Why was Faldon abandoned for so long anyway

During college I worked on the game here and there, but mostly I coded for fun and what was interesting instead of trying to make a go of the game. No business sense.

After college I had about $10K in savings and did work on the new client pretty well that year, but I ran out of money and had to get real work.

I also discovered that if I code for more than (say) 10 hours a day, I start to get carpal tunnel symptoms. I can't risk not being able to provide an income (so, 8 hours of coding spoken for) for any game.

Besides that, I remember some guy dropped out of school to play the game. And another guy camping a monster spot for monsters to get an item that, turns out, actually wasn't on the drop list. (I added it so that he got it and stopped.) I started to feel bad about the effect creating an MMORPG has on other peoples' lives and what they would otherwise have done with their time.

This time around I've been trying to improve the game at a very slow and sustainable pace. Who knows if it'll go anywhere, but if I keep improving it, it may end up a fun little game my kids can enjoy, and hopefully other people too, a bit of a penance for making it in the first place. We'll see.

Do MMORPGs have to be addictive like that, though? IS that their nature, or do people just copy each others' design decisions unthinkingly?

I used to read a game development website called Gamasutra -- it was fairly technical at the time -- and it published an article that was real wake-up call to me. It framed, quite enthusiastically, various MMORPG game design choices in terms of Skinner boxes. There is, in that way of thinking, no love for mankind.

I'm glad you got some enjoyment from the game. But to me at least, there's still that awful question, what would you otherwise have accomplished with the time spent? By creating this game, what good things have I taken out of the world? You can see why I didn't go into game development as a profession

Interesting insight.

I played this game some 25 years ago, and online gaming (particularly the world of Ultima Online) did hurt me as I pursued my collegiate studies.  It was not the only thing that hurt of course- you discover a lot of fun but distracting and often destructive things in your late teenage years, and that's part of growing up.  Eventually I got serious about school and career, and things turned out ok, though not without some bumps and changes of direction.  Could I have gotten myself on the correct path sooner, if I hadn't spent so much time playing games, or doing other silly young person things?  Maybe, but when you're 18, 20, it's hard to really know what you want to be or do forever.  Plus life is about making some mistakes.

Thanks for sharing your self-reflection, James.  I think your video game creation did bring enjoyment to many, and contributed to the social experiment that is the Internet.  People's reactions to the game, whether they be addictive or not, seems more of a reflection on them than on the game itself.