The Meridian 59 Interview by Nash Werner Many a brave online role-player has lost sleep over Meridian 59's vast multiplayer world. Real-life friendships have been formed and destroyed, yet there's no stopping the insomnia. Online gaming is here to stay--and computer gaming will never be the same. I recently met up with Meridian 59 designers Andrew Kirmse and Christopher Kirmse. Both have been writing game code before the dawn of the IBM clone. I also spoke with programmers Rob Ellis II and Damion Schubert. Here's what they had to say.

PCG: Where did it all begin?

Andrew: That's a long, interesting story. (everyone laughs) Let me give you the long version. Chris and I were the ones who started it. In the early '80s we began playing this 16-player text-based game over the modem. The fact that it was multi-person was impressive; we must have spent several hundred dollars on it.

One day we were thinking, it would be really great if we could do a graphical version. We were both in college, so we took the summer off to write it.

Chris: We worked in our parents' basement.

Andrew: For a long time, this was a zero-budget game. So we went back to school for a year, worked on it here and there. The next summer, we started hacking on it again.

We had no art yet: it was just a 2D overhead, tile-based game with no gameplay.

Chris: We worked on the network architecture for a 35-person game, but basically all you could do was walk around. (everyone laughs) All we needed now was some gameplay.

Andrew: Once we had the whole architecture in place, minus the gameplay, money came into the picture. We need money to make the game better, so we formed Archetype Interactive with two business partners. And soon after that we met Damion and Rob.

We got the 3D engine going and created some early art, and threw it together and rented a server, Chris and I were back in Virginia, Damion was in Austin and Rob was in Connecticut, but we had our server running in San Jose.

PCG: How convenient. (everyone laughs)

Andrew: Other than Chris and myself, we had never met each other. Damion and Rob would e-mail all the coding to Chris' dorm room. It was all patch-work.

Damion: Before we hired an artist from Washington, all the art was mostly done by us.

Andrew: We got our alpha running Dec. 15, 1995. We set it up one night, went to bed and the next morning four people were logged in and one of them had already solved all the puzzles. That's when we knew we had a great game.

Damion: Our game was instantly cool. We had to put a limit on how many people could play.

Chris: The server could only handle 35 people, and in a week or two, we had 35 people on, all the time.

Andrew: We soon found out we needed a better server and a better graphics engine. We had about 10 people working on the game. Things were moving much faster, we took down our alpha version and put up a beta that worked better.

Chris: One of the programmers here at 3DO was out on the Net looking for multi-user games and liked our beta. He showed it to his manager, who show it to his manager, and they all liked it. 3DO put together a plan and decided they wanted to buy us, and they did. Then we all moved out here to California and finally met each other for the first time.

Rob: The coolest thing about the pre-3DO days--although I would never go back now (everyone laughs)--is that, at the time, it was really wild. Not only had we never met, but the only time I had ever talked to Chris on the telephone was when he called to tell me 3DO had acquired us. The first time I ever spoke to Andrew was when I came into the 3DO offices after I had already moved to California. We basically lived and did business in this world. We would go into the server and interact through our game. To us, it was like our office: we all worked on the game, in the game.

Damion: We all worked 12 hours a day, 15 days a week.
(Note: PCG does not promote working 15 days a week, nor believes anything Damion says.)

PCG: Living so far apart, how did you all meet?

Damion: One of the people who Archetype Interactive hired to cover the business side knew that they needed more people to work on game design and room design. Since Andrew and Chris were busy with the graphics engine, they got me to work on gameplay.

Rob: I started off when the alpha was already out. I got into it, and kept asking Andrew and Chris, "Where's the beta? When is the beta coming out?" I remember walking up to Damion in the game and telling him "Hey, I know you guys are really behind on your beta." At this time I knew nothing of the state of their company--I was completely making it up on the spot. I told Damion he should hire me to build his levels. He told me to send in a sample level and I did. I basically bluffed my way in.

Damion: At the time we were looking for anyone who was willing to work for free, and Rob was that stupid. (everyone laughs except Rob)

Rob: I remember them telling me, "We can only pay you a little bit here and there." And I thought to myself, "Wait--you're gonna give me money!?!"

Damion: I still have not met the guy who did the music face to face.

Chris: Neither have I.

Rob: The strange things is, having never seen these people, I pictured them in my head as their avatars. I was expecting this 6-foot man with red hair.

PCG: With red pants. (everyone laughs)
(The Meridian 59 update will include new pants!)

Chris: I think the weirdest was when I talked to Rob on the phone. He has this really deep voice, so I was expecting some rough 200-pound muscle man, but just look at him! (Rob grins) He's married, he has a kid--sheesh.

PCG: What traditional role-playing games did you used to play?

Andrew: Chris and I played AD&D.

Chris: The purpose of Meridian 59 was to create a AD&D-type game online.

Damion: I played AD&D, Top Secret, and Marvel Super Heroes until I realized how bad it was.

Rob: I liked AD&D, but I had nobody to play with. I remember once trying to get my mom to play.