D&D

I had a chance to visit the Origin Systems building in 1997 when I first moved to Austin, at the time the only THX-certified game studio in the country. Starr Long even gave me a demo of naked Ultima players running around a rather barren virtual landscape. When we were working on the book, Richard… Read more »

The Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down just a bit ago, marking the end of the Shuttle Space Age in America. Throughout my life, Americans have gone to space regularly. Now that is over. As I dug through the Dungeons & Dreamers yesterday constructing a draft of the Second Edition introduction, I was struck by how… Read more »

I was never much sold on the cover for our book. It looked too much like a business book (which it wasn’t) without any of the modern flair of say Tron. It seemed to be designed by committee. That said, this particular version of the cover came out infinitely better than the first draft we… Read more »

The idea of professional computer gamer was in its nascent phase when John and I started writing the book.  Jonathan Wendall, better known as Fatal1ty, was making headlines, and Stevie Case was the new nerd pinup girl. We spent a good deal of time traveling to QuakeCon and the Cyberathlete Professional League events to understand exactly… Read more »

The first computer game was SpaceWar!, we all know that. However, this is the first game produced by Richard Garriott, the man who built the first commercially successful massively multi-player game. Akalabeth would eventually morph into Ultima, launching a franchise of games that built — and then changed — the gaming landscape. This is the… Read more »

I’m selling my house in Austin, which is only interesting to this tale because I purchased the house with the advance onDungeons & Dreamers, and then moved here to finish the book. As I was digging through my files, I came across this little gem, the map of some of the early Ultima games. Throughout… Read more »