The year was 1986 and my brother and I were heavily into the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons as well as this really cool new thing known as ‘computer gaming'. We'd spend entire nights getting lost in the magic of Bard's Tale and Ultima. Steve was working as a silk screen printer and I was teaching high school art classes. In our free time we designed a couple of D & D modules in hopes of selling them, but we quickly realized it was nothing we'd make a living at – besides we were having a lot of fun drawing with some basic art programs on our Amiga computers.

Then came the fateful night that changed everything. We were at a friend's house looking at some new Amiga games and we noticed that the artwork was not quite as good as what Steve and I were creating. What happened next was a moment I still remember with perfect clarity. Steve looked over at me and said "We should make our own computer game".  The idea made perfect sense. We could combine our love of role playing and computer gaming. And that was the spark that started the fire.

The beginning was really rough. We had no idea what we were doing because no one had ever done something like this before. Of course, all our family and friends said it was a cool, but you could see on their faces that they thought it was a pipe dream. Still, we didn't let that slow us down. Steve's roommate had some experience with programming so we explained our idea for a dungeon computer game to him. He said it'd be easy and he'd be happy to help us; all we had to do was draw up a grid for the dungeon and then create a separate art file for each of the four directions you could look in from each point on the grid. However, when Steve and I sat down with our 2 room demo dungeon, we quickly realized we would need to generate hundreds, if not thousands, of individual files to create the gaming experience we wanted. Impossible, we thought. We had our first big obstacle in front of us and we had to overcome it.

Looking for help, we visited a friend who owned a store that sold game software and showed him our work so far and we explained our troubles to him. He was very impressed with our art and design and said we should meet a young programmer he knew named Ben Gokey. So we met Ben. He was only 19 years old and a self taught programmer, but the programming examples he showed us were very cool. So we gave Ben our art files and agreed to meet with him a week later.

Man, what a difference seven days can make. Ben sat us down and showed us what he'd done and it was one of the most exciting things I'd seen in my life. He'd taken our art work and created a small dungeon that you could actually walk around in. It was at that second we KNEW this was going to happen.

Realizing the game was too much work for one programmer, Ben brought in a friend of his, Rick Johnson. Rick was just as enthusiastic about computer games as Ben and he was filled with creative energy. So, fueled by our excitement for the game, the four of us worked for six months in our spare time to build a demo for our first game – BLACK CRYPT for the Amiga.

Proud of our work, we printed up some fliers and took it to the Amiga users group that met at GENCON every year in Milwaukee. When we asked if they'd like to see it they were very supportive and said yes. As soon as we loaded it up everyone was amazed. Soon our demo was on almost all of their machines, causing a big crowd to gather around. It was great to see these tough critics getting so excited about our work. Even more importantly, their excitement led to our first PRINTED mention in the rumor section of Computer Gaming World. It was a huge moment for us and a much needed source of encouragement that we could feed off of.

Fresh from our success at GENCON we got very serious about making a really great demo to send out to publishers. Those were good times with the four of us working together. It was very fluid and easy, with lots of creativity...and more than a little friendly competition. We created 5 monsters and every time Steve drew one I would be driven to try and outdo him which in turn made him want to outdo me. I'm convinced it was that rivalry that gave us such high quality artwork. Also, we had to be resourceful in other areas, such as sound. The noise of the creature that slid along the ceiling was created by scrapping a microphone across my facial stubble and then modifying the sound file. The smashing of trashcan lids was used for armor. The sound of a heavy stone door sliding closed was really an explosion, mixed in with the roar of a lion playing backwards. Rick even provided one of his horrific growls for one of the creatures. I also brought in Kevin Schilder, a college buddy of mine who was a high school music teacher, to help us write the music for the opening title of BLACK CRYPT. (Happily, Kevin is still our music director!)

Then came the big day. After months and months of working in our spare time, we pulled an all nighter at Ben's house where we play tested our bigger, better demo and fixed all the bugs. Then, in the early morning, we sent out 10 copies of the game to 10 different publishers. With more than a little anticipation, we settled in for a long wait because we'd been told it would be weeks or months before anyone got back to us. Much to our surprise, after sending the game out on a Saturday we had 6 offers by the following Tuesday. Later we found out that the other 4 publishers had a policy of not replying to demos that were sent to them - so basically, everyone who could love the game, loved it . Once the final offers were in, we were flown out to 2 big game companies to discuss publishing deals. After a lot of debate we decided to go with Electronic Arts.

So that's how it all began. Since then we've joined forces with Activision and grown from 4 people to 185. We've acquired a huge new office building complete with a motion capture studio, sound studio, and 3D scanning equipment. We've created many popular titles and sold millions of games. And it all began with one little sentence: "We should make our own computer game."