"one night while playing Lemmings he had been playing some strange, text-based game on a BBS."
For those of you that don't know him, John Pritchett is the current programer of Tradewars 2002 and also heads Epic Interactive strategy. I've never heard of the guy, but I guess he's pretty important if I'm interviewing him. He also owns the rights to some tradewars 2002 game. I think he was on that "Who wants to be a Millionare?" Show also.
**My first question is, what do you do besides program Tradewars? I've heard reports from someone that there's a John Pritchett working at a local McDonald's in Fresno, CA.**
Yeah, that's me. And I'm also an editorial cartoonist in Hawaii, and I occasionally show up on TV credits as a sound technician. Actually, I considered changing my name because this one is way too common :(
Seriously, though. I actually do this full time. Because of my wife's career, we need to be pretty mobile, which means I can't really spend too much time with any one company. So we decided that I would take a shot at building my own company on the Internet so I can carry it with me wherever we decide to go. My work with Trade Wars has been very helpful in this way, because it puts me in contact with people who are active in the gaming industry (it's amazing how many people have played this game). Trade Wars isn't my only project, of course, but most of my other projects are still in R&D.;
I'm currently in Oklahoma City, but I expect to be in a small town in Nebraska within a few months :( Not a lot of game development going on in that neck of the woods.
Some of you may know of the last company I worked for. It was Multi Service, the company that runs Metropolis BBS on the side. That's where I met the Martins. That's an interesting story, actually...
**Care to elaborate on this story?**
Certainly :) I might as well give an overview of my history with Trade Wars, if you don't think it's too long-winded.
It was always my dream to be an independent software developer, or more specifically, a game developer. But I always believed it was a long shot, and I didn't focus my efforts on making that happen. I got a degree in a non-computer field, and when I graduated, I looked for work that was focused on my field of study, yet computer related. I ended up going to work for Multi Service out of college, back in '94. I worked in the billing department (their primary business is a fuel credit card for fleet customers). This was not at all interesting to me, but I chose the job over more interesting jobs in other areas (including a job designing control systems for satellites) so I could stay close to my then girlfriend, Angel.
After about 6 months at that job, I was driving to work and I rear-ended a green minivan at a stoplight. The occupants were very understanding, and as we discussed what we should do, it became obvious that we all worked at the same company. They introduced themselves as Gary and Mary Ann Martin, and they said they ran Metropolis BBS for Multi Service. I had no idea who they were, or that Multi Service even ran a BBS. Later that same day I requested to begin working part time in that department, and ended up doing projects for Gary.
One morning while analyzing the BBS audit trail, Gary casually mentioned that he was a game author. This caught my attention, obviously. I asked for details, and he told me about Trade Wars 2002. I had done some BBSing in college, though very little, and I had heard of the game. Since my exposure to BBS doors was very limited, I was impressed by this. He then mentioned that he needed someone to handle bug reports because he and Mary Ann had become too busy lately. He said that he had been reluctant to bring anyone in on the project, but that he was confident of my skills and judgment (a decision that I'm sure he came to regret ;).
That was about TWv2b5, and I worked a few hours a week for awhile doing minor bug revisions. The first revision that many of you will recall was the Type II TransWarp drive. This went on for awhile, and after I had been at Multi Service for two years, I decided to propose a deal with Gary and Mary Ann. I knew I wouldn't be staying in Kansas City for much longer, and that I'd be traveling with Angel (who was my fiancé by that point), and I decided to take a chance on a career path that would be more portable, not to mention more enjoyable. The Martins agreed to provide a small but guaranteed monthly salary if I would take the lead role on an online game project, a sequel to Trade Wars. This was very exciting to me, and I decided that with the small amount they offered, and my savings, and by moving back in with my mother so I could live rent-free (she's always been supportive of my crazy dreams :), I could give it a go.
Well, obviously, things went off track. Not long after I had designed a game proposal, Gary and I agreed that it would not be acceptable to release a sequel to a game that was never complete. Gary had been selling registrations to a game that was never bug free. We agreed that in order to avoid alienating our prospective market, I should attempt to fix a few of the serious problems. One of those fixes, unfortunately, was multiplayer interaction. I set out to design a multiplayer solution for the game, and the result was TWv3. In hindsight, this was the wrong move, because the logic of the code was just not suited to multiplayer. I had little time for anything but TW revision for a very long time, and hopes of starting work on the sequel faded. After awhile, it became clear that I could not continue working under the current arrangement without bringing in more revenue. I designed the Gold upgrade as an attempt to continue funding my efforts. Gold has sold at a slow, steady pace since it was released, but it never generated the kind of revenue spike that we needed to proceed, and a few months after Gold had been released I was forced to leave Martech. In an attempt to forge my own path without completely ditching everything I had done and was doing, I conceived the game server idea. I formed my own company around the general concept of persistent, multiplayer game design, and started development of TWGS as the first step toward my goals. Luckily, TWGS has done well enough to allow me to continue working full-time on these projects. v1.00 was released the same month I married Angel, and the revenue has been enough to keep her from shutting me down ;)
At this point, I'm trying to turn my focus to the online game server concept in general, and perhaps to other game designs. In order to free up more time, I have chosen a programmer who can continue Trade Wars support in my place, in a role similar to my earlier role with Martech. Trade Wars will continue to require a good deal of support in the near future, and I want to provide that. But the reality is that I can't continue to focus so much of my time on it if I want to make any real progress with EIS.
**There you go folks, John got a job by getting into a damn traffic accident! If only that opportunity landed into MY lap when I crash someone's car. All I get is higher insurance. :/ But you threw in there that Gary didn't approve of your judgement. where didn't you see eye to eye with Gary and what was it like working for him when you were on contract?**
It really was an unusual set of coincidences that led me to this. The coincidences go even further. When I was in college, I published two cartoon strips, one at my college and one at the college my friend attended. He was an editor at that newspaper, and the managing editor was a guy named Ed. I spent a few late nights at the staff offices playing Lemmings with the guys, including Ed. About a year and a half later, after I graduated and interviewed at Multi Service, one of the interviewers seemed oddly familiar. It was Ed from the newspaper. And as it turns out, this was the same person who had approached the Martins about 6 months earlier with the idea of bringing their BBS, Metropolis, to Multi Service. He had convinced the owner of the company that there was a future in online entertainment, and was made the head of the new Metropolis BBS project. In hindsight, I can remember one night while playing Lemmings he had been playing some strange, text-based game on a BBS. He explained briefly what it was, but I wasn't very interested. This was about two years before I met Gary and Mary Ann.
But getting to your next question. It wasn't so much that Gary didn't approve of my judgment, but that I added a great deal of complexity to the code. It wasn't a simple task to convert the game to multiplayer. It would have been much simpler in hindsight to rewrite the game with a true multiplayer model. But to continue working with the original code, I created a complex file sharing system. After Gary looked it over, he commented that I had created a nuclear warhead to hunt a rabbit :) I honestly believe it would be impossible to do what I set out to do in a simpler way. The mistake was in not doing a rewrite in the first place, and that was a mutual decision. We had no idea what we were getting into! If we did, I doubt we would have undertaken the project at all.
What has kept me interested in the project for this long is R&D.; Quite a bit of what I have put into TW and Gold has been in the spirit of experimentation, and will be useful in future projects. But this was not a feeling that Gary shared with me. It was always clear that I was looking toward a bigger picture and Gary was just interested in finishing Trade Wars. This was never more than a hobby for the Martins.
Despite our disagreements on the way the project should have progressed, it was always great working for Gary and Mary Ann. I appreciate their willingness to let me take such a controlling role in their game. I honestly wish that things had progressed as we first intended, because I would love to have written a game with Gary. The TW sequel design we collaborated on is one of the most interesting game concepts I have conceived. Maybe it'll see the light of day yet :)
**Now that Gary has sold you the rights to Tradewars, he's pretty much out of the picture in this industry. Why do you think he wanted to leave?**
I wouldn't presume to speak for Gary about that. I do know that he loves gaming. But as I said before, he has never allowed himself to view it as more than a hobby, and at this time there are more important things in his life. I believe he could work up a project in the future if he decides to put his energy into it. He has turned down opportunities to work with game companies in the past. I wouldn't say this is the last we'll hear of Gary in the online game industry. In a way, having Trade Wars out from under his control opens him up to consider completely fresh projects. He put a lot of years into Trade Wars, and it's no wonder that he reached a point of burn-out.
**[To Be continued....](/post/1155)**