I was a Lego kid when I was growing up. Um, you know, age whatever five to 11 or so, and then when I was 11 -- this was 1981/82 in England, I, uh, I got a computer. Um, and it was just starting to ship home computers. In -- in those days, uh, the first thing you did was start the program on those computers and then the second thing you did was start to try and work out how to make games. Um, so, you know, everyone was kind of doing it for a little while, but I stuck with it for a bit longer than most people. Um, and specifically I think the thing that really switched it over for me as, uh, again age about 12 now, the, uh, guy who ran the computer lab at school gave me a, uh, dodgy, uh, somewhat illegal username, password, set of phone numbers, etc, to go through a very archaic precursor to the internet to a mainframe at Essex University to play a game called MUD, or Multi User Dungeon. And, uh, age 12, that was a pretty influential experience on me. Um, I started playing MUD. I, uh, played a lot of MUD. Um, you could only play between 1AM and 7AM. So, on school days I would wake up about four and play for a couple of hours and then go to school. And on the weekends I would stay up all night and just play all night long. Uh, so I played a lot of MUD and, uh, I then, you know, stopped doing computer games for a little bit, but after school before I went to university I got back interested in MUDs and I met a guy and we started a MUD together, and that was my first company. Uh, the game is called Avalon and it's still running today. Um, and so I think, you know, if you look at your pivot points in life and those places you could have gone in different directions, there were certainly lots of those, and some of them came later in life. But, uh, looking back in retrospect it's quite easy to see it's a very smooth continuum from making things out of Lego, to playing and making MUDs, to making MUDs again, to working on MMOGs and Puzzle Pirates and so on, which leads me to think that I'm probably not good for anything else much. Um, I feel like I've been sort of accidentally or by self-inclination and obsession sort of trained to do what I do. Um, and, uh, and I'm not sure, uh, if the end of the world came what useful function I would provide in an agrarian or even somewhat industrial society.
