Born in 1971 to a navy family, I have lived in a variety of places and was raised in several cultures that would seem at odds with each other.
Christmas of 1981, brought a change. Not because of a new location or anything so mundane. No, I discovered Dungeons and Dragons. Instead of moving a piece on a board to play a game, I was the piece. I saw the game board not as a player but as the character within the game. This utterly changed my view on how games could be played. Almost immediately, I gave up board games and began playing role-playing games.
Shortly thereafter, Intellivision released the Dungeons and Dragons video game for its console. I was sorely disappointed. There was no interacting with any persona within the game. played an archer who went into caves, killed monsters, collected treasures so you could kill bigger monsters. A grave disappointment indeed. It was several years later before I found out how role-playing could be done using a computer.
I discovered bulletin board servers. I was part of a local bulletin board group that hosted role-playing games. They were entertaining and enjoyable at first, but the turn around was slow and sometimes games would be dropped shortly after being started due to long periods between responses. The cost-benefit ratio was horrible. Enter the chat room.
A role-playing friend told me of how he would play Dungeons and Dragons with people all over the world via online chat rooms. I was skeptical at first but he showed me how it was done. Everything was great, but the waiting for others to log in to play, having to wait for someone else to participate, I dreamed of being able to go into a game and have things to do already set up. A place I could play without others being necessary. That same friend who told me about chat rooms told me about multi-user domains.
I thoroughly enjoyed the MUDs. Specifically one called New Moon. I would spend hours playing it. It reminded me of Zork, but other people could play with you. The only thing that would make it better would be for it not to be a text based game, where a player could see the environment instead of reading about it.
I wanted to learn how to program so I could make a game with a 3d environment where players and gamemasters would play games together. Sadly, I lived in a small town and was having difficulties finding a school I could attend that taught what I needed to know. In my research, I found DeVry had online courses and signed up. When financial issues forced me to drop out, I found the University of Advancing Technology could help me out.
By then, however, games like Everquest and World of Warcraft were becoming quite popular and I had tried playing them. But something was lacking. Their stories were linear. There was hardly any diversity. As a gamemaster of Dungeons and Dragons, as well as a player, the one thing I loathed was a plotline set on rails (no divergence was at all possible). Though these games had thousands of side quests, you were expected to always get back on track as soon as possible.
That’s when I had my idea. A system for these massive multi-player online role-playing games in which the quests were constant evolving and being updated by the actions of all the players. Where the reputation of the player’s characters would help shape the way the world was played. A sandbox, if you will, for role-playing games. My senior project at UAT was the first step in this endeavor. My current project is CelestialForge (it’s a working title at the moment), that is designed to allow a multitude of players to try and make the game world they all share into something specifically for them. A simulation of the real world, in story format.