Was the aim with Meridian 59 to make that type of game accessible to a wider audience?
RV: Basically what we did is a MUD. That’s what it was. It was just a visual DikuMUD. You had levels and you had abilities and the advancement where you can kill things and gain experience points and get cool loot and move on from there. And meet people. One of the cool things about Meridian 59 was you had your avatar in the game that you customized and showed off. That game was such a trailblazer that we were very excited to have as many people as we had on it because it was the first time anybody had done this and the internet was just kind of getting there then. But no one really knew what this game was outside of hardcore gamers. Ultima Online was the first to introduce this type of game to a lot more people who had never played much like it before. What was your role on Ultima Online? RV: I was an associate producer and my job was to get the game together in a shippable state and make sure that it had everything it needed to be an online game. At the time Origin didn’t really have
