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Books Microsoft Games

Why Bill Gates Recommends This Novel About Videogames (gatesnotes.com) 74

Posted by EditorDavid from the geeky-reads dept.
Bill Gates wrote a blog post this week recommending a novel about videogame development. Gates calls Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. "one of the biggest books of last year," telling the story of "two friends who bond over Super Mario Bros. as kids and grow up to make video games together." Although there are plenty of video games mentioned in the book — Oregon Trail is a recurring theme — I'd describe it more as a story about partnership and collaboration. When Sam and Sadie are in college, they create a game called Ichigo that turns out to be a huge hit. Their company, Unfair Games, becomes successful, but the two start to butt heads. Sadie is upset that Sam got most of the credit for Ichigo. Sam is frustrated that Sadie cares more about creating art than about making their company viable...

Most of the book is about how a creative partnership can be equal parts remarkable and complicated. I couldn't help but be reminded of my relationship with Paul Allen while I was reading it. Sadie believes that "true collaborators in this life are rare." I agree, and I was lucky to have one in Paul. An early chapter describing how Sam and Sadie worked until sunrise in a dingy apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, could have just as easily been about Paul and me coming up with the idea for Microsoft. Like Sam and Sadie, we worked together every day for years.

Paul's vision and contributions to the company were absolutely critical to its success, and then he chose to move on. We had a great relationship, but not without some of the complexities that success brings. Zevin really captures what it feels like to start a company that takes off. It's thrilling to know your vision is now real, but success brings a lot of new questions. Once you make money, do you still have something to prove? How does your relationship with your partner change once a lot more people get involved? How do you make the next idea as good as the last?

You can't help but wonder whether you would've been as successful if you started up at a different time... Paul and I were very lucky in terms of our timing with Microsoft. We got in when chips were just starting to become powerful but before other people had created established companies... Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow resonated with me for personal reasons, but I think Zevin's exploration of partnership and collaboration is worth reading no matter who you are. Even if you're skeptical about reading a book about video games, the subject is a terrific metaphor for human connection.
The book is now being adapted into a movie.
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Why Bill Gates Recommends This Novel About Videogames More

Why Bill Gates Recommends This Novel About Videogames

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  • While at it, why don't you tell me (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why should I care about the dimwit opinions of a white collar career criminal?

  • Bill Gates Recommends (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Sunday June 04, 2023 @07:20PM (#63576073)
    Who Cares!

  • Oh, *now* he cares about Paul Allen? (Score:5, Informative)

    by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Sunday June 04, 2023 @07:26PM (#63576077)
    "Bill Gates betrayed his ailing business partner and tried to deprive him of his share of the Microsoft fortune, according to a scathing memoir from Paul Allen, the company's billionaire co-founder.

    Allen portrays the Microsoft mogul as a sarcastic bully who tried to force his founding partner out of the firm and to cut his share in the company as he was recovering from cancer. The book, Idea Man: a Memoir by the co-founder of Microsoft, is set to go on sale on 17 April, and an extract appears in May's Vanity Fair magazine and has been released online."

    Link:
    https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]

    • It's possible Bill is trying to get his narrative out there before Paul Allen's book hits the shelves.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It's possible Bill is trying to get his narrative out there before Paul Allen's book hits the shelves.

        Or at least counter the narrative he's taking over the world because of the whole COVID vaccine chips he had implanted in all of us.

        Sadly, that's really been the narrative for Gates for an alarmingly large number of people the past few years.

  • Why do we still hear this guy? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday June 04, 2023 @07:28PM (#63576081)

    Do you remember the Bill Gates of Microsoft? You know, before he bought himself a conscience with his nonprofit. The unprincipled Bill Gates that ran an aggressive monopoly, extended, embraced and destroyed, tried to kill Linux and open source for years, played every dirty in the books... THAT Bill Gates.

    Bill Gates is not a nice charitable old man with charming stories to tell. He's the same old sonofabitch with a new image. I intensely dislike the man. I wish he'd stop giving his opinion on anything, or reminisce about times that aren't relevant to anyone anymore and are a painful reminder of what life in the IT industry was like when he was at the helm of Microsoft and you happened to be a Microsoft competitor.

    Fuck you Bill. Retire already you horrid man.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      Do you still wake up in a pool of sweat yelling his name?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

      And for the most part, that evil was what he brought to the table. His parents' money and connections got him a head start unlikely to be available to anyone participating in this discussion.

      He's a privileged asshole who, like so many, is starting to realize his mortality and wants a 'legacy' that looks a lot nicer than the truth.

  • What gives? Bit insulting to the intelligence to have to hear about this has-been blogger at Slashdot often rather than more current and relevant players in the industry of which we hear nothing at /.. Bill Gates. Dead horse. Punching down. Go to bed old ma-a-a-n.

  • Soon I realised that wasn't a good recommendation, especially when he claimed never to have said that. =/

    • In all the years that quote has been attributed to him, has there ever been actual evidence that he said/wrote it?

      • Anecdotal evidence of juicy assertions should be enough for everyone.
      • Here [quoteinvestigator.com] is the best of available evidence. There's no recording of him saying those words, but he did admit that he thought it at the time. Note that even the original claimed quote doesn't really imply "for all use cases in the future" It could well have been meant for that particular time period. Or even for a particular use scenario.

  • I stopped listening to Gates long ago (Score:3)

    by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 ) on Sunday June 04, 2023 @08:18PM (#63576123)

    All his failed charitable efforts have made me realize that a person who can make tons of money isn't necessarily smart anywhere else in life. I don't give a flying fuck about anything he says unless it's about Microsoft.

    • All his failed charitable efforts

      Bill Gates' "charitable" efforts accomplished exactly what they were meant to accomplish: he's whitewashed his name, laundered the money he stole, and he's actually worth more now than he was before.

  • Keith Richards (Score:3)

    by quintessencesluglord ( 652360 ) on Sunday June 04, 2023 @08:48PM (#63576149)

    expressed much the same about working with Mick Jagger, but the results being more than the sum of the parts kept their partnership going through all the hair pulling.

    That's 60 years of one of the most successful music partnerships ever. If there is a takeaway from all that, it is get over yourself, which apparently Gates still hasn't figured out.

    Or is this distraction from running stories about Gate's relationship with Epstein? That's worth discussing.

  • Supposed to have been an epic release for Microsoft's subsidiary, but instead ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    I received the game bundled with a nVidia video card I bought, and while I've had fun with it I have to agree with those who say it was released in an unfinished state. It's been out for a month, and the only thing patched since was some server issue they were having. Hilariously that was initially botched, and required a second try.

  • I agree, enjoyed this book (Score:3, Informative)

    by esposed ( 1327243 ) on Sunday June 04, 2023 @09:50PM (#63576249)
    I finished this book a few months back and I am still thinking about it regularly. It's such a good book. It was fun to see Bill Gates recommend it and fun to learn it's being made into a movie.

    • I read it. I did overall enjoy it, but I think it kind of went off into the weeds at around the 2/3rds mark and got somewhat flabby and directionless.

      • My book club at the videogame company I work at read it a few months ago. Results were fair to positive. I agree, it was pretty interesting for the first half, or maybe two thirds. Then things went into la la land, at least from the perspective of a videogame programmer. The author apparently was much more interested in advancing a narrative than paying attention to the remotest bit of technical feasibility, which was kind of disappointing to the group. Funny story: our server programmer, who had exten

        • But I had a hard time with the book because none of them were very *likeable*,

          Yes.

          Likeable is a curious thing. Ignatius J. Reilly is not "likeable" in that he's a thoroughly obnoxious person, and yet one (well, me and clearly many others given the enduring popularity of the book) want to follow him around. I suppose that's because he's a wish fulfilment of my worst instincts. He's the hero part of me wishes I could be.

          The characters in this book are also not likeable, but I have no desire to tank a relation

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hazem ( 472289 )

        went off into the weeds at around the 2/3rds mark and got somewhat flabby and directionless.

        Ouch! I'm trying to not take that personally!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It was fun to see Bill Gates recommend it and fun to learn it's being made into a movie.

      I don't think that word means what you think it means.

  • I know you have a low Slashdot number and creep around here. Can you promote my book as well and reply that you have? The ISBN is in my sig.

    • I’m not bill but here you go.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        lol. That was a good one! Too bad Slashdot doesn't understand unicode!

        • Yeah I saw that but figured it was a happy accident. Oh wait this is a romance novel? It’s a serious romance novel!

          So like I don’t know how you might advertise this on slashdot better but this can be a silly place and amazon has weird books like Chuck Tingle and stuff. People might see the title and think you’re playing a joke sending them to a book about dogs and close the tab without investigating further.

          No offense but that would be a very slashdot thing to do and I’d hate for

  • Mr Allen is also very rich today. Maybe that's enough?

    2 decades ago he had a personal company to create his own digital AV jukeboxes at his homes. I'd interviewed as a contractor that he was going to fly around, house to house. Sounded swank to me and I'm still bothered I wasn't offered the chance to try. But I was young and impertinent, and the last hiring manager didn't like me as much as the rest. This was all before streaming services were common.

    It's amazing how polarizing Mr Gates still is. Espe

  • Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is one of my favorite reads of the last year.

    Recommend for you if you like old video games, Hamlet, stories of collaboration and non-romantic love and musings about the nature of creativity and art.

  • He wishes he was Elon (Score:3)

    by ugen ( 93902 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @12:32AM (#63576433)

    Bill Gates is trying real hard to stay relevant and in the spotlight. Unfortunately for him, he lacks the natural carnie/trolling skills and could never match Elon in his ability to draw publicity and attention. IMO Bill should just retire somewhere quietly and enjoy his later years.

    • Maybe he's trying to get another wife which is difficult when you can't just poach an underling in the office.

  • Bonding over video games? (Score:3)

    by MysteriousPreacher ( 702266 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @03:17AM (#63576527) Journal

    I like to imagine Gates and Epstein bonding over video games, maybe Deus Ex or L4D2. It's much nicer than what really cemented their friendship.

  • The title is from just after the Lady MacBeth - MacBeth's partner - has died, implied suicide, from ambitious stress.

    Just like Jeffrey Epstein, I'm sure - right, Bill?

  • Who gives a rats ass what that pedo thinks. That sick fuck should hang himself in a prison cell.
  • For those interested in this genre - collaborators' love/hate relationship while trying to get something out the door - I suggest folks go back and watch Halt and Catch Fire [imdb.com].

    Over four seasons, we follow the main characters from hawking IBM service contracts and Speak-and-Spell, to developing an early PC-clone portable computer, to launching their own AOL-like internet service, spinning games that engage and develop community, to SF venture capital, and eventually the start of the world wide web and sea

  • Why read a fictional video game dev book? (Score:3)

    by WDot ( 1286728 ) on Monday June 05, 2023 @01:46PM (#63577567)
    Plenty of good dunks on Gates already, so instead I’ll recommend “Masters of Doom” by David Kushner as a better video game development book. It follows John Carmack and John Romero from their childhoods, through the early days of Commander Keen, Wolf3d, Doom, Quake, Daikatana, finishing at around Doom 3. Lots of interesting 90s computer history, discussion of their business decisions, and fun drama (probably less fun for the players involved).

  • This guy is very rich but I dont care at all what his poor opinion is, as he showed many times in the past how bad his thinking is.
    So please Slashdot, elevate your news level, and avoid wasting reader's time.

  • A slice of life story set in the real world taking place over 30 years.
    Sounds boring.
  • ...In 1990, before computers were "a thing" where everybody had one in their homes. It was on a Commodore 64 and it used those large floppy discs and i typed miles and miles of code the old-fashioned way - for months - to create my very own (simple by today's standards) adventure/action game. i called it "Warfare". i guess it was most similar to Nintendo's MegaMan. It had a full range of colours and sounds, explosion effects, even music i thought up. Warfare was the name of a robotic lifeform fighting for s
  • I swear, some people talk just to remind us that they still exist.

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