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Chapter One - The Designer
As they continued along the slew, Taylor stopped dead in his tracks. He turned to Kauzlaric, looked him in the eye, and, waving his hands to emphasize the point, proclaimed, "Wait until the world sees this, Clayton!" He wasn't taking about the irrigation ditch, but rather the lines of computer game code sitting back in their office. Total Annihilation was still little more than twinkling in his mind's eye, but Taylor knew he was on to something special.
Taylor was asking difficult questions, and the answers would be a long time in coming. Indeed, no one outside his tightly nit circle of programmers and artists would even know about his game until nearly a year later, when Total Annihilation was finally announced to the public.
But the secrecy would ultimately pay off. Despite tremendous odds - it was, after all, a first-time effort from an unknown designer in one of gaming's toughest categories - Total Annihilation became the surprise hit of 1997. But it wasn't a fluke. Taylor realized that for the game to succeed, he must come up with a design that would stand apart from the crowd - and that meant taking some serious chances. And from its innovative marketing plan to its unique gameplay elements, his creation delivered - in spades. Which shouldn't really come as a surprise, considering that, in a roundabout way, Taylor had been thinking about it all since he was 14.
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