The title of this book comes from a speech in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Sam’s close friend and part-time dramatist, Marx, makes a strong case for naming their fledgling game company - Tomorrow Games.
“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
Whether “loss is permanent” seems to be revisited often in this book.
This book tells the story of the long-term friendship between Sam, Sadie, and Marx as they navigate childhood, college, love, building games, and life challenges.
Takeaways/moments that stood out to me from this book
- The NPC Chapter
- Building games in Goldilocks moment of technology
- The friendship between Sadie and Sam
- Observations of the Generational Difference
The NPC Chapter
Woah! The title of this chapter is attributed to Marx - the “non-playable character,” perhaps illustrating how his destiny is set, unmoveable, and non-influenceable. Also, perhaps emphasizing how Sadie and Sam have always been this narrative's “playable” characters.
Video games don’t make people violent, but maybe they falsely give you the idea that you can be a hero.
This chapter was unique and the most emotional.
In the audiobook, this chapter is brilliantly narrated by a different person - Julian Cihi (instead of Jennifer Kim). He wonderfully replays Marx’s emotions and thoughts before he gets shot and while he is in a coma.
This chapter leaves one rooting for Marx to escape his coma. But, when that does not happen, he is given a wonderful sendoff where his NPC Character is reborn, returning full circle to the book's title - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Building games in the Goldilocks Moment in Time
In the 90s, John Carmack spearheaded the shift of games into 3D with games such as Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake via his company Id Software. It was partly made possible because technology at the time was shifting - x86 CPUS and external GFX cards.
An older Sadie reflects on how she, Sam, and Marx created their hit game Ichigo at such a technology turning point. They worked in a vacuum and weren’t handcuffed to the same technological and social limitations that people might now have.
We wouldn’t have made Ichigo Japanese, because we would have worried about the fact that we weren’t Japanese. And I think, because of the internet, we would have been overwhelmed by how many people were trying to do the exact same things we were. We had so much freedom—creatively, technically. No one was watching us, and we weren’t even watching ourselves.
What also stood out to me was Sadie’s observations of the Internet and the building of software. There was no internet and no wealth of information. There was no way to doubt yourself. There was no one to turn to for help. You only had yourself when it came to building something. You had to try everything until you figured it out yourself.
The friendship between Sadie and Sam
“You have different things,” Dong Hyun said. “You were born into a different world than I was. Maybe you don’t need what Grandma and I have.”
The book beautifully illustrates Sam and Sadie’s platonic friendship as they first encounter each other playing Super Mario as 12-year-old kids in a hospital to 30-something-year-olds deciding whether to make a sequel to their hit game.
Several misunderstandings and a tragic loss cause their friendship to be strained and put on pause, but with the passage of time, their friendship is always rekindled.
“Sammy, we were together. You must know that. When I'm honest with myself, the most important parts of me were yours.”
“Every time I run into you for the rest of our lives, I'll ask you to make a game with me. There's some groove in my brain that insists it is a good idea."
There are two instances where Sam seems to go above and beyond for their friendship.
- A Maze
- A Game
A Maze
As a 12-year-old, his last gift to her was for her Bat Mitzvah. It was a maze that showed a route from his house to her.
Sam would later tell people that these mazes were his first attempts at writing games. “A maze,” he would say, “is a video game distilled to its purest form.” Maybe so, but this was revisionist and self-aggrandizing. The mazes were for Sadie. To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.
A Game
Sam (aka MAZER) builds an entire online RPG game based on Sadie’s love of “Oregon Trail.” He does this to lure her out of her severe depression.
Observations of the Generational Difference
And lastly, the following quote was a well-thought observation on the “current” generation -
…This generation doesn’t hide anything from anyone. My class talks a lot about their traumas. And how their traumas inform their games. They, honest to God, think their traumas are the most interesting thing about them. I sound like I’m making fun, and I am a little, but I don’t mean to be. They’re so different from us, really. Their standards are higher; they call bullshit on so much of the sexism and racism that I, at least, just lived with. But that’s also made them kind of, well, humorless.