Are you going to make Donovan’s game?” Michael asked.
“We are. Thinking of a game jam. You want to join us?”*
“Just let me know when!”
I invited Ian Dunbar, an outstanding student in the UC Santa Cruz master of science in game development program, to join us, and contracted Paul Conway, an artist we met in Galway, to create pixel art for Donovan’s game. We met regularly to work on the game and shared great fun and food. After some time, the game was really starting to come together.
In March, Dean Takahashi, a reporter for VentureBeat, called us. He’d heard about Donovan’s game from Brenda’s Facebook post and wanted to write a story about it. The resulting article, “A 10-Year-Old Designs Gunman Taco Truck with Help from Legendary Gaming Parents,” opened a floodgate of interest. In April, the Wall Street Journal sent a reporter and photographer to our house and ran a great article about the power of video games to inspire kids to learn to code. It was great coverage for kids and programming, but we wanted to keep Donovan’s focus on the game. He joined us in the game jams, playing the game, designing the world map, and helping out where he could.
Brenda was nearly finished with her Fulbright report.
“You know, the goal of this report wasn’t to convince me that we should move to Ireland, but that’s what it’s done,” she told me. “We can live anywhere in the world. Why not Ireland?”
When you’re here as a tourist looking at the amazingly beautiful scenery, you might not be thinking about Ireland as a tech hub, but it most certainly is. As I write, Ireland is the second-largest exporter of software in the world, and nine of the ten largest software companies in the world have their European headquarters in Ireland.
I was in. Before long, the kids were, too. We decided to settle in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. Something about the city’s charm got to us. Judging by the amount of times it has ended up on various tourist “top ten” lists, it seems it’s gotten to others, too. It’s creative, artistic, and weird in all the right ways. When we asked Irish people where they liked to vacation, Galway was the answer. We made plans to move in the summer of 2015.
Coming to Ireland changed the course of our lives for the better, and we are grateful to Bob Jackson of the Institute of Technology Tralee and the Fulbright Program whose idea kicked this whole thing off. We felt welcomed as part of the tech community in Galway and in Ireland as a whole, and my Yaqui and Cherokee heritage is celebrated here (I even appeared on RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcasting network, to discuss Irish donations to the Navajo Nation). My only regret is that we did not move here sooner.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only id Software alum in the country. Adrian Carmack had purchased The Heritage, a five-star hotel in Killenard, County Laois, in 2014. During the move and while we searched for a house, we stayed at The Heritage and Adrian and I spent lots of time talking about our shared past as well as my plans for the future.
* Game jams are events where game developers come together, form groups, and try to create a game in a constrained space of time, usually over a weekend.