Salon.com > David Kushner

“I’m not Bobby Fischer”

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 12:43:00 +0000

This week in San Diego, 64 hunched and pensive brainiacs have been competing for the coveted title of United States Chess Champion. The winner, to be decided Sunday, will take home $25,000. That's chump change compared to the millions that young stars like Daniel Negreanu are making in poker. But there's plenty at stake for 18-year-old Hikaru Nakamura, the controversial boy king defending the crown.

This stocky Asian-American teen from White Plains, N.Y., is shattering the history books to become America's winningest chess prodigy ever. By 10, he achieved the rarefied title of master. At 15, he was the country's youngest grandmaster. In December 2004, he sealed his coronation by taking home the 2005 U.S. championship. As of Friday morning, after seven long and brutal days of play, hes in the top three of his group, and gunning for a repeat.

Grand Death Auto

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 20:30:00 +0000

The bullets came from nowhere, and there's plenty of nowhere in Newport, Tenn. An hour into the sticks east of Knoxville, this country town of 7,200 is little more than a piss stop on the way to nearby attractions like Dolly Parton's Dollywood theme park or the Life of Christ Experience in 3-D. Like most people who make it to these parts, Aaron Hamel and his cousin Denise "Dee Dee" Deneau were just passing through. Quickly.

It was around 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25, 2003, and the sun was still shining on the end of what Hamel called "a perfect day." The two were driving back to Knoxville in his red Toyota truck after hiking in Black Mountain, N.C. Hamel, a 45-year-old registered nurse and nature lover, had recently relocated from Ontario, Canada, dreaming of landing a log cabin in the woods. The day before, he had gotten a call back from a juvenile detention facility where he hoped to work. "I think I could make a difference and help these kids," he told his cousin during their hike.

Trent Reznor’s pretty hate machines

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 19:30:00 +0000

Trent Reznor is not only a critically acclaimed rock star -- he's also Pooper Sniffer. That's the alias he uses while engaging in his other lifelong passion: computer games. Almost every night in his New Orleans studio, Reznor leaves his work on the upcoming Nine Inch Nails album (which he cheekily refers to as "More Songs About Oppression and Slavery") for the Nazi shoot-'em-up game Return to Castle Wolfenstein. For the 36-year-old, games and gadgetry aren't just diversions; they're a vital means of artistic exploration.

"I'm interested in using the computer as a creative tool, as a recording tool, as a musical instrument tool," he says, while nursing some carrot juice in a stylish hotel on a recent jaunt to New York. "I'm not interested in using the computer in the way the manual says to do it, not in the clean way, but to add a collision of humanity and electronics." He pauses, then adds with a smirk: "There's not always this peaceful coexistence."

The Michael Jordan of gaming

Tue, 05 Sep 2000 18:05:00 +0000

Dennis "Thresh" Fong is the Michael Jordan of electronic gamers. Over the past several years, Fong has proven unbeatable in Doom and Quake tournaments, scoring everything from a Microsoft sponsorship to a Ferrari donated by the co-creator of the games he has mastered. Now the 22-year-old University of California at Berkeley dropout is living up to the Jordan comparison by making the precipitous journey from athlete to entrepreneur.

Since "retiring" from competitions last year, Fong has been devoting himself full-time to Gamers.com, an ambitious portal for gaming fans. With a recent influx of $11.5 million in venture capital, as well as a partnership with AltaVista, Fong is positioning his company to be the gateway for the coming tidal wave of next generation, Internet-ready console players.

Heart in darkness

Wed, 08 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Next to vampires, no one hates the light as much as gamers. There's nothing worse than a big, bad glare blinding down on a computer screen. So when Ion Storm's crew moved into the penthouse of the Texas Commerce Building in 1998, they took one look through the wall-to-wall windows that afforded a panoramic view of Dallas and let out a gruesome, unanimous sigh.

The architects immediately set to work, installing stylish spoilers on top of the cubicles. But that proved hardly dark enough to suit the gamers' finicky tastes. Instead, the builders of anticipated first-person shooter Daikatana whipped out staple guns and nailed thick sheets of black felt over every cube in the office.

Now Ion Storm's 31 game developers don't just work in the shade, they work in the black. To get into their cubes, they part felt drapes like photographers entering miniature darkrooms. It was a fairly awesome and ironic sight as I wandered through the glass-domed gamers' haven last October. All I saw were rows of caves. And of these caves, Weasl's was the darkest.

How do game developers hack it?

Tue, 07 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Ogre is seeing white flashes again. It'd be nice if he could just blame fatigue. Unfortunately, the real culprit is an unidentified bug that's causing his screen to go blank every time he eviscerates a beast. For Ogre and the others on the front lines at game maker Ion Storm, this means another bloodshot night of testing what they promise will be among the most beautiful and sophisticated shooters ever made: Daikatana.

A hulking 29-year-old Texan who got his nickname after chugging four pitchers of beer one spring break, Chad "Ogre" Barron reaches for the industrial-size bottle of Tums above his convulsing PC and considers the situation. After numerous delays, Ion Storm is supposed to burn a demo of Daikatana for its eager publisher, Eidos Interactive, in minutes.