Back in olden times when programmers had to finger-paint our 1s and 0s on cave walls, players actually wrote snail mail letters to publishers. I’m glad I kept this one.
It’s a combination of a letter of complaint and a fan letter.
Brainworks is the publisher of the Apple II and Mac versions of ChipWits.
His copy of ChipWits wouldn’t run because the disk had a physical defect. My coding didn’t cause a bug that threw the error message. Hooray for that.
Selling games on disk in the 80s meant that if there was a serious bug a publisher had to either send a new disk to all its purchasers or stiff them. You couldn’t just update the game over the net.
I pride myself on the fact that my games shipped bug-free.
Naming his Peace Paths CW “Paxman” is clever. Pax means peace in Latin.
The fact that he ends his letter with praise and says he intends to buy another copy is sweet.
We sent him a free new disk.
Discussion
Did you ever experience the frustration of a broken disk? Post your comments, below!
Jim S.
Very cool. I never had a problem with my ChipWits disk. I did some early pre-release adopter/consumer testing on the Gato WWII submarine simulator for the Mac. The programmers were very nice and would send new versions as bug were discovered. Eagerly awaiting the rebirth of ChipWits!