Jonathan Gay Interview

An Interview with Jonathan Gay Programmer of Airborne!, Dark Castle, and Beyond Dark Castle Conducted via e-mail by David J. Lohnes March 16, 2012 Jonathan Gay is most well-known as the developer of Macromedia Flash, but many Mac users in the 1980s first learned his name in connection with three Silicon Beach Software titles that he programmed, Airborne!, Dark Castle, and Beyond Dark Castle. Recently, Mr. Gay agreed to answer some questions for the vintage Mac community. David Lohnes is a teacher by day and a vintage Mac hobbyist the rest of the time. Regarding Silicon Beach: DL: Describe the work environment at Silicon Beach. What did you learn about how to run a company from your years there? JG: I tended to work pretty independently but the process of developing a product, testing it, and making sure the details were right was a big lesson. Silicon Beach did not have a lot of formal process or education in the early days, but the people were smart and did good work. DL: In addition to your coding, what other responsibilities or decision-making influence did you have? JG: In the early days, I was an independent contractor who was paid a royalty on the sales of the games, so my involvement in the company was limited. After I graduated from college, I became an employee, but the company was larger, and I was focused on building next-generation graphics software, IntelliDraw. DL: During the dot.com bubble in the late nineties, taking a company public and cashing in on your vested shares was a major motivator for many people in the industry. To what extent did the financial motivator drive the engine at the Beach? When did a buyout become recognized as a possibility or even perhaps a goal? JG: In the Silicon Beach days in San Diego, no one knew what stock options were, so the employees were not aware of what a liquidity event was or might mean. Some of the early programmers who got paid a royalty on sales did well, but generally the employees were happy to have a good job doing something they enjoyed and were not thinking about big money events. DL: Which was Silicon Beach's most successful product? JG: I think SuperPaint was the product that really helped the company grow. Dark Castle was also very successful in that it was a leader in its generation of computer games and helped establish the reputation of the company, but there was more money to be made in tools like SuperPaint and SuperCard than in games at the time. Regarding Software Development at Silicon Beach: DL: Describe the development process for Airborne!. JG: The goal was to design a simple game that could be implemented quickly. At the time, Mac development was done in Pascal on a Lisa Computer. I was still in high school and would go over to Charlie Jackson's home to work on the code after school. Airborn…