A People’s History of Video Game Development

Tracy and Kel chat with Wendy Despain about her video game origin story, and hear all about an encounter with Majel Roddenberry...

Tracy and Kel chat with the amazing Emily Taylor, who's worked on everything from EverQuest II, to Dragon Age to Spry Fox' Spirit Crossing (forthcoming; check it out at https://playspiritcrossing.com/). Our 11.5 listeners are in for a real treat!

Tracy and Kel talk about game developer career life, from layoffs to contract work to the changing shape of development teams over time. 

Tracy and Kel talk about industry veteran Graeme Davis, networking and how to not be remembered as “that guy who smelled like pizza.”

Tracy and Kel talk about the problem with faceless enemies, and reminisce about creating quests for EverQuest and Elder Scrolls Online.

Tracy and Kel talk about the ways people role play beyond the screen and text-based games, including costume events, Renaissance Faires and the SCA, D&D, and LARPs.  They also discuss some of the history of that tradition, and how far into the past role play nerds can be traced.

In their third episode, Tracy and Kel talk about getting into the game development industry from a slightly different angle: spicy chat rooms on the earliest incarnations of the World Wide Web. Kel talks about their break into the industry from a different kind of text-based role playing, and why no one would let them touch the live build ever again.

In this episode of "A People's History of Video Game Development," hosts Kel Bachus and Tracy Seamster talk about the very early origins of text-based role play, and what players were looking for in immersive experiences. They talk about community building across the fourth wall, and how a surprising number of successful designers in those contexts were femmes or women -- and why. 

Join Tracy Seamster and Kel Bachus as they delve into the fascinating world of early online gaming, specifically the text-based adventures that shaped the industry. From the start of Tracy’s developer journey designing content for Gemstone 3 in 1996 to managing the intricacies of player experience in classic text-based multiplayer environments, they share their unique experiences. Discover what it was like working on some of the very earliest multiplayer games, the technological challenges they faced, and how these elements influenced the evolution of gaming. This episode covers GE’s “Genie” network, Simutronics’ Gemstone 3 and Xena and Hercules, some of the earliest online game technology, including MUDs and chat room role play. Perfect for gaming enthusiasts and nostalgics alike, this episode reveals the roots of modern mutiplayer games through storytelling, humor, and a touch of personal history.