Table of Contents

About the Author
Introduction

Part 1: Apple II
Do I Really Want to Make Another Game?
Negotiating
California
The Attic
Restarting
The Crucible
Home Stretch
Reality Check
Beta
It Takes a Village
Finishing
Ship It!

Part 2: From Flop to Megahit
An Uneasy Quiet
It’s Dying Out There
Clinging to Life
New York
Sequel
Foreign Lands
Lost in Translation
Paris
Where in the World?
Night Train to Berlin
San Francisco

Legacy
Post-Postscript

About the Author

Jordan Mechner is a game designer, screenwriter, graphic novelist, and author. Widely considered a pioneer of cinematic storytelling in the video game industry, he created Prince of Persia, one of the most successful and enduring video game franchises of all time, and became the first game creator to adapt his own work into a feature film with Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. He also created the games Karateka and The Last Express. His books include the Eisner Award-nominated graphic novel Templar (a New York Times bestseller); his 1980s game development journals, The Making of Karateka and The Making of Prince of Persia; and his recent sketchbook journal, Year 2 in France. He lives in France.

Reviews

"Mechner's journals are a unique record from the birth of an industry, in the words of one of its pioneers—and if that's all they were, they would be invaluable. But The Making of Prince of Persia is also an unvarnished window into the creative process, with all its excitement, toil, setbacks, doubts and triumphs. A fantastic read."—D.B. Weiss, writer and co-creator of HBO's Game of Thrones

"When an industry is brand-new, its innovators are generally so busy creating the future that they rarely have time to document the present. Luckily, Jordan Mechner did. With these journals, we can track the development of Prince of Persia from a few penciled squiggles to a global franchise. For anyone aspiring to create a game—or any endeavor that takes months and man-hours—Jordan's journal is sobering and inspiring."—John August, screenwriter, author, host of Scriptnotes podcast

"Mechner's journals are a time machine that takes us back to an era when ambitious young creators were making strange new video games all by themselves and making up the rules as they went. It is not a retrospective; instead, it is a present-tense diary written by the creator throughout the creation of his most influential work. It is a humbling and inspiring record of what it was like to make one of the best video games of all time. I love these journals."—Adam "Atomic" Saltsman, game designer and creator of Canabalt

"Prince of Persia was the first computer game I ever fell in love with. Thirty years on, we are very lucky to have this window into its creative process. Mechner's journey is a universal one for anyone creating something brand new, and it brought me back to the early, crazy days of building Instagram. The engineer in me loved his description of the technical challenges and solutions, and the entrepreneur in me loved the honest chronicle of his emotional adventure. I'm excited to get to revisit these journals in newly illustrated form."—Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram

"Probably my favorite book on game development."
—Neil Druckmann, writer and director of The Last of Us and Uncharted 4