Rocket Jump: Quake and the Golden Age of First-Person Shooters (Shacknews Long Reads Book 1) by Craddock David L

Author:Craddock, David L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

Pause Screen: Observing and Simulating with Jennell Jaquays

Over months of interviews and research, I got to know the names behind the credits screens on each Quake game. These profiles dig deeper into a developer's career beyond analysis of id Software's culture and the Quake franchise.

RIGHT AROUND THE time the bottom dropped out from under the North American videogame market, Jennell Jaquays was stepping up. Already a veteran designer, Jaquays cut her teeth designing campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons and publishing The Dungeoneer, one of the first magazines tailored to gaming hobbyists. Her desire to try her hand at designing and creating art for different types of games—as well as a burning need to earn a living wage—led her to Coleco around the time the leather company released the ColecoVision to go head-to-head with Atari's Video Computer System (2600) and Mattel's Intellivision.

Her mission as one of Coleco's principal designers was to recruit teams of engineers and artists and convert popular arcade games to the 8-bit system. There was just one catch. They were given no code, no art assets, no documentation—no foundation on which to duplicate hits like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. To create faithful adaptations on Coleco's notoriously thrifty budgets, Jaquays and her team took the only approach available to them: observe and simulate.

Over our two-and-a-half-hour interview, Jaquays and I discussed her introduction to tabletop roleplaying, how she became one of the first publishers of a gaming magazine, and what it was like to work before and during the North American videogame market crash of the 1980s.

You attended college when tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons were in their infancy. What led to your interest in games?

Jennell Jaquays: Before college, I played some [wargames]. My friends in high school played Risk, and we did play some of the Avalon Hill wargames. My younger brother was an avid wargamer—still is, actually—so it wasn't until college that I discovered fantasy roleplaying games, or any roleplaying games, because it didn't exist before then. Before then it was just tabletop wargaming. I played stuff like that with my brother; we used to fighting miniature battles on our dad's pool table. In fact, not long after he built it, he never got to play pool on it again. We just co-opted the surface and would set up armies, and have these massive battles.

I know some wargamers who enjoy the hobby for the deep tactics and strategy, while others see it as a form of roleplaying. What drew you to it?

Jennell Jaquays: I'd always been kind of a world designer, even as a child. Growing up, my influences were having really cool sets of blocks, and having a lot of small plastic toys. Not as many big toys, but smaller figures. My dad was a model railroader, so he was a world builder in that sense. I got exposed to what he did as a very young person. He was a hobbyist all his life, so just about every single hobby he got involved in, I got involved in, in some way.

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