Introduction
On October 14, 2008, Richard Garriott de Cayeux became the first video game developer to travel into space, a journey made possible by a true spirit of adventure and a fortune earned as a role-playing game pioneer and entrepreneur. Richard’s fascinating story, from teen game developer to astronaut, is just one of the 15 diverse, detailed, and enlightening interviews with 16 industry leaders in Online Game Pioneers at Work.
Like Garriott, video games have come a long way over the last 40 years. From the lab to the arcade, and from the arcade to the home, the video game market continues to expand. There are not only new platforms and genres, but new and exciting ways to discover, buy, and play video games. There are, effectively, whole new worlds to explore.
The Internet has made a significant contribution to the advancement of the video game as an entertainment medium and as a business, connecting a diverse number of players around the world and frequently at scales beyond anything we would have ever imagined.
Indeed, many of the creative and business leaders in this collection of interviews have at times commented on the pace at which the online game will displace other forms of interactive entertainment. Online games are everywhere. They’re on mobile phones, tablets, and virtual reality headsets. They’re digitally distributed, streamed in real time, and played in web browsers. They’re free-to-play, buy-to-play, and subscriber-only. They’re social, casual, and massively multiplayer; they’re sandboxes, theme parks, and virtual worlds. They’re esports, played by amateur and professional cyberathletes, covered by ESPN, and watched by audiences rivaling those for other sports and competitions.
More than just an entertainment product category, online games have produced wide-ranging social benefits, too. Online games connect disparate groups of people within safe, virtual spaces, enabling players to communicate, cooperate, and learn together more effectively without the physical and social boundaries that hold us back in the real world. While some developers of serious games construct virtual environments where we can practice vital workplace and emergency response skills, others create online experiences from which we come away better informed.
In Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play, published in 2012, I spoke with 18 founders of successful console and PC video game companies about their stories and what we could learn from them. I wanted to learn about the challenges of entrepreneurship, and specifically, how those who had gone before managed to come out alive and on top.
With Online Game Pioneers at Work, I continue that good work through interviews with 16 founders of successful online game companies, but with an eye toward the shift to the online future of video games. In this collection, you will enjoy some of the deepest treatments of the business of video games, as well as some of the most exhaustive and illuminating interviews with working founders of major entertainment companies.
I hope the questions I’ve asked have revealed insights into online games that you will find informative, uplifting, and never less than entertaining.
—Morgan Ramsay
Founder, President & CEO
Entertainment Media Council