by Michael Yanovich Tuncer Deniz is a busy man. The co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Mac community's favorite gaming magazine (well it's my favorite gaming magazine, anyway) has a lot on his plate. And while he's one of those people who will always answer his e-mail, it's not always on the same day he receives it. Which is why, when I wanted to interview him for his own magazine, he promptly ignored it. Days later (okay, weeks later), I realized that he had let this one slip between the cracks. He was trying to avoid being interviewed! But I had so many questions I wanted to ask him, and I was fairly sure the rest of his loyal readers would like a bit of history on the man behind the legend. He is such a distant figure... in fact, the only glimpse I've caught of this elusive shadow is that of a lowly peasant on one of Bungie Software's "Myth II" maps. That's right, the project leader of this amazing game had been mysteriously turned into an assassination target. I knew his days were numbered. My evil online opponents would soon be charging across the digital-desert landscape with only one thought on their minds: Tuncer's severed head in a ghol's pouch. I quickly dispatched my plea to him for a second time: Tuncer... TUNCER! Please, give me your interview. Your data, a DNA sample, and a copy of your driver's license, before it is too late! He reluctantly agreed to allow himself to be interviewed for his own magazine, and I hastily threw together a slew of intelligent, well thought-out, probing questions that would have made even Bill Clinton squirm with the pressure. And even as the restless hordes of attackers were barreling over the hill, Tuncer began to scrawl his reply in the sand... MY: What's the first video game you remember? TD: I think it was Defender on the old Atari. I played for hours and hours. But I really didn't get into gaming until high school around 1984. We were lucky enough to get some of the first Macintoshes, and the rest is history. The first game I ever played on the Mac was Airborne, but I quickly grew tired of it. I soon moved onto Gato, a great submarine simulation by Spectrum Holobyte. Wow, was that game amazing. MY: What was the first computer you owned? Your first Apple/Mac? TD: The first computer I owned was a MacPlus with 1 MB of RAM (woohoo!). My dad bought it for me after I graduated from high school back in 1987 (man, I feel old!). At that time I think he paid something like $2700 for it, what a joke! In college, I bought a 20 MB hard drive for it from a now-defunct company called Jasmine. It was around $600 back then and was considered "cheap" at the time. Heh. MY: What lead you to pursue a career in games? TD: In college (Indiana University) I really got into games. I would go to my local Software, Etc and buy any new game that came out on the Mac. And believe me, I bought them all, even the bad ones. After graduating from collage, I started working at Montgomery Ward in their advertising department. But due to cut backs, they decided to let the "newbies" go (the company since then has been near bankruptcy ever since). So after that I came up with the idea for IMG. MY: What was your first job in the video game industry? TD: Well, my first job was really doing IMG. But later on, in 1996, I joined Bungie Software as their Production Manager. MY: Why Mac games? TD: Cause Macs rule. It was my first machine, and it was the only machine I really knew. I eventually bought a PC because I felt I needed to know Windows for any future projects or job. To this day I'm a heavy Mac user. I do all my work on it, e-mail, gaming, you name it. MY: When did you start IMG Magazine, and how did you go about doing it? TD: IMG began in January of 1993. My friend Jon Blum and I came up with the idea of doing a Mac-based magazine. We actually met through AOL and both loved the Mac. We began talking and then one day I pitched him this idea about doing a magazine. Since we couldn't afford to do a print magazine, we decided to go the electronic way. We began selling subscriptions on floppy disk over AOL and people seemed to really like it. MY: What are some important milestones of the magazine? Early problems? Successes? TD: The move to CD was pretty huge. Once we started doing a CD version in 1995, the magazine started to become profitable. Before then it was just a hobby. There really weren't any problems. Through the years we've struggled with content, not having enough games to review, but that all seems to be changing now. MY: How did you build a reader base? TD: Mainly through advertising. I asked companies to put in our flyer with their game boxes and the return on that was great. These days most of our subscribers come from the web. But, we're just about to launch another massive advertising blitz in magazines, game boxes, and over the web. MY: Did subscriptions meet expectations? With the smaller market share, were you able to make a living with this? If not, what did you do to make ends meet? TD: Yes, they absolutely did. We had great content and people loved it and kept coming back for more. I a real stickler for content because without it, you've got fluff. I've been concentrating the last few months on improving our content, and getting a good staff together. Because in the end, it's the people behind the scenes that make a difference. MY: What made you sell the magazine and go to Bungie? TD: I wanted to try something different. Apple was really going through hard times, and I wanted to experience what it was like to work at a game company. But really mainly for the experience. MY: Initial impressions of Bungie? TD: Awesome. At that time Bungie was a very small company and very personal. Right off the bat I worked on games like Marathon Infinity, Weekend Warrior, Abuse, the Marathon Trilogy Box Set, and of course Myth. It was fun working on so many good titles. MY: Who came up with the concept for Myth? Was it a direct answer to Warcraft, showing how it could be done from a non resource-management approach? TD: Myth was Jason Jones' idea. He fell in love with Braveheart and thought he could come up with a game that was similar in fashion, but in a fantasy setting. The result was Myth. We really didn't see it as a "direct answer" to Warcraft. At that time a lot of Warcraft clones were coming out, and if you know Jason Jones, he doesn't like to copy other people's games. The issue of resource management was something we discussed over and over. And I think we made the right decision. It's certainly possible that Myth could have been more successful if it had resource management. MY: What was your involvement with Myth/Bungie? (Or did you start with the Marathon series?) TD: I came on board right after Marathon 2 shipped. Bungie started work on two projects, Marathon Infinity and Myth. So they asked me to oversee Infinity while Jason Jones worked on Myth. MY: What led to your promotion in Myth II, and what did this new job entail? TD: After Myth I was done, Jones wanted to work on something else. Bungie handed me the Project Lead role for Myth II. I along with a few members of the Myth I team began working on Myth II around January of last year. We then hired a few more artists, programmers, and level designers. All in all, Myth II was created and shipped in less than a year. Quite a feat! MY: Myth II has about 25,000 registered online users. Log onto Blizzard's Battle.Net at any given time, and there can be over 100,000 on at that moment, with a reported registered base of over 1 million users, a year after Starcraft's release. Now in my opinion, Myth is a significantly better game... why the massive difference in number of users? TD: Good question. Myth II is a difficult game to master and learn and tends to appeal to more hard-core gamers. Blizzard is VERY good at making their games accessable to everybody and they've been quite successful at it. Bungie tends to push the envelope with what they can do with graphics, interface, and such. In Myth's case, the interface was difficult to learn, and the game was just way too hard. MY: You left Bungie and returned to IMG in January. The turnaround of the web site and magazine was remarkably quick. What was the secret of success? Is the magazine profitable now? TD: The magazine isn't profitable right now, but we're working on adding more and more content to the web site and the magazine. In the end, I hope this will bring more advertisers to IMG and more subscribers. It's really a labor of love. I really love doing this. People are really excited about the Mac and seeing all those games coming to the Mac. We just want to provide our readers with the best gaming information out there. MY: Video games seem to move from periods of revolution to a series of evolutionary steps, followed by a revolution again. (Pole Position...revolutionary new game, followed by racing games over the years that have steadily improved. Virtual Fighter, another revolution, and the evolution of that form is still going strong. Virtual Fighter I is now all but unplayable, but a mere five years ago was the hottest game in town.) What is the next revolution? TD: That's a good question. I think about a year or so ago the trend was 3D acceleration, where almost every new game coming out either had harware acceleration or required it. I think in the future you'll see more and more games requiring 3D acceleration. Apple as well as most PC vendors are putting 3D hardware on board in order to make the transition easier. The next step? The next revolution. Well, I don't have the answers, but I've got some ideas. I think you'll see online gaming become a major factor. People love playing other people online and sucessful games like Quake 3: Arena, Tribes, and Half Life: Team Fortress are ahead of the competition. While I don't think single player gaming will disappear, I think you'll see a move toward Internet play. Another trend I see emerging is sophisticated artificial intelligence. Unreal, for example, had some of this. The bots are very intelligent and act surprisingly like humans. Games in the future will feature AI that will do interesting things like talk, fight, act, and screw up like a human. One game that I saw at E3 recently that had these characterists was Maxis' The Sims. In the game people walked around, kissed, talked, got into bath tubs, went to work, cut the grass, etc. It was incredible to watch. MY: What is your future in gaming, Mac gaming in particular? TD: Heh, kicking ass, what else is there?