ABSTRACT
Thatcher Ulrich watches over Austin’s shoulder, gently nibbling his fi nger. Austin and his colleague, Doug Church, are playing Thatcher’s game, Dueling Machine. In Dueling Machine, one player hunts another using sonar pings to fi nd or avoid their enemy amidst tens of thousands of innocent bystanders. Few games use sound in such an integral way; this idea came from Marc LeBlanc. At the time, Marc worked for Visual Concepts, a video game development studio owned by Sega. Thatcher worked at Oddworld Inhabitants, a video game development studio owned in part by Microso . Given the competitive nature of the modern game industry, it doesn’t make much sense that these two would be designing a video game together.
