MUDNews

MU*News's exclusive interview with Matt Mihaly and Jeremy Saunders, owners of Iron Realms Entertainment and Sparkplay. If you don't know what they are, shame on you.

This is pretty much just a transcript of the meeting, edited a bit to make it look prettier. Sarapis is Matt Mihaly, and 'Jumpy' is Jeremy Saunders. The meeting took place on Achaea MUD.

----

You say, "Matt. How did you first get involved with MUDs?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Well."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "That goes back a long ways!"

The corners of Jumpy's mouth turn up as He grins mischievously.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "My very first exposure to MUDs was in 1991 while at

university (Cornell)."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I was a political science student, but was in a

computer science lab with a computer science friend."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And I distinctly remember the scene."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "It was a lab full of NeXT computers."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And there was almost a satire of a gamer staring at a

screen of scrolling text."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "You know, overweight, big bushy beard, balding, etc."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I chuckled at first because it was a bit funny but

then got interested in what the heck he was so interested in."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I asked him and he said it was a MUD, which I hadn't

heard of previously. I watched for a little while but you know how watching

someone play a MUD is....not very exciting."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "You don't get the full sense of it unless you're at

the keyboard."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So I had my computer science friend show me how to

find a MUD and connect with telnet."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "It took about 30 seconds to be hooked."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I don't even remember what the first MUD I played

was."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I just remember that I was in what was presumably a

newbie area."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And this parrot flew by."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I went south from where I was."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I followed it and somehow I was just thrilled to find

the parrot was there when I went south."

"Heh heh heh," Jumpy chuckles.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "That, of course, was immediately followed by the game

prompting me to kill the parrot."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So I did, and that was it. HOOKED."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Well, the first MUD I really got into was

Batmud."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Which, as you probably know, is still one of and

perhaps the biggest LP MUD around."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I became a wiz on Batmud after awhile."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And then eventually got myself kicked off for pulling

stupid pranks."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Like creating a room to lock all the admins higher

than me up and remove their ability to execute commands."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Someone had to go down to the server physically to

fix the problem. It was funny."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Well."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "It was funny at the time. Looking back I'm embarassed

about acting like an asshat."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I actually became a wiz again on Batmud later on, but

the real influence on me was when I started playing Avalon."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "In 1994."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Avalon was the MUD started by a couple guys, one of

which is Dan James, who runs Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates, Whirled, etc)."

You say, "Yeah, I've played Avalon. That was actually my first MUD."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "They had JUST opened up avalon to the internet in

'94, as it had been dial-up only from '89 until then."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I was their first american customer in fact."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I had just finished college when I started playing,

didn't have a job, etc."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Well, I had one as a stockbroker, but quit as it was

a horrible, horrible job."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So for about a year I basically played Avalon."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Became completely dominant in the game and became

their God of Pain."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And then ended up living with one of the founders of

the game in Chicago."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Around that time I started thinking about starting my

own MUD."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So I licensed the Hourglass engine from the Avalon

guys."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Which was literally the biggest piece of shit you've

ever seen."

"Heh heh heh," Jumpy chuckles.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "It's a testament to Avalon that it manages to run on

such a horrible engine."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I mean, no local variables."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "No way to pass variables to subroutines."

You say, "Was that built off original code, or a codebase like Diku?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Avalon's Hourglass engine was an original creation."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yehuda, one of the founders, wrote it when he was

15."

Sarapis, the Logos smiles with a wink and says, "And it shows."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So, I taught myself to code and started writing

Achaea."

You say, "So are all of your MUDs are based off of the Hourglass engine?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Nope, none of them are. I'll get to that in a sec."

You nod your head emphatically.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Achaea, the first MUD, opened in september, 1997."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "The same month that Ultima Online launched,

incidentally."

Jumpy says, "No competition there."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Kind of weird in retrospect to launch a text MUD

company just as the age of graphical MMOs was really dawning (yes, there were

ones before UO, but none that were particularly big)."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Soon after launch, I discovered that Yehuda had a

backdoor in Hourglass."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "That let him connect to a specific port."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And listen to ALL input coming into the game."

You say, "Wow."

The corners of Jumpy's mouth turn up as He grins mischievously.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yeah, he's a scumball. My understanding is that he's

currently a heroin addict actually, but I haven't spoken to him in 10 years."

You say, "So you basically payed for a piece of shit with a ton of backdoors in

it?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yeah."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Luckily, another God on Avalon had done a linux port

of Hourglass."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Hourglass ran on RISC machines, I should mention."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Like the Acorn."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Which was never sold in the US I don't think."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So not only was it a piece of shit but it only ran on

hardware that nobody used."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And to make things worse I learned my early coding

habits from Yehuda."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Which contained such lovely patterns as

double-spacing all your code evenly."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Never indenting."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And naming all of your variables unhelpfully."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "In a conscious effort to make the code harder to

read."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "In yehuda's mind, this meant it would be harder to

steal."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Because nobody else could read the damn code."

Jumpy says, "I will point out that we are still paying for that."

You say, "I'll bet that was fun for the first coder besides you that looked at

it."

"Heh heh heh," Sarapis chuckles.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yes, you could say that."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "You still find variables in Achaea's code that are

named unhelpful things like "trueminor1"."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Or "colour3"."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So anyway, this person that ported the Hourglass

engine to linux."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Called his engine Vortex."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So we licensed Vortex and spent an incredibly painful

4 or 5 months porting the game to vortex."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Had to rewrite a good portion of it as Vortex had

branched significantly from HOurglass by then (and had things like local

variables and whatnot)."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Vortex worked well for awhile but ultimately was too

slow."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So I had Chris Kohnert, who was a volunteer at the

time, write a new engine in return for a portion of the company."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "That engine is the Rapture engine, which powers all

Iron Realms games."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Chris became Iron Realms's CTO and now is lead

architect for Sparkplay, my other company."

You say, "So when, and why, did you start your second game?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Well."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "There were a couple motivations."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "The first was that we were occasionally running into

problems on Achaea at peak usage times."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Too many players doing too much stuff."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Rapture isn't set up to be multi-threaded and we were

already running on the fastest server we could find."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "So the only way to grow was to open a second game. We

also wanted to expand in terms of content, which is why Aetolia has a

vampire/werewolf theme instead of straight-up fantasy."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "We then opened two more MUDs because we saw our

overall audience expanding each time we opened a new MUD."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Jeremy here opened our third MUD, Imperian."

Jumpy nods His head emphatically.

You say, "Did you ever consider making a Science Fiction game?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Actually, we are right now."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Tears of Polaris."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Iron Realms has two MUDs in the works at the moment."

You say, "Tell me a bit about those?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I'll let Jeremy get a word in edgewise here."

You nod your head emphatically.

The corners of Jumpy's mouth turn up as He grins mischievously.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Why don't you talk about them a bit Jeremy."

Jumpy says, "Sure."

Jumpy says, "We have two new games in the works."

Jumpy says, "The first is Midkemia Online. This game is based on the series of

book written by Raymond Feist."

Jumpy says, "The second is Tears of Polaris, which is our first game not based

on fantasy at all."

Jumpy says, "Both will probably open in the middle of next year."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Raymond Feist did the Riftwar series of books. He's

sold about 20 million novels worldwide I believe."

Jumpy nods His head emphatically.

You say, "What will the setting be for Tears of Polaris?"

Jumpy says, "And of course we have licenced the rights to make a game based on

those books."

You say, "Of course. Will the setting be futuristic Earth.. or a completely

original timeline?"

Jumpy says, "Completely original."

Jumpy says, "Players will be able to build ships, fly to planets, create

corporations."

Jumpy says, "And of course, blow each other up."

Jumpy says, "Aliens, cyborgs, psychics."

You say, "How will the space combat system work? Will you be using a SWR Style

coordinate-based system, or perhaps something like an overland map?"

Jumpy says, "It will have an overland map type look."

Jumpy says, "Of course, that is harder to do in 3d space."

Jumpy says, "I actually do not know all the specifics."

Jumpy says, "At any rate, it will be a combo deal using coordinates and an

ascii map."

You nod your head emphatically.

You say, "Anyway. How about a bit of history on you, Jeremy? How did you get

involved in MUDs, and how did you come to be working at Iron Realms?"

Jumpy says, "Well."

Jumpy says, "I first played a stock MUD on a web based role playing game site

called Rondak's Portal."

Jumpy says, "I was the only player."

Jumpy says, "So it was semi boring."

Jumpy says, "But as I had never played anything like it before, I spent quite a

bit of time on it."

Jumpy says, "I recall running a search for more MUD's and of course ran into

mudconnector.com."

Jumpy says, "Achaea was the main advertiser on the site at the point, so I

jumped right into that one."

Jumpy says, "I think this was about 1996?"

Jumpy says, "Hard to remember."

Jumpy says, "Actually, it must have been later then that."

Jumpy says, "At any rate I played Achaea for about a year."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yeah, it would have been about '98 or '99 for you."

Jumpy says, "Yeah."

Jumpy says, "Then I began playing as Sartan, the God of Evil."

Jumpy says, "As a volunteer for about another year."

Jumpy says, "I was running 3 martial arts schools and a weight gym at the

time."

Jumpy says, "Working from about 6AM to 10PM everyday."

Jumpy says, "Matt decided he wanted to open a third game so I jumped on that

and sold my businesses."

Jumpy says, "I worked on Imperian for a couple of years, then assisted with

Aetolia (our 2nd game)."

Jumpy says, "Then I suckered Matt into letting me run the company."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "He did. He won it in a game of poker."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And I'm pretty sure he cheated."

Sarapis throws out a quick jab at Jumpy.

Sarapis connects.

Jumpy says, "So now I manage IRE."

The corners of Jumpy's mouth turn up as He grins mischievously.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I started Sparkplay as a subsidiary of Iron Realms

back in 2006."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And soon thereafter Jeremy became executive producer

of all Iron Realms MUDs."

Jumpy says, "Still lots of hours, but nothing can beat working from home."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Once we raised our money for Sparkplay, I had to

focus completely on Sparkplay and Jeremy was the obvious choice to run Iron

Realms."

Jumpy nods His head emphatically.

You say, "Tell me a bit about Earth Eternal."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Earth Eternal is a free-to-play 3d MMO that you can

play either as a download or in a browser."

It is now the 19th of Aeguary, 497 years after the fall of the Seleucarian

Empire.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "It's set in a highly fictionalized version of earth."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And the backstory is a fun mish-mash of real-world

myths, history, and a lot of our own IP."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Some of the key features include multi-classing, an

elaborate player "housing" system called Groves in which players get not just a

house, but an entire island or valley to make their own."

You say, "Inspired by Imperian's groves, no doubt."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Actually, no."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Not really inspired by any of the Groves from Iron

Realms."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Sparkplay is actually quite separate in terms of

design from Iron Realms."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "One of the great things about text MUDs is HOW MUCH

you can do with them."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "And how cheaply."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Trying to replicate in 3d what we can do in text is

way beyond our resources."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Hell, it's way beyond Blizzard's resources and they

wear money hats."

The corners of Jumpy's mouth turn up as He grins mischievously.

You say, "How will you let the players create their own groves? Have a building

system similar to Second Life?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I'm afraid I can't talk in detail about game systems

for Earth Eternal. I did initially, which was a mistake, as a lot has changed

since we started talking openly about it almost 2 years ago. We've got a VP of

Marketing now, and she wants me to be relatively quiet until we relaunch our

site and start feeding more information to the public in the New Year."

"Heh heh heh," Jumpy chuckles.

You say, "Plan on opening any other MMOs in the future?"

You say, "I'd love to see a sci-fi one that didn't suck."

The corners of your mouth turn up as you grin mischievously.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "We will definitely be doing other MMOs."

Jumpy says, "Tears of Polaris should be pretty exciting."

Sarapis, the Logos smiles with a wink and says, "Assuming that the economy

doesn't fall apart and everyone stops spending money on anything but food and

clothes of course."

The corners of your mouth turn up as you grin mischievously.

Jumpy says, "We do not have an official site for it yet, but the producer Kunin

does regular updates here: http://forums.tearsofpolaris.com/."

Jumpy says, "We should be releasing a website for ToP in the next couple of

months."

You say, "There have been some concerns among several people I've spoken to

that any advertising you do for Earth Eternal on MUD sites will drive traffic

away from MUDs, and advertising you do for MUDs on MMO sites won't be as

effective."

You say "What do you think about these concerns?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Well, advertising for MUDs on MMO sites is not as

effective as advertising on text MUD sites."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "But that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "The existing text MUD audience is small."

Jumpy says, "Right, we have had little success advertising on MMO site for our

MUD games."

Jumpy says, "And I am not sure how much EE plans on advertising on MUD sites?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yeah, but we do have to reach outside the MUD

audience to get new players."

Jumpy nods his head emphatically.

Jumpy says, "Right."

Jumpy says, "Which is something IRE is working on."

You nod your head emphatically.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I don't think Marketing's plans are done yet but none

of the MUD sites really get that much traffic (compared to what we need to

spend on advertising for EE), so I doubt she'd be looking at MUD sites to

advertise on."

Jumpy says, "Our focus is really shifting to introducing people to MUDs, who

have never even seen them."

You say, "Your IRE MUDs are "pay-for-perks", correct?"

Sarapis, the Logos says, "Yes, in fact, I pioneered that busines model with

Achaea."

Jumpy says, "Right."

You say, "I know there are some in the hobbyist MUD community who despise that

kind of system, but I personally think it's just good buisness. What's your

take on hobbyist MUDs, and do you think they provide you with a lot of

competition?"

Jumpy says, "However, it is worth pointing out, that someone who never spends a

penny, can get everything money in the game can get you."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "I absolutely do not give two flying shits about

people who have a problem with our business model, to put it bluntly."

The corners of your mouth turn up as you grin mischievously.

Sarapis, the Logos says, "As for hobbyist MUD, I think it's great that people

are out there creating MUDs as hobbies."

Jumpy says, "I think hobby MUDs are great. I have always thought that

competition, even between our own games, creates even better games."

Sarapis, the Logos says, "It's one of the nice things about MUDs as opposed to

3d MMOs, where it's MUCH harder for a hobbyist to pull anything off."

You say, "Forces you to evolve to stay better than the others to survive."

You nod your head emphatically.

Jumpy says, "Right."

Jumpy says, "It also helps promote MUDs in general."

----

Soon it's quite possible that I'll be getting an interview with the developers of Tears of Polaris. Stay tuned!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

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Exclusive with Matt Mihaly and Jeremy Saunders

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Exclusive with Matt Mihaly and Jeremy Saunders

Monday, December 15, 2008

An Interview With..

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

An Introduction to MUDs: The RIGHT Way

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Where our Viewers Live!

Where did you hear about MU*News?

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About Me

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