Bill Gates has written a new blog post about the "wonderful" novel "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow" by Gabriel Zevin. Titled "This novel about video games was personal for me," Gates discusses the book's plot, his own personal gaming history, and uses this lens to discuss his relationship with key Microsoft figures.

"I never thought I would identify with a book about gaming," Gates writes, "but I loved 'Tomorrow,' 'Tomorrow,' 'Tomorrow. Am I a gamer?"

For a long time I would have said no. [But when I was younger, I loved arcade games and was good at Tetris. In recent years, I play a lot of online bridge and games like Spelling Bee and variants of Wordle. The definition of gamer has become broader and more inclusive.

In Mr. Gates' mind, how good does one have to be at Tetris to be "very good" at it? Mr. Gates is clearly an extraordinary man, and this claim reminded me of a recent minesweeper story. A former Microsoft employee recalled that when Minesweeper was being played internally before it was released, Gates was so engrossed in the game and spending so much time on it that the staff had to design a high score he could not break. I have a half-suspicion that Bill is hiding his World of Warcraft habits.

The novel Gates discusses centers on the life and friendship of Sam and Sadie, who bonded as children over Super Mario Bros. and embarked on a career in game development together. The Oregon Trail is a recurring theme, but it's more of a story about partnership and collaboration," Gates writes. Sam and Sadie create an indie hit called "Strawberries," but its success creates friction and problems in their relationship, and the two strain to go their separate ways: Gates summarizes the film as "about how creative partnerships can be both surprising and complicated . can be both surprising and complex."

The book recalls Gates' own remarkable career and the friendships and collaborators he gained in the process of building one of the world's largest software companies. One of the book's passages reads, "True collaborators in this life are rare," Gates said, "and I agree.

Paul Allen was a childhood friend of Gates and a member of the same computer club. He later persuaded Gates to drop out of Harvard to co-found Microsoft. Allen came up with the name Microsoft from "micro" for "microcomputer" and "soft" for "software." After Microsoft's great success, he and Gates had an acrimonious and somewhat acrimonious relationship in the 1980s, but the two later reconciled and remained friends until Allen's death in 2018.

"An early chapter describing how Sam and Sadie worked until sunrise in a dingy apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, could have been the story of when Paul and I came up with the idea for Microsoft," Gates wrote. Like Sam and Sadie, we worked together every day for years." Paul's vision and contributions to the company were absolutely critical to its success, but he chose to move on. We had a great relationship, but it was not without the complications that success brings."

Gates muses about one of the questions raised by Sadie, a character in the novel, about the sense that their success was due to timing, to having made the game at the right time, in the right era.

"I know what she means: Paul and I were very lucky in our timing with Microsoft. Gates writes, "We entered at a time when chips were starting to become powerful, but before others had created established companies."

Another character in the novel is Marx, who, while not as creative as Sam and Sadie, has business sense and a sense of the production realities that make a company's success possible. If Paul and I are Sam and Sadie, Steve Ballmer is our Marx."

Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 as the 30th employee. Ballmer first met Gates at Harvard University, where they roomed in the same hall, and held various senior positions, including president, before succeeding Gates as CEO in 2000, where he remained until his retirement in 2014. Ballmer and Gates were said to have had a very close relationship, which Ballmer described in 2016 as "like brothers," but they also butted heads, especially in their later years. In the same 2016 interview, Ballmer said that he and Gates had become "estranged" since Ballmer resigned as CEO.

"[Steve Ballmer] didn't write code, but Microsoft's success depended heavily on him," Gates wrote.

"Like Marx, Steve made sure we hired the right people and had the tools we needed to get the company off the ground. The comparison is not perfect: we always valued Steve, but throughout the book Sam comes to resent Marx and downplay his contributions. (Of course, Steve became CEO of Microsoft, but Marx was never reached at Unfair Games.) Zevin, however, is not a dreamer alone who can turn big ideas into reality.

[5] Gates concludes with a hearty endorsement of "Tomorrow," "Tomorrow," and "Tomorrow," noting that video games and the industry surrounding them are "a great metaphor for human connection." As Zevin writes, "Allowing yourself to play with others is no small risk. It means opening yourself up, exposing yourself, and allowing yourself to be hurt. Playing requires trust and love."

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