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World Creation, PMOG/The Nethernet (2006-2009)
In early 2006, my GameLayers co-founder Justin Hall was about to give a talk at South by Southwest dealing with online play. A lot of our friends were playing World of Warcraft but neither of us had the time or dedication to spend 20 hours a week leveling an elaborate character. For the talk, Justin and I conceived of a massively multiplayer online game that you could play just by surfing the web. At the time, Justin was a graduate student in interactive media and needed a thesis project. With my help, he decided to produce a prototype of our game concept for the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media Division.
I was responsible for grounding the concepts into specific interactions, the game, story and visual design. I began with the world: What kind of people lived there? What was the architecture of this place between the real world and the world of information?
I developed the backstory for PMOG: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game while earning my Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. In addition to studying magical realism fiction writing with Aimee Bender, I took several Victorian literature classes. I set PMOG/The Nethernet in a digitized Victorian world, a look generally known as steampunk. I fell in love with the idea of Victorian-era London as similar to the structure of networked information. Both are dramatic mazes of people, structure, and story.
I started by writing short stories that became the “Histories” of this Victorian internet world. The Histories mentioned characters that were later brought out of the fiction and into the live game as Non-Player Character (NPC) virtual puppets. I worked with the community manager at GameLayers, and a volunteer force of player Stewards to run live events using the NPCs. Stewards helped us keep in touch with the rest of the player base, enforced the social rules, and maintained the community standards. Between the Histories, the NPCs, the theme and setting, and my work with the community, I established and perpetuated the fictional universe for PMOG/The Nethernet.
The image on here was the illustration from a story in the Codex fiction, drawn by Colin Adams under my direction.
World Creation, PMOG/The Nethernet (2006-2009)
In early 2006, my GameLayers co-founder Justin Hall was about to give a talk at South by Southwest dealing with online play. A lot of our friends were playing World of Warcraft but neither of us had the time or dedication to spend 20 hours a week leveling an elaborate character. For the talk, Justin and I conceived of a massively multiplayer online game that you could play just by surfing the web. At the time, Justin was a graduate student in interactive media and needed a thesis project. With my help, he decided to produce a prototype of our game concept for the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media Division.
I was responsible for grounding the concepts into specific interactions, the game, story and visual design. I began with the world: What kind of people lived there? What was the architecture of this place between the real world and the world of information?
I developed the backstory for PMOG: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game while earning my Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. In addition to studying magical realism fiction writing with Aimee Bender, I took several Victorian literature classes. I set PMOG/The Nethernet in a digitized Victorian world, a look generally known as steampunk. I fell in love with the idea of Victorian-era London as similar to the structure of networked information. Both are dramatic mazes of people, structure, and story.
I started by writing short stories that became the “Histories” of this Victorian internet world. The Histories mentioned characters that were later brought out of the fiction and into the live game as Non-Player Character (NPC) virtual puppets. I worked with the community manager at GameLayers, and a volunteer force of player Stewards to run live events using the NPCs. Stewards helped us keep in touch with the rest of the player base, enforced the social rules, and maintained the community standards. Between the Histories, the NPCs, the theme and setting, and my work with the community, I established and perpetuated the fictional universe for PMOG/The Nethernet.
The image on here was the illustration from a story in the Codex fiction, drawn by Colin Adams under my direction.