Nancy Settle,
A Professional Woman

Software Engineering, 2001:
It’s All In The Game

by Steven Salemi


"...Quake transports you to strange new virtual worlds inhabited by such creatures as limb-snapping Rottweilers, head-cleaving Death Knights, and fireball-spitting Vores -- not to mention chainsaw-wielding Ogres and a host of other death-dealing beasts."

-- Review of "Quake"
Computer Shopper Magazine

"Problem: Zombies sometime (sic) get stuck on the ground and connot (sic) get back up. (You can still hear them, but you cannot kill them. This bug makes it impossible to get 100% kills on whatever level it occurs on.) Solution: There is no workaround for this bug."

Scene: A small, brightly-lit conference room on the second-floor of id Software’s corporate headquarters in Orem, Utah. A half-dozen software engineers, all male, twenty-something, bleary-eyed, and unshaven, are seated around the table, swilling coffee. The meeting is conducted by an attractive yet stern-looking professional woman – the only person in the room wearing a suit. Or, for that matter, a shirt with a collar.


Nancy prepares for the next round of client-based
user-management focus groups, in an effort to maximize corporate
productivity in a proactive, developmentally-coherent, strategically-optimized....

MANAGER (Nancy) – Okay, guys, listen up. If we’re going to ship by the fifteenth, we’ve got to fix these bugs, pronto. Dave, could you read the list, along with the responsible engineers?

DAVE (bored) – Sure, Nancy. "Zombies sticking on ground, Jim. Vampire blood coagulating, Hank. Rottweiler fangs won’t retract, Andy. Severed head reattachment issues, Chuck..."

CHUCK (interrupting) – That’s not a bug, man, that’s a feature. I thought it would be cool if...

NANCY – Listen, Chuck, we’ve been through this before. I don’t know what virtual world you inhabit, but in this world, a severed head can’t just roll off the floor and reattach itself to a torso without some kind of surgical intervention...

CHUCK (energetically) – That’s ‘cause you’re mixing your paradigms, man! In real virtual worlds, you don’t need surgeons! You’ve got self-organizing fields and spontaneous healings and…


Life In The Real Virtual World

NANCY – Tell you what, Chuck. Next release, you can code one sighting of the blessed holy virgin for every 500,000 points. But for now, let’s keep the heads on the floor of the dungeon where they belong, okay?

CHUCK (deflated) – Okay, Nancy. You’re the boss.

NANCY (briskly) – Anything else on that list Dave?

DAVE (evasively) – Just some loose ends, Nancy.

NANCY (mimicking) – "Loose ends." Such as?

DAVE – Just some minor compatibility issues, Nancy.

NANCY – Work with me here, Dave. What kind of compatibility issues? `

DAVE (hesitantly) – Well, we get some program crashes and other anomalous behavior when the program runs in the Windows 98 environment.


Hell, Just Run It In DOS Mode!


NANCY (pointedly) – But it runs beautifully if you restart 98 in MS-DOS mode first, right Dave?

DAVE (evasively) – Well, not exactly, Nancy. That kind of aggravates the problem.

NANCY (patiently) – What’s the workaround, Dave?

DAVE (reading) – "For optimum results with Quake, use the "Add/Remove Programs" applet in the Windows 98 Control Panel to remove Windows 98 from your computer and restore your old DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 files..."

NANCY (furious) – Dave, that is not an acceptable solution, and you know it.

DAVE (defiantly) – Well excuse me, Mrs. Gates!

ANDY (earnestly) -- When can I start work on the Mac version?

HANK (aside, to Andy) - I’ve got it running on Linux.

ANDY (perplexed) – Linux? How the heck...?

HANK (proudly) -- Win98 emulator. Wrote it myself last weekend.

ANDY (comprehending) – Cool!

The Engineers’ talk breaks down
into separate animated conversations.

NANCY – Listen, gang. In case you haven’t noticed, Novell’s got a hiring freeze on, and the Mormons don’t need you. So let’s just hang in there and get this thing out the door, okay? Then you can all take a week off with pay, and go backpacking in Moab with your girlfriends.

DAVE – After which?

 
A Week in Moab, and Then...

 

...Back on the
Hamster-Wheel...

NANCY – After which we get back on the hamster-wheel and start work on "Doom III – Death Never Dies."

DAVE (confused) – I thought it was going to be "Doom III – Pain Always Hurts?"

NANCY – We yanked it. E-Mail from Tipper Gore. Suggesting deletion of all specific references to pain and suffering in software entertainment titles.

DAVE (incredulous) – But death’s okay?

NANCY – Hey, do I look Tipper to you? Talk to her about it! Do you think I’d be working here if I was married to Al Gore?

The meeting is interrupted by a young man
who strides into the conference room, holding a letter.

YOUNG MAN – Hey, gang! Great news! Quake just received PC Magazine’s Year 2001 "Editor’s Choice" Award. "Best Technical Achievement, PC Gaming."

ANDY – "Editor’s Choice?" We haven’t even shipped yet!

NANCY (knowingly) – Welcome to show biz, men.

- END -

[ Return to Computer Guru Home Page ]