PATHS INTO THE games industry can be twisty, even criminal. Apogee founder Scott Miller and id Software co-founder John Carmack famously broke into their respective schools to continue their programming experiments after regular hours. Many aspiring developers didn’t even know they could get paid to design games for a living.
Brad McQuaid knew, and he began making plans to realize his dreams at an early age. “In junior high, there was an introduction to computers course. I think they were Apple IIes. The computer teacher was really cool. What he'd do is he would leave his room open at lunch, and people who maybe had those machines at home--I couldn't afford it--would play it games, and we could play them during lunch.”
The games McQuaid and his classmates played were simple. Then someone brought in Ultima II. McQuaid was astounded. He was a huge D&D fan, playing whenever he could round up friends. That was a chore, though. Some kids had too much homework; others had extracurricular activities. Without a Dungeon Master and a few players, D&D went from a game of limitless possibilities to a few sheets of paper and a bunch of weirdly shaped dice.
Ultima II was different. When he played it, the game’s code was the Dungeon Master, and all the maps and quests were pre-made. Best of all, he didn’t need anyone else to play it. “It just blew my mind. At that point, I knew that's what I wanted to do: Make RPGs for computers. A lot of kids going through junior high and high school, and even in college, aren't sure what they want to do. Maybe they get the wrong degree. I knew. I knew deep in my heart: Games.”
McQuaid saved for months to buy a computer. As soon as he brought home his first PC, a Commodore Amiga, his first move was to connect to bulletin board systems, or BBSes, online corkboards where users could exchange messages and post files. McQuaid wasn’t only out to make friends. He wanted to assemble a small team.
“I met some people locally: met an artist, met another programmer. Around that time, I also realized that even then, the mid to late '80s, it was late to completely create your own game [on your own]. You needed an artist, and you needed help.”
Steve Clover answered McQuaid’s message. He was a programmer, too, and aspired to make games. They also shared a passion for games like Wizardry and Ultima, dungeon crawlers consisting of crypts, dungeons, and forests where monsters roamed. They founded a company, calling it MicroGenesis, and broke ground on their first title.
“Tolkien had a great quote about sub-creation: About how we're made in God's image, and we want to create worlds as well,” said McQuaid, “so we took Genesis, which is the creation of a world, but obviously we're not doing it like God did it. We're doing it on a micro level.”
Until they could publish a game and make millions, McQuaid and Clover held down day jobs. Clover was an IT specialist at a nursery, and McQuaid got a job there as an IT manager. Together they built business apps and generated reports. After work, they retired to their homes and worked on WarWizard.
WarWizard was the fantasy RPG both guys had dreamed of building. Players are cast as the titular WarWizard, a spellcaster who completes quests and learns spells. The game’s graphics were sophisticated for the time, rendered in VGA (Video Graphics Array) mode to display scenes at up to 640x480 resolution. WarWizard’s biggest selling point was its gameplay. The combat system was deep, permitting players to attack specific body parts such as legs to slow enemy movement, and opponents could be left helpless if all their limbs suffered too much punishment. So, too, could the WarWizard.
McQuaid and Clover threw in with Milo Cooper, an artist they hired online, to develop the game for the Amiga. Clover worked on an Atari ST, so they turned their attention to converting the game’s code for that platform after shipping the Amiga version. As production went on, McQuaid divided his time between writing code and making high-level decisions about gameplay and marketing.
“I was acting as the lead programmer and producer, although I didn't even know the term producer at the time. I was just managing and encouraging people, putting things together, making sure everything fit. Whatever worked. It was an all-hands-on-deck time, helping out wherever you can, finding your gifts in different areas, doing whatever you can do.”
Late in development, McQuaid sprang for an apartment so he, Clover, and Milo could work closely without distractions such as needing to pick up the phone to talk. “If I needed something from one of them, I'd go knock on their door. If they needed something from me, they'd come knock on mine. That was MicroGenesis.”
Sales trickled in. Clover converted WarWizard to IBM-compatible PCs, and the trio pitched the game to Epic MegaGames, a publisher/developer experienced in shareware, giving away the first episode free as a way to entice players to mail a check in exchange for the rest of the game.
Epic’s representatives turned them down. RPGs were for nerds; they were more interested in titles like Jazz Jackrabbit, an action-platform and Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski’s first game.
“We had to self-distribute. That curbed a lot of the potential of the game. You'd put games up on Usenet. You'd make a shareware version, and you'd put it out there on newsgroups for people to download.”
WarWizard brought in around $8,000. It wasn’t enough for McQuaid, Clover, and Milo to quit their day jobs, but it justified development of WarWizard 2. When the game progressed far enough for the guys to put together a demo, they made the rounds to publishers again. Once again, they were met with reticence, though for a different reason. While they’d shipped a game themselves, they had no experience working with publishers. They knew how to deposit checks and swipe credit cards from the customers who wanted to play all of WarWizard, but they had no idea how to do things like set up contracts, pre-plan a project’s scope of work, and determine a budget to complete it.
“What are we going to do?” Clover asked one afternoon in late November of 1995. “Are we going to keep doing this, or try something else creative?”
McQuaid took a breath. “What the heck, let's just release it publicly. We've been showing it exclusively to publishers. Let's just put it out there on the boards and see what people think.”
The three guys typed up a text file explaining who they were and how to install and play WarWizard 2. When Clover got cold feet, McQuaid reassured him. They were going to upload their demo—no more, no less. Hopefully, a publisher would play it and like it enough to bankroll the rest.
Decided, the guys zipped (compressed) the document along with the game’s data and uploaded it to BBSes. Four months later, the phone rang. McQuaid answered, and John Smedley, co-head of Sony Interactive Studios America, introduced himself and made his pitch.
“I've got good news and bad news for you,” he said. “The bad news is, we don't want to finish WarWizard 2. The good news is, we want to make a 3D, online RPG.”
At first, McQuaid didn’t understand. What did WarWizard 2 have to do with this guy’s plan to make a 3D roleplaying game? Then he got it. Smed loved his games, but he considered WarWizard a resume of sorts, proof positive that these guys had what it took to build something greater.
“Ultimately, we did fail,” McQuaid admitted. “The WarWizard 2 demo wasn't published, but it's what got us noticed by John Smedley at Sony. It turned out to be a bridge into professional game development. I have no regrets.”
