Beginnings

John Smedley was living a computer geek's dream. Though only 25 years old, he landed a cushy job in 1993 at Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA), which occupied a sleek office outside San Diego, California. And not just any job: Smedley's passion, talent, and initiative had earned him the rank of Producer which, in SISA's corporate structure, made him responsible for advancing profitable franchised sports titles including ESPN Sunday Night NFL, ESPN National Hockey Night, and ESPN Baseball Tonight.

Smedley's key role made him critical to Sony's plans to dominate the next console generation. Sony was finalizing plans for the original PlayStation, which was released in Japan in late 1994. The console proved a quick success on the company's home turf, but that wasn't enough to ensure the PlayStation's future.

Sony's top brass believed the PlayStation could be an international hit, but they also knew they couldn't conquer the United States simply by localizing the games launched in Japan. The console would need different games to succeed in North America—including sports titles that covered football, baseball, hockey, and extreme sports.

The first projects Smedley oversaw as producer were released on competing consoles, such as the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, because the PlayStation had yet to arrive, but his efforts built a foundation for future success when Sony's console made its North American debut in 1995. The ESPN license was a particularly strong lure for American players. ESPN Extreme Games, a PlayStation launch title developed by SISA, was the best-selling PlayStation game worldwide through October of 1996.

It was all a dream come true—but not for Smedley. In fact, Smedley hated sports games. He wanted nothing to do with them.

It was an odd twist of fate for a producer who'd earned his experience through personal initiative. Introduced to computers when his father, a chief petty officer in the Navy, came home with an Apple II, a teenage Smedley quickly decided to make his own version of Dungeons & Dragons—and failed, instead settling on building character creation software.

Still, it was enough to nudge him towards larger, more elaborate projects, which he pursued while attending San Diego University. He found his first major gig working on console ports for Taito, a Japanese publisher, and soon dropped out of university to start a small company, Knight Technologies, and pursue the work full-time. This eventually led to a position at Park Place Productions, which was contracted to produce John Madden Football for the Sega Genesis, among other projects.

Madden was a success, but Park Place Productions folded, leaving Smedley out of a job. So, once again, he took the initiative, approaching Sony alongside several former coworkers with a proposition: Hire us to do what Park Place Productions no longer could. Sony accepted, and Smedley found himself guiding teams of developers to build popular sports titles that hundreds of thousands of players would enjoy.

But Smedley had a different passion: online multiplayer gaming.

His game of choice was CyberStrike, a 1994 mech combat game developed by Simutronics and available to play on GEnie, General Electric's alternative to America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe. Although rarely spoken of today, CyberStrike was crowned On-Line Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine and proved a star title for GEnie in the network's final years of operation. Gameplay was billed at a rate of six dollars per hour, leading to at least one family financial discussion when Smedley's wife discovered his hobby could add up to more than $600 (over $1,200 today when adjusted for inflation) a month.

It was the dawn of a new era for online gaming. Multiplayer, Smedley realized, was the future, and he had the nugget of an idea that seemed a perfect fit for this new landscape: Dungeons & Dragons (or, at least, something very much like it) in a persistent, always-online world. This wasn't an entirely original idea: An officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights, had previously launched on America Online in 1991 and became a flagship game for the service.

Yet this concept, no matter its potential, wasn't aligned with Smedley's work on PlayStation titles. The original PlayStation was a marvel for its era, packing a CD-ROM drive and fresh 3D graphics in a compact footprint, but online play wasn't part of the plan. That meant Smedley had to beg permission to explore the development of a game which, even if successful, could never ship on Sony's breakout game console. It was a tough sell, to be sure, and his initial moves to start the project were rebuffed for the obvious reason: SISA existed to develop games for home consoles, not PCs.

Fortunately, Smedley knew how to seize an opportunity, and the opening he needed appeared when a new studio manager, Kelly Flock, arrived to head up SISA. He'd yet to hear the pitch, so Smedley enthusiastically presented the idea to his new boss. Flock was receptive and green-lit the project in early 1996 with a meager $800,000 budget. The money came with an important condition: Smedley's work on Sony's sports titles would take priority. The new game would add one more project to his already packed schedule.

Odds are high that Smedley couldn't have handled the day-to-day nitty-gritty of building the game he envisioned no matter the conditions imposed by Flock. His programming skills were rooted in the rapidly receding era of assembly language coding for computers, which predated the rise of IBM-compatible PCs as the dominant hardware and Windows as the dominant operating system.

Still, Flock's line in the sand settled the matter. Smedley wasn't allowed to program the online multiplayer fantasy game himself. He needed fresh developers who were preferably young, hungry, and deeply invested in online games—and he soon found them over the World Wide Web.

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Brad McQuaid was an unapologetic nerd. Though brought up on tabletop role-playing games, his love of Dungeons & Dragons took a turn towards the electronic when he learned of Ultima II, Richard Garriott's landmark 1982 computer RPG.

Eager to pursue the hobby, McQuaid saved up to buy a Commodore Amiga with an online connection. Once online, he frequented online bulletin boards (a predecessor to web forums and social media). It was there he met Steve Clover. The pair learned they lived nearby and became fast friends, bonding over their love of computer games and through frequent visits to local arcades. They eventually took a day job working as IT specialists at a plant nursery outside San Diego, where the pair built and operated software to track the nursery's stock as well as the supplies required to keep them healthy.

In their spare time, however, they were hard at work on their passion project: a computer roleplaying game called WarWizard. They founded a two-man studio called MicroGenesis in 1989 and devoted their nights and weekends to building what they hoped would become a computer RPG to rival Ultima. McQuaid worked on a version for Amiga, while Clover programmed for the Atari ST. In 1993, after four years of hard work, their game was finally ready. WarWizard, a colorful 2D computer RPG with deep combat and roughly 20 to 30 hours of gameplay, was unleashed on the world.

The world shrugged.

It wasn't a complete bust. Distributed as shareware, WarWizard sold around 1,500 copies and brought in roughly $8,000 for the fledgling developers: a reasonable haul for a debut game from a development duo with no prior titles to their name.

But McQuaid and Clover were snubbed by New World Publishing and Epic MegaGames. Both companies showed interest in publishing WarWizard but then backed away, leaving MicroGenesis to rely entirely on shareware for distribution and word-of-mouth for marketing.

And, perhaps more importantly, WarWizard's haul wasn't enough to quit their job at the nursery to pursue game development full-time.

Discouraged, but not defeated, Clover and McQuaid spun up work on a sequel to attract more attention. Eight thousand dollars in shareware sales wasn't bad for a game that received essentially zero promotion, and the completion of WarWizard proved they could ship a game that worked as promised. Perhaps publishers would take MicroGenesis more seriously now that it had a real, playable game that anyone could download and try.

McQuaid also learned a lesson from the first game's development. Instead of trying to finish the entire game and then present it to publishers, he suggested they quickly build a demo showing their game's strengths and post it, complete with their contact information, on Usenet.

They did exactly that in 1994. Curious players who downloaded the demo of WarWizard 2 were greeted by an introduction and a résumé.

This is a demo of a CRPG currently in development.

We are releasing this demo as a business card of sorts,

in order to introduce games publishers, developers and investors

to our company, MicroGenesis. If you have any question whatsoever,

please contact Brad McQuaid.

The "business card of sorts" goes on to list McQuaid's phone number. It also credits a team of five: McQuaid and Clover are listed as Producer and Programmer, while Kevin Burns, Victor LaFica, and Bill Trost are credited as (freelance) Artists.

It's unclear how widely the demo was circulated. Though still available to download on abandonware sites today, records of its original release are long lost. But the demo did cross paths with someone looking for young, eager game designers, preferably in southern California: John Smedley.

Smedley gave McQuaid a call. He didn't want to finish WarWizard 2, but he did want to speak with him about working on a new online RPG. It wasn't exactly what McQuaid and Clover had in mind when they put out the demo, but they agreed to visit SISA for an interview.

There was a distinct spark of connection between Smedley, McQuaid, and Clover. Smedley, to the astonishment of the MicroGenesis duo, was not just another corporate suit. He, too, was a lifelong nerd who shared their enthusiasm for tabletop role-playing, fantasy novels, and PC gaming. Smedley was equally impressed by McQuaid and Clover: They had just enough experience to show they could build a game, yet not so much to be daunted by an ambitious project.

And coincidence handed the MicroGenesis guys another advantage. Milo Cooper, who'd contributed art for the original WarWizard, had since landed a job at SISA. Smedley, knowing this, asked Cooper's opinion on McQuaid and Clover. Cooper offered his vote of confidence.

That sealed the deal. Smedley first spoke with McQuaid and Clover in February of 1996. By March, they were lead developers of a new online fantasy RPG at Sony's largest North American studio.