The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 23

ramw) Sunday buraiMt wd UwniJa Jranrigro famtncr 'pnodDincnc 8 tphmpi uUMl UlLinaB I LuniuUUJD Sunday, OctoU 23, 1994 B-5 toft JQB.S1 nnv i Crystal Dynamics survives a shaky year GINA SMITH' IB silicon VALLEY Crystal Dynamics isn't crashing and burning, but like dozens of other startups that were flying high during the rock 'em-sock 'em multimedia rush this time last year, it's sure got one bumpy road ahead of it. Crystal, you'll remember, was all over the headlines last year when it lured ex-20th Century Fox CEO Strauss Zelnick up from Hollywood as its new CEO and scored some way. First, the heavily-hyped 3DO platform didn't take off as investors expected. Then, early this year, its plan to start a distribution firm called Star Interactive couldn't score the $30 million in financing Crystal was seeking and the plan was dropped. Soon after, founder and vice-president Judith Lange hit the road.

And the final cut? Last month Zelnick announced he will be returning to the traditional entertainment business at BMG Entertainment come January. What a year. And now, amid a CEO search and enormous pressure to get some top-selling games 1 'i i $20 million in capital from big media companies like HBO and Kingworld. Private investors valued the Palo Alto firm at more than $70 million before it had even shipped its first product, a game bundled with the 3DO gaming system called Crash 'n' Burn. But these days, the people at Crystal are back down to earth in a major on the market this Christmas, the rumors are flying.

At virtually every Valley gathering lately, the dish is on how how game-maker Spectrum Holobyte is planning on buying Crystal, or whether The 3DO Co. may purchase it. The gossip, insiders say, has a lot to do with the fact that big venture firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield Byers is involved in all three companies. "Well, when you've chosen to take as high a profile as we have, that's what you get," says David Morse, a Crystal founder and chairman of its board, explaining that the company has gotten "a lot of feelers" from potential buyers since Zelnick announced his exit. "There has been a discussion with Spectrum about licensing some of our titles and (moving) them to the PC, but that's it We're not really for sale.

I don't think it makes sense for us to sell the company right now. We want to keep going and realize the See CRYSTAL, B-6 -JOT nil Coming and going: Crystal Dynamics CEO Strauss Zelnick, above, is headed back to Hollywood at the start of the year. Due out for the holidays is GEX, right, Crystal's new videogame featuring GEX the gecko in the "Media Dimension." EXAMINER KIM KOMENICH An interactive Golden Age? (djVm Key to medium's future is seen in TV spast High techs hired hand: Meet the code jockey f-- If Will V. audience, and even news, cultural, and educational programs would have to carry more than a modicum of showmanship. But Weaver's vision was also pointed: No commitment to quality, whether in high culture or middle-brow comedy, could stand long unless the power of the advertisers was held in check.

It wasn't, of course, and the rest is, as they say, television history. Turn on your set, even to the cultural channels, Interactive entertainment seems destined to become the next television, with all the compromises implied by a mass medium. We, the interactive audience, can look forward to being served only dishes designed to corporate specifications and lowest common denominators. Fortunately, we may be able to avoid this unsavory fate. By seeing ourselves as an audience than a market, we can learn some lessons about the possibilities that lie ahead by looking By Dwight Silverman HOUSTON CHRONICLE NAME: Keith Ferrell AGE: 41 TITLE AND BUSINESS: Vice presidenteditor OMNI magazine; vice presidenteditorial director General Media Online Services; writer speaker.

FAMILY: Married 20 years; one son WHAT COMPUTER DO YOU WORK ON: IBM; mm WHOSE PORTFOLIOS are performing best in The Examiner's Bay Area Stock Challenge contest? Which stocks did they pick to carry them to the top? Find out by checking the Top 20 leader board. Inside the Business section. MONDAY'S EXAMINER and you instantly see what Weaver was afraid of. Everything's for sale, and every set's a salesman. Reading Weaver's book, one senses a dreary inevitability about this state of affairs, but also a sweet breath of that wonderful world of what-might-have-been.

Maybe it still can be. Now there's a new digital backward. Looking, in fact, to the early days of television and one of that medium's grand pioneers, Sylvester Tat" Weaver Jr. Weaver is a fascinating man who's just published a fascinating book: "The Best Seat in the House: the Golden Years of Radio and Television" By Keith Ferrell SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER There's a new digital medium at roughly the same period in its history as television was in the mid-'50s. And we, the audience, hold, far more power to shape its nature and destiny than our parents did in front of their black-and-white Phiicos.

If WHAT YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT YOUR JOB: OMNI brings HOUSTON Think of a free-lance software programmer, and what comes to mind? Someone wearing a pocket protector, with thick glasses? Perhaps a tendency to mumble in social situations, poor personal hygiene and a fondness for pizza? How about a savvy business owner? Independent and intelligent. A motivated self-starter. Maybe even a hero. They're called "code jockeys" independent contractors who program computers, hired by employers who are either short-handed, caught in an emergency situation or in need of specific expertise. Code jockeys ride in, fix a problem and then leave, a new kind of maverick gun-for-hire of the high-tech age.

They live life on the edge, not always sure where their next job is coming from, how late the hours may be or how long the work will last And they like it that way. "They are more motivated, maybe a little more business-minded and communicative than the average programmer in the back closet," says Al Williams, himself a Houston-area code jockey and the author of several computer books, includingthe best-selling "Commando Windows Programming." As computers have gotten more sophisticated, so have the challenges for the software that runs them. Good programmers who can write GOING TO MAGICAL NEW HEIGHTS inlevita-tion technology; a bedside earthquake survival shelter; getting a better handle on ski poles and wa-terskiing bars. The latest designs and devices from American inventors, in the Patents column. MONDAY'S EXAMINER medium, our medium, at roughly the same period in its history as television was in the mid-'50s.

And we, the audience, hold, I believe, far more power to shape its nature and destiny than our parents did in front of their black-and-white Phiicos. The new interactive media remain young enough, and our relationship to them intimate enough, that we can shape the future rather than simply accepting a future that's been shaped for us. Unlike the television audience 57 channels, 500 channels, and nothing on, so settle for the least-boring programs we don't have to settle. It won't be easy. There's a definite best-seller mentality developing in the distribution channel, and that's not too different, in potential effect, from the (1994, Knopf, $24).

Father of actress Sigourney, Weaver is also the father of many aspects of television still with us today. "Today," in fact, as in Bryant and Katie's show, was Weaver's idea, as was "Tonight" and countless other approaches to televised entertainment and information. Just don't blame their current incarnations on him. Weaver, you see, may have sired these concepts, but he didn't rear them. Indeed, his vision for television was far different from what has emerged.

Watching during TVs Golden Age, he saw the medium as the great leveler an opportunity for everyman to have a seat at the opera, to experience great drama, to lend an ear to discourse on the great issues of the day. Not that his vision was dry or stuffy or snobbishly highbrow. There was, he felt, no substitute for comedy in terms of building an me in contact with all of the various worlds of science, technology and science fiction, as well as with the world's best writers, and provides the opportunity to present serious speculation about the nature of our universe and the future of our species. WHAT YOU LIKE LEAST ABOUT YOUR JOB: A thousand pages a month would not be enough to coverall of the wonderful stories we uncover. (But the flexibility of our online areas helps!) LAST BOOK READ: "Descartes' Error," by Antonio Damasio LAST MOVIE: "Pulp Fiction" FAVORITE ESCAPE: Gardening See CODE, B-6.