I promised Gilroy I'd tell a bit about what it was like working on Meridian. So, here it is. ;)

As many know, I am a huge fan of online games. I started playing text MUDs in college in 1992. After about a year of playing, I became a "wizard" on one MUD, which meant I could use a coding language to add to it. It's funny, I never thought I'd get paid to do the same thing later in my life.

When I was hired at 3DO, Meridian was obviously in decline. I had not heard much about the game before my interview; heck, when I first heard about it and that 3DO was making the game, I thought it was a game for the 3DO console! Aphasia was the only programmer on the project at the time, and interviewed me. From my interview I got the idea that the company wasn't very enthusiastic about the game. However, it was a chance to do what I had spent many hours doing in college: coding on an online game.

So, I agreed to start work at the company after a bit. I moved to California and started work on the game. After a bit of time on the game, I started to learn about the immense history of the game's development. I heard the stories about the older developers and met the last few people at the company that were at one time involved with the project. I also learned that originally Meridian 59 was supposed to be the cornerstone of the company's then-enthusiastic foray into the world of online games.

To give a bit of history, 3DO bought Archetype (the original developers of Meridian, AKA the Kirmses, Sellers, and Schuberts) and I heard they planned to marry that with another company they had acquired, New World Computing. I'm sure you can see what that would have produced. The company wanted to create a huge web portal for different types of online games, similar to the Microsoft's Zone or Sony's Station. Well, after some evaluation, 3DO thought the endeavor would cost too much money and would not produce enough profit. The plans for all online games fizzled, sending a lot of the old Meridian developers scurrying for jobs at other companies. Only a few stayed to work in other areas or to work on the now more-or-less doomed Meridian.

When I started, I was the fourth generation of programmer on the project. As any programmer can tell you, maintaining code is one of the hardest and most thankless tasks imaginable. As the code passes through more and more people and teams, the code gets harder to deal with and increasingly more fragile. Well, after three other teams had dealt with the code, some of them containing less-than-spectacular programmers, I had a mess to deal with. ;)

But, it was still exciting work. Working on a commercial game at a company is quite different than working on a free MUD on your spare time. There are more elements to consider, and you need a lot more planning to make sure that things go smoothly. On a free MUD, accidentally deleting the player files is an honest mistake that might make the MUD population low for a while; on a commercial game it is almost a reason to commit seppuku. (Thank god someone made a backup that day ;)

One of the biggest misconceptions is that people think the development team is made of several people. Although there are a lot of names listed in the credits, this reflects people who contributed more than people who worked full-time on the game. At the height of the game since I've worked there, we had 8 people full-time dedicated to the game: 3 designers/programmers, 3 artists, one events coordinator, and one director. During the latter part of Dark Auspices, this team had shrunk down to 4: 2 designers/programmers, no artists (but they had completed all the art that was required in the original design), one new events coordinator, and one director. These numbers do not include the people on the customer service side of things (IE, the Guardians).

The most crippling aspect of the game was always not having enough resources. Although I'm quite good at programming, I don't have a whole lot of specialized knowledge and am hardly a master programmer. I started as a Software Engineer I and was promoted to Software Engineer II after my tenure on Meridian. My fellow designer/programmer was more designer than programmer, so I was the technical expert on the team (which scared the hell out of me!). We tried to interview lead programmers, but there are few client/server programmers that are experienced enough to be a lead while willing to settle for the (comparatively) low wages of the game industry. We had to beg/borrow/steal art for any corrections; that's why the chocolate mints are so pixelized in your inventory, they were never intended to be held in the inventory, just viewed on a bed in a rented room. :) In addition, Meridian always seemed lowest in priority when it came to internal testers; I respect and appreciate our Beta testers, but the internal testers are usually able to attack the game with a measured ferocity that just cannot be replaced.

I also think people don't understand how the game industry works. Wages are low. I was salaried, with no chance for overtime. I also made about half what I could have if I had worked for any other company in the Silicon Valley with my programming skills. Look up a salary survey for programmers, and see what a Software Engineer in Silicon Valley with three years of C++ programming experience can make. I guarantee I make no where near that. :)

People also seem to think that everyone has complete creative control over the project. The general direction the game takes can be suggested by the programmers/designers, but it is the managers who usually set the general direction and the schedules. Usually, the managers only tell us as much as we need to know to get our job done. We often had to do everything short of threaten to quit if we wanted to make changes to the design after it was set. The schedules were tight, and the game was only delayed if the designers/programmers were late in finishing the release. We were under constant pressure to not fall behind and to finish the updates on time. In addition, the major design features of the last three updates had been decided before I even started at the company. Aphasia (who left the company during the development of Dark Auspices) was the lead designer at the time and was asked to design out the updates before the start of Insurrection. This included all the art and sounds we required, and most of that was done before we even finished Insurrection. So, major elements of the design were locked in and we couldn't be very flexible as new information presented itself.

The only update we had any real input into was the last one, the "Liberation" patch. I had argued that the game had terrible bugs that needed to be fixed, and that we needed time to fix them. We were putting quick fix over quick fix and the game engine was quickly becoming unstable. The design of the combat system had so many special-cases and exceptions that it was nearly impossible to work with. Aythya and I worked to improve the spells and to re-work the combat system into something manageable. Were we successful? Partially. We replaced some of the old bugs with a lot of new ones, and it would have been nice to have tested things more.

Here's a confession, so get ready for it: Yeah, I fucked up on the combat code. I made plate/gauntlets/helmet/KS too powerful and too able to absorb damage. If I had the time to go fix it, I would rebalance it. This next part isn't so much a confession as an explanation: it was never our intention to entirely remove the old style touch spells. The classic complaint from mages was that they had to learn weaponcraft in order to fight things, because reagents were so damned expensive. Well, the new style of touch spells was supposed to fix that. A high mysticism (or punch skill) and a high percent in a touch spell would allow the mage to hit most of the time with the touch spell. The touch spell did damage comparable to a long sword or a mystic sword at high levels. Well, that was the intention, anyway, YMMV.

We had hoped to re-introduce the old-style touch spells in the next update, but with different mechanics. See, the old style touch spells worked such that every time you cast them, it was like trying to "punch" an enemy. This meant that touch spells used both the fragile spellcasting code AND the buggy combat code. It was a nightmare to alter them at all. Since we had no artists to create new spell icons, we decided to replace the old touch spells with the new version. Our plan was to give the mages the equivalent of weapons with the new touch spells, then on the next update (which we would have theoretically had full design control of), we would have re-introduced the old style touch spells with much cleaner code. Well, that "next" update never happened.

After the Liberation patch and a few quick fixes afterward, I was removed from full-time Meridian work. Aythya had been removed a few months before that to work on Crusaders of Might & Magic for the PC, the project I was also to work on. I was sad to leave, but optimistic that something cool would happen soon in the future. I was supposed to work on the multi-player aspects of Crusaders. Well, if you've played the game (and let me apologize now if you have), you'll notice that there's no multi-player....

So, I decided to leave 3DO after working on some mediocre single-player games. It was a sad decision, really, but I carry with me a lot of good memories and a lot of good friends. I want to stay in the online game medium, so if anyone has any good job leads.... ;) My current plans are go to the Game Developer's Conference (the GDC) later this month and do some job hunting there. I've also got a few friends in the industry that are trying to convince me to work at their companies. In short, I'm not going to starve to death anytime soon.

People ask me what that means for Meridian now that I'm gone. I can't say anything specific, but the number of full-time people on the game in the whole company is now 0. Even the Guardians are part-timers on the game. No development resources are focused on the game, so I think we all know what that means. When will it die? I don't know, but I'd guess before the year's out. I was never told anything by management. :)

Well, in the mean time, I'm going to help Gilroy a bit with his site. It's a great site, and he's been really great in allowing me to keep in contact with the Meridian fans via this WWW page and an Email account. I hope to keep in touch for quite a while to come. :) I'll be reading the discussion boards, so post any info you have on there.

So, that's an insider's view of things. A toast to Meridian 59! May it never be forgotten.

-Psychochild, aka Brian Green