WEBVTT

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(upbeat ambient music)

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- Furcadia is a primarily
social virtual world

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where players take on avatars
of anthropomorphic animals.

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The game was created by and
for the furry community,

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though in its heyday,
its popularity extended

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into the mainstream of the internet.

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For a subculture frequently
targeted by internet trolls

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and far right fear mongering,
Furcadia has been a space

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to simply hang out without
unwanted attention or harassment.

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Few virtual worlds have
offered their players

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as much ability to
shape their surroundings

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as Furcadia.

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Players can create their
own areas called dreams

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and customize their workings
using an accessible,

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yet robust scripting language
developed specifically

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for the game.

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Furcadia\'s exceptionally
artistic community

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took to these tools well
and player-created dreams

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soon proliferated across its servers.

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Furcadia is uncommonly
dedicated to its player base

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and these days, Dragon\'s
Eye Productions is almost

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entirely staffed by longtime members

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of the Furcadia community.

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We spoke with the game\'s creator, Dr. Cat,

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about how he and his
colleagues have kept it running

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for so long.

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- I\'m Dr. Cat and I\'ve
been making computer games

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professionally for over 40 years,

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I actually use Dr. Cat
for just about everything

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in real life, except like tax
forms and driver\'s licenses.

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I\'ve been going by Dr.
Cat since I was like 17.

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I haven\'t had my name legally changed yet,

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but I will some decade.

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I\'m best known for the Ultima
series that I worked on

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and for my game for
Furcadia, which I created

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with my partner and best friend Amanda,

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also known as Talzhemir.

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We got a Guinness World
record for the longest,

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continuously running MMORPG Furcadia,

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which we will always have
unless someone invents

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a time machine \'cause we\'re
never shutting it down.

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Furcadia is an MMORPG,
Massively Multiplayer Online

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Role-Playing Game.

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We were inspired by the text
MUDs, which had been around,

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you know, since the late
80s and they kind of

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were split into two main categories.

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There were the combat MUDs,
which like so much of gaming

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was heavily inspired by
Dungeons and Dragons.

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And then the other half
were the social MUDs

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and they tended very often to let players

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build their own areas
and add descriptions,

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some of them had scripting languages.

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They would have people
doing freeform role playing

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and they would have
people just talking about,

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real life and making friends,
which were two things

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you saw a lot less of in the combat MUDs,

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people were very focused
on winning and leveling up

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and so forth.

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In 1994, we made a game
called DragonSpires

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and that actually was a classic,
you know you\'re a knight

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with the sword and there
was an arena to fight in,

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but when we remade it for
Windows 95, Amanda said,

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\"How about we do,\" as she put it,

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\"How about we do the furry game?\"

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And we had never discussed
making a furry game,

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but we both loved talking
animals and the furry fandom

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and things like that.

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And we were both two halves of one brain,

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so I didn\'t have to discuss
with her what that was,

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I just said, \"Okay, yeah.\"

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So we made this social game
and she did a lot of work

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on the website and other
things to try and encourage

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various forms of freeform role
playing, which our community

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really took to and loved
doing and you didn\'t have

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all these built-in rules
to distract you from,

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you know if you wanted to have
a really dramatic sword fight

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with your friend in the
tavern and over an argument,

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you could ham it up all you like.

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You didn\'t have dice
saying, \"Oh no, he hit you

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for eight points and knock you
down and the fight\'s over.\"

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fight ends when you two want it to end.

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Let me try and hit the
button and see if I can

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pop my butterfly wings on
here before we go look around

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a little.

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Oh, there they are, so
we should go somewhere

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more colorful and impressive.

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Go to your B tab, the Go To,
if you hover over the A button,

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you\'ll see it says, \"Go To
Allegria Island-Socializing.\"

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Allegria Islands early on
was the most popular place

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to upload dreams, so
everyone who wanted to find

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new dreams to explore,
they would go there.

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Now it\'s maybe the
second most popular place

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to upload dreams.

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So a dream is a map or in a lot of games

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you would call it a game
level, each place in here

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is a dream.

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You see these portals here
that have names on them,

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the first line is the name of the dream,

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and then the second line
is the name of the creator

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or owner of the dream.

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And if you look here in
these doorways, you see these

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blue and red ones Don\'t
have a dream in them.

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In this particular map, you
can only place your dream

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on these gateways so they\'re
not cluttering everything up

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and so the paths are clear to walk on.

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When you have your own
dream, you can upload more

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of your dreams within it and connect them,

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in whatever network you
want or let other people

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put theirs there.

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Our stated philosophy was,

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\"In your dream, you\'re in charge.\"

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not any of us game creators.

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Whatever rules you want to have,
I mean the basic rules like

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don\'t plot to commit any real world crimes

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when you\'re talking to each
other and just a few things

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apply everywhere, but what
the rules are in your dream,

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that\'s up to the dream owner
and they can enforce them.

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We gave them ways to kick
players out of the dream,

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block them permanently mute
people so they can\'t talk,

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things like that and of course
they control the scripting

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that gives all the
functions for what happens.

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They could do things like
say, \"Oh, I want to be able to

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lock and unlock the gates to my castle.\"

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and they could make something that says,

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\"If somebody pulls this lever
and their name is Varonius,

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then the lever pulls,
but anyone else tries to

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pull the lever it won\'t work.\"

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You can give the dream
staff spoken commands

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to control whatever you want.

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People really do have a
lot of ability to control

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what goes on in their part
of the world, which is neat.

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One of my proudest
accomplishments in the game is the

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scripting language.

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It\'s called DragonSpeak, by
the way, I should mention

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that\'s my baby.

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It\'s not as strong as
typical programming languages

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and I never use the word
programming, I always call it

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scripting because a
normal person will hear

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the programming and
hear, \"Oh, a hard thing

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that only smart people
who are programmers can do

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and I therefore cannot.\"
and they wouldn\'t even try,

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but we\'ve had kids make stuff
in my scripting language.

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It\'s basically chunks of English sentences

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that you paste together
and then you fill in

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a few parameters.

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Like you could say,
\"Whenever anybody steps on a

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purple floor tile, create
a pillow at their feet.\"

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that\'s a one line dragon
speak script that will work.

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Somebody simulated a 2D
graphic adventure game

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where there were full screen pictures

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instead of these tile maps
and you\'d hit an arrow key

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and it would jump you to another location.

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Someone made Ms. Pac-Man,
someone made Bomberfurre,

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which is basically
Bomberman, only you know

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with our little animal characters,

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which I was really impressed
by that was very popular.

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People get very dedicated
when they\'ve decided

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a particular dream is sort of their home.

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Some people have storylines
of the interactions

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between their characters that
have been going on for years

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or even over a decade in some cases.

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A lot of people will just
log off from that dream

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and then in the early years
I put in a feature so that

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when you log back on, you would by default

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appear the same place you logged out from

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and that made a really big difference.

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Again, there\'s more social
continuity, you just come back

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and you\'re home again.

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You don\'t have to walk past the spaceships

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and the anime characters to get back

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to your 20s gangster
story, you\'re just there.

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You\'re always a 20s gangster or a vampire

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or whatever you are.

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Oh, here it is sanctuary.

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There\'s two dreams that players
made, which we converted

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into just permanent maps that are built in

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on our server and if we reboot the server,

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it\'s just there, Sanctuary and Lost Lake.

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Lost Lake was created by a
very nice lay named Alexsi

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who we think was probably
like granny lady age

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and she eventually passed
away, but her dream

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is there forever for all
her friends and all the

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Lost Lake regulars to remember her by.

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Sanctuary was the most
popular dream in Furcadia

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in the mid-to-late 90s.

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Emmy as we know her affectionately,
she created it to be

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guild dedicated to helping
players in any way possible,

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if you have questions about
the game or you needed help

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with anything, she was
already trying to do that

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even before she was a staff member.

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This is the party version of the dream

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that has some extra decorations in it,

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this is a big happy birth.

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Oh, I forgot about this.

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Yeah, this was a birthday party for me

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and oh, this is the green room.

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This was like the place to hang out

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through most of Sanctuary\'s
lifetime, this would be

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the first place you\'d come and some of the

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Sanctuary regulars would always be sitting

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around here, chatting.

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Ahh, this really takes me back.

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Oh, I\'m gonna see if I can
summon you guys over here.

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I forgot Sanctuary has a water slide,

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I don\'t know if it still
works, I\'m probably about

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to be horribly embarrassed.

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Oh my God, it still works.

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You don\'t have to walk,
just sit and enjoy the ride.

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I\'m so happy this still works!

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You see this multi-story building here.

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We don\'t have multi-story
anything, but if you ever played

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some of the Legend of Zelda
games, you may have noticed

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how they kind of faked an
illusion of depth and altitude,

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even though it\'s just a flat 2D tile game.

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Some of our players figured
out how to stack walls

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in just the right
relationship to each other

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to make it look like
a multi-story building

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and this is a fine example here.

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Me and Talzhemir never did
this, but once one player

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figured it out.

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Maybe it was Baron? I can\'t remember.

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Baron was on during our first week

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and he like made a checkers game out of

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red and black pillows and
different colored floor tiles

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and I played checkers
with this ferret guy.

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Everybody was a ferret when
we started, by the way.

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Our character creator let
you pick from six species,

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but we only had art for the
ferret in when we launched.

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We invented minimum viable
product, but we didn\'t have that

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jargon term to call it by
yet, but over the first year

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we got the horse and the wolf and the cat

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and everything put in.

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This is the chapel.

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Emerald herself performed
a number of weddings,

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I haven\'t done as many as Emerald.

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She also invented this
ceremony called heart bonding

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for people who are very close,
but they\'re not married,

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they\'re like close friends or something

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and she\'s done a number of
heart bonding ceremonies

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both here in Sanctuary and elsewhere.

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It was hard not to recruit Emerald Flame,

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I think anybody would\'ve done that,

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she fell in love with the
game as soon as she saw it.

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Emerald was our third member
and then Emerald was good

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friends with someone, a
very bright young programmer

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in Helsinki, Finland.

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He had made a bot for her
sanctuary dream called

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Sancy the Cat, who added
some features to her dream

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that you couldn\'t do in our game system.

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We ended up bringing him
in, making him a partner

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in the company and he
became our lead programmer

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and he ended up for a
number of years after that,

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doing more of the coding than I did.

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Initially, since Talzhemir\'s an artist,

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I programmed 100% of the Furcadia server

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and the Furcadia client for
the first couple of years

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until Fox joined us, and then
there were two programmers.

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Almost everyone we ever
hired for the team with one

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or two exceptions was
someone we met in the game.

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So, we have a company
full of people that are

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passionate about the
game and the community,

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which really works out well.

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I started working with Emerald of course,

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we chatted a lot in the game
and we really hit it off

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and we\'ve been together ever since.

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One year at Anthrocon, which at the time

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was the biggest furry
convention, we started telling

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our players for like six
or eight months in advance.

00:13:44.047 --> 00:13:46.800
\"We\'re going to Anthrocon
if you want to come meet the

00:13:46.800 --> 00:13:51.060
Furcadia creators.\" so a lot
of Furcadia players came.

00:13:51.060 --> 00:13:54.780
We picked a nice spot outdoors
and we had cat costumes on,

00:13:54.780 --> 00:13:57.330
and I don\'t know if
you\'re familiar with the

00:13:57.330 --> 00:13:59.880
hand fasting tradition,
but we had a paw fasting

00:13:59.880 --> 00:14:03.690
and we tied color ribbons
to tie our hands together

00:14:03.690 --> 00:14:06.330
with a lot of Furcadia
players watching and you know,

00:14:06.330 --> 00:14:10.773
smiling at us, so that was a special day.

00:14:11.940 --> 00:14:14.820
I knew people would meet and
fall in love in the game.

00:14:14.820 --> 00:14:17.120
I didn\'t know what
happened to me, but it did,

00:14:18.088 --> 00:14:19.388
which was a nice surprise.

00:14:30.780 --> 00:14:33.450
One of the things Emerald
set up a seasonal festival.

00:14:33.450 --> 00:14:36.420
She also became our
first community manager.

00:14:36.420 --> 00:14:40.110
Over the years, Emerald built
up a set of festival maps

00:14:40.110 --> 00:14:44.430
that have games and
activities and challenges

00:14:44.430 --> 00:14:46.560
and fun things to do.

00:14:46.560 --> 00:14:48.030
Oh, here\'s the kissing booth.

00:14:48.030 --> 00:14:50.663
Sanctuary actually had a kissing booth

00:14:50.663 --> 00:14:52.350
before we started doing these,
these big festival dreams

00:14:52.350 --> 00:14:55.731
and I got to sit in the
kissing booth for a few of the,

00:14:55.731 --> 00:14:58.260
the sanctuary carnivals, that was fun.

00:14:58.260 --> 00:15:01.380
We would put up our dream
contest entry dreams

00:15:01.380 --> 00:15:02.790
in the festival dreams.

00:15:02.790 --> 00:15:04.710
We haven\'t been running them lately,

00:15:04.710 --> 00:15:07.240
we might start them up
again at some point,

00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:08.850
but these are some past contest winners

00:15:08.850 --> 00:15:10.980
from one of the spring
contests in particular,

00:15:10.980 --> 00:15:14.490
so you see there\'s a beach
theme and you can go into those

00:15:14.490 --> 00:15:18.030
and explore and those usually
have a lot of scripted

00:15:18.030 --> 00:15:20.433
challenges and games
and activities in them.

00:15:22.730 --> 00:15:25.050
So, we should look at a player dream

00:15:25.050 --> 00:15:27.750
and I would like you guys to pick one.

00:15:27.750 --> 00:15:30.330
- Esmi\'s Fun Beach
sounds like a good time.

00:15:30.330 --> 00:15:31.860
- Fun\'s right in the name.

00:15:31.860 --> 00:15:33.060
All right, let\'s hop in.

00:15:34.110 --> 00:15:37.113
Oh wow, very bright colors.

00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:45.480
Yeah, you see the little
hearts in the corners here,

00:15:45.480 --> 00:15:47.730
that\'s part of a custom skin.

00:15:47.730 --> 00:15:50.310
People can either use
our default interface

00:15:50.310 --> 00:15:52.530
or they can reskin it and
we\'ve seen some beautiful art

00:15:52.530 --> 00:15:53.703
just on the skins,

00:15:58.936 --> 00:16:00.210
so pick another one.

00:16:00.210 --> 00:16:02.490
- Yeah, Happy Froggy Island?

00:16:02.490 --> 00:16:04.353
- Happy Froggy Island it is.

00:16:05.490 --> 00:16:07.923
oh this is great, we\'re frogs.

00:16:10.440 --> 00:16:12.213
I love this big lily pad too.

00:16:13.620 --> 00:16:16.017
People have made a lot of great stuff.

00:16:16.017 --> 00:16:18.960
We had Spyro the Dragon
dream that had games in it

00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:21.960
where you\'d run around or
fly around collecting rings

00:16:21.960 --> 00:16:24.630
and power up and there\'s
been some really good

00:16:24.630 --> 00:16:27.523
Pokémon\'s including scripting
to let you catch Pokémon

00:16:27.523 --> 00:16:30.930
in Pokémon balls and do
Pokémon battles and all that

00:16:30.930 --> 00:16:33.210
kind of things and little mini games.

00:16:33.210 --> 00:16:35.820
Deathdog won a lot of our dream contests.

00:16:35.820 --> 00:16:38.550
She did one where you go into this world

00:16:38.550 --> 00:16:41.700
and you see like giant
crayons and you know,

00:16:41.700 --> 00:16:42.930
flowers towering over you.

00:16:42.930 --> 00:16:45.240
Everything\'s big or you\'re small,

00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:46.950
however you wanna look at it.

00:16:46.950 --> 00:16:49.860
Every kind of creative thing
you could imagine I\'ve seen

00:16:49.860 --> 00:16:52.530
here over the years, I
could probably sit for hours

00:16:52.530 --> 00:16:54.660
remembering some of the
different fun places

00:16:54.660 --> 00:16:56.283
we got to see and explore.

00:17:03.750 --> 00:17:07.320
I don\'t think anybody has
the ease of content creation

00:17:07.320 --> 00:17:11.400
we do, you know 3D worlds,
it\'s harder to create art in 3D

00:17:11.400 --> 00:17:14.820
than 2D to begin with
and then our English like

00:17:14.820 --> 00:17:17.280
scripting language that even kids can use.

00:17:17.280 --> 00:17:20.100
The maps are easy to make
by just plopping down tiles,

00:17:20.100 --> 00:17:22.260
you don\'t have to lay
out a mesh of polygons

00:17:22.260 --> 00:17:23.940
or anything to build places.

00:17:23.940 --> 00:17:27.240
It\'s just super quick
and easy to build content

00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:30.420
in this world, I think
more so than any other,

00:17:30.420 --> 00:17:32.403
so that\'s kind of special.

00:17:49.350 --> 00:17:52.350
This place is charming,
I love the tadpoles.

00:17:52.350 --> 00:17:54.690
If you click on the flowers
you can see how they\'ve

00:17:54.690 --> 00:17:59.343
re-skin all the controls,
they got seahorses and fish.

00:18:00.570 --> 00:18:04.080
Yeah, this is beautiful and
people can add extra buttons

00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:06.393
that activate functions
in their dream too.

00:18:07.410 --> 00:18:10.513
Oh, the treasure chest is
to go buy our premium items

00:18:10.513 --> 00:18:13.383
that\'s cute, I appreciate
them helping us out that way.

00:18:21.317 --> 00:18:23.340
We were just flat out free
for the first few years

00:18:23.340 --> 00:18:27.810
and then we added the avatars
and customization features.

00:18:27.810 --> 00:18:30.750
First was the wings that you
could put on your character.

00:18:30.750 --> 00:18:33.660
Then there were fantasy
creatures that you could only be

00:18:33.660 --> 00:18:36.180
if you paid for them, the
the dragon, the Phoenix,

00:18:36.180 --> 00:18:38.550
the Griffin and most of our early avatars

00:18:38.550 --> 00:18:40.410
were mythical creatures that can fly,

00:18:40.410 --> 00:18:42.960
so we\'re kind of selling
the fantasy of flight too.

00:18:43.906 --> 00:18:46.620
Also the ability to put
a custom portrait in,

00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:49.924
we charge a few bucks for each
portrait you wanted to add

00:18:49.924 --> 00:18:50.886
to your character.

00:18:50.886 --> 00:18:53.610
It\'s a very gentle monetization
model, you can enjoy

00:18:53.610 --> 00:18:56.310
the game all you want if you don\'t pay.

00:18:56.310 --> 00:19:00.030
But we did find that if
you wanted to meet people

00:19:00.030 --> 00:19:02.310
and make friends or get more attention,

00:19:02.310 --> 00:19:06.210
if you were dressed up a bit
fancier or maybe your avatar

00:19:06.210 --> 00:19:08.790
was a bit larger too
because you were a dragon,

00:19:08.790 --> 00:19:11.310
people would give you a
little more attention,

00:19:11.310 --> 00:19:13.650
because here\'s a million
cats and dogs running around

00:19:13.650 --> 00:19:15.870
and two or three dragons,
\"Hey who\'s that dragon?\"

00:19:15.870 --> 00:19:18.720
You know it gets your interest.

00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:23.490
So I realized after a while
we were kind of selling

00:19:23.490 --> 00:19:25.140
the attention of other
players a little bit

00:19:25.140 --> 00:19:27.990
through that model, even though
that wasn\'t our attention.

00:19:27.990 --> 00:19:31.080
We also tried to encourage gifting a lot,

00:19:31.080 --> 00:19:34.620
whether it\'s a boyfriend or
girlfriend or just a buddy,

00:19:34.620 --> 00:19:36.930
people would buy each
other some of these items,

00:19:36.930 --> 00:19:38.133
which is really nice.

00:19:42.870 --> 00:19:45.540
If you try and walk off the
edge here, it won\'t let you,

00:19:45.540 --> 00:19:48.000
but since I put my wings on the sky floor

00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:50.370
will let people with wings move on it,

00:19:50.370 --> 00:19:51.933
so I can fly over to here.

00:19:52.920 --> 00:19:54.120
This is Zefiroth.

00:19:54.120 --> 00:19:57.450
This is one of our older maps,
but for historical purposes

00:19:57.450 --> 00:20:00.000
it\'s like this early
special treat for flyers

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:01.450
is that they could come here.

00:20:04.800 --> 00:20:08.370
I have one semi-regret.
When we first made the game,

00:20:08.370 --> 00:20:11.850
the only way to sit down
was to move on to a pillow

00:20:11.850 --> 00:20:14.190
and you could pick up
pillows and carry them around

00:20:14.190 --> 00:20:16.050
and put them somewhere else.

00:20:16.050 --> 00:20:18.360
So if you\'re making your own
dream, you could just make

00:20:18.360 --> 00:20:20.730
an infinite pillow
machine if you wanted to,

00:20:20.730 --> 00:20:22.770
but on the main maps, we didn\'t have one.

00:20:22.770 --> 00:20:27.090
So if a map had 17
pillows, it had 17 pillows

00:20:27.090 --> 00:20:29.370
and so people coveted them.

00:20:29.370 --> 00:20:31.470
They\'re like, \"Oh, I can sit in the bar

00:20:31.470 --> 00:20:33.420
and have a conversation sitting instead

00:20:33.420 --> 00:20:34.620
of having to stand up.\"

00:20:34.620 --> 00:20:37.980
And there were also some fixed
seats that couldn\'t move,

00:20:37.980 --> 00:20:40.500
and again these had value to people

00:20:40.500 --> 00:20:42.360
and in a game where everything\'s free

00:20:42.360 --> 00:20:44.886
and you can make your own map full of

00:20:44.886 --> 00:20:46.590
as many treasure chests
or anything you want

00:20:46.590 --> 00:20:49.350
that you can imagine,
pillows were the only thing

00:20:49.350 --> 00:20:50.310
with value.

00:20:50.310 --> 00:20:54.210
And I put in a sit down
command that you could do

00:20:54.210 --> 00:20:58.800
and instantly the value of
pillows was almost nothing now,

00:20:58.800 --> 00:21:01.890
because you didn\'t need
them and I really agonized

00:21:01.890 --> 00:21:05.220
over whether to put in the
sit down command or not.

00:21:05.220 --> 00:21:07.530
I\'m still not a hundred percent
sure I did the right thing.

00:21:07.530 --> 00:21:10.680
It was probably the
right thing, but you know

00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:11.823
slight regrets.

00:21:16.230 --> 00:21:18.900
We tried to design the game,
so there\'s not too many

00:21:18.900 --> 00:21:20.910
bad things you can do to each other.

00:21:20.910 --> 00:21:25.260
If you\'re a good programmer
designer, you have your,

00:21:25.260 --> 00:21:27.450
you know evil hacker hat that you put on

00:21:27.450 --> 00:21:29.347
when you\'re designing systems and you say,

00:21:29.347 --> 00:21:31.170
\"How would I abuse this system?\"

00:21:31.170 --> 00:21:32.820
And then you see what the problems are,

00:21:32.820 --> 00:21:35.193
you try and design around
them to some extent.

00:21:36.390 --> 00:21:38.850
The biggest problem is
people try and trick people

00:21:38.850 --> 00:21:41.287
into giving them their paid items or say,

00:21:41.287 --> 00:21:42.630
\"Oh, I\'ll give you this for it.\"

00:21:42.630 --> 00:21:45.958
And they give it to you and
you don\'t, and then Cironir,

00:21:45.958 --> 00:21:47.280
our guy in Germany, will track you down

00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:48.750
and try and make it right.

00:21:48.750 --> 00:21:50.670
One of the things early
on, people would just go

00:21:50.670 --> 00:21:54.120
into a crowded area
and spin in place a lot

00:21:54.120 --> 00:21:56.970
and just try and lag
players, because there\'s

00:21:56.970 --> 00:21:58.477
all these packets coming from you saying,

00:21:58.477 --> 00:22:00.510
\"The bunny turned left, the
bunny turned left again,

00:22:00.510 --> 00:22:01.980
the bunny turned left again.\"

00:22:01.980 --> 00:22:05.430
So I put in an endurance
system where speaking

00:22:05.430 --> 00:22:08.280
or moving or turning, anything you do,

00:22:08.280 --> 00:22:10.620
it takes a few endurance
points and if you\'re playing

00:22:10.620 --> 00:22:13.050
the game normally you just
never run out of endurance.

00:22:13.050 --> 00:22:15.060
You can run around all
day, do whatever you want

00:22:15.060 --> 00:22:17.940
and we never display this
stat, it\'s just internal.

00:22:17.940 --> 00:22:20.130
But if you try and just
like spin, like mad,

00:22:20.130 --> 00:22:22.560
like a whirling dervish
or run around in circles

00:22:22.560 --> 00:22:25.926
around somebody, you will
very rapidly get tired

00:22:25.926 --> 00:22:30.150
and your avatar will stop doing
anything for a few seconds,

00:22:30.150 --> 00:22:32.700
that was an easy problem to
solve and it\'s worked well.

00:22:32.700 --> 00:22:35.703
I mean we haven\'t run into that
form of griefing ever again.

00:22:37.080 --> 00:22:40.440
Community management I
think is largely something

00:22:40.440 --> 00:22:43.410
our team kind of invented,
as did a few other

00:22:43.410 --> 00:22:47.820
early game teams because
there were no examples

00:22:47.820 --> 00:22:50.220
of other games doing
that you could imitate.

00:22:50.220 --> 00:22:52.560
I mean I think they may
have had a little of that

00:22:52.560 --> 00:22:55.740
on GemStone on GEnie,
which was a text-based

00:22:55.740 --> 00:22:57.990
multi-player fantasy game.

00:22:57.990 --> 00:23:01.500
So Emerald put a lot of work
into that, she also came up

00:23:01.500 --> 00:23:04.050
with our rating system
and how we would implement

00:23:04.050 --> 00:23:05.340
that in the game.

00:23:05.340 --> 00:23:09.540
When a player makes a dream,
they can set the rating

00:23:09.540 --> 00:23:12.600
and they\'re expected to
try and ensure that people

00:23:12.600 --> 00:23:13.680
stay within the rating.

00:23:13.680 --> 00:23:17.760
So we have E for everyone
maps, we have Teen maps,

00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:19.530
Adults Only maps.

00:23:19.530 --> 00:23:22.740
There was some controversy when
people first started making

00:23:22.740 --> 00:23:27.060
some X-rated dreams when we
were early in a small community,

00:23:27.060 --> 00:23:29.400
if you wanted players
to come to your dream,

00:23:29.400 --> 00:23:32.400
which everybody wants,
let\'s face facts, right?

00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:34.290
The hope is, \"Oh, I\'ll
get a bunch of people,

00:23:34.290 --> 00:23:36.390
it\'ll be popular,
conversations will start,

00:23:36.390 --> 00:23:38.070
it\'ll be a popular hangout.\"

00:23:38.070 --> 00:23:41.250
Some people manage that,
some people don\'t obviously.

00:23:41.250 --> 00:23:43.950
But if you wanted a chance
at it, you had to upload

00:23:43.950 --> 00:23:47.400
an Allegria Island, or later Imaginarium

00:23:47.400 --> 00:23:49.497
when there started to become

00:23:49.497 --> 00:23:50.880
some popular role-playing
dreams, so that was

00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:52.890
that particular crowd.

00:23:52.890 --> 00:23:55.650
The first adult dreams
were all in Allegria

00:23:55.650 --> 00:23:57.630
by far the most popular
place and there were a

00:23:57.630 --> 00:24:00.360
few popular adult dreams.

00:24:00.360 --> 00:24:03.217
The people who thought,
\"Oh, there shouldn\'t be

00:24:03.217 --> 00:24:05.340
any X-rated stuff going on
in this game.\" we\'re upset

00:24:05.340 --> 00:24:07.890
and there\'s concern about,
you know there\'s kids

00:24:07.890 --> 00:24:08.723
and they\'ll get in there.

00:24:08.723 --> 00:24:10.207
So we made for Furabian Knight said,

00:24:10.207 --> 00:24:12.900
\"Well, adult dreams should go there.\"

00:24:12.900 --> 00:24:17.250
We created the parental lock
and you\'re not allowed to do

00:24:17.250 --> 00:24:19.560
anything sexually explicit in this map,

00:24:19.560 --> 00:24:22.650
but you can sure swear
and you can talk about it.

00:24:22.650 --> 00:24:25.590
But most of these dreams
here are adults only

00:24:25.590 --> 00:24:27.960
if you go into them and
again, you can\'t upload

00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:30.420
an adults only dream in
an everyone rated map,

00:24:30.420 --> 00:24:32.310
you can\'t even have a portal to it.

00:24:32.310 --> 00:24:34.950
There\'s all these rules
which Emerald worked out.

00:24:34.950 --> 00:24:38.490
The people who didn\'t want
adult stuff in the game,

00:24:38.490 --> 00:24:41.790
while they\'re not seeing it
in in Allegria or Imaginarium

00:24:41.790 --> 00:24:44.430
or anywhere else, it\'s not in their face.

00:24:44.430 --> 00:24:46.380
The people who don\'t mind
it being it in the game,

00:24:46.380 --> 00:24:49.260
but they don\'t want to participate,
it\'s not in their face.

00:24:49.260 --> 00:24:51.690
The people who want to do
it, it\'s all in one place

00:24:51.690 --> 00:24:53.550
and if you don\'t want to be around kids

00:24:53.550 --> 00:24:56.100
or people who will complain
that there\'s adult content

00:24:56.100 --> 00:24:58.350
in the game, nobody in
here is complaining.

00:24:58.350 --> 00:25:00.540
They\'re here because they\'re okay with it

00:25:00.540 --> 00:25:02.613
and they want to experience it, so.

00:25:12.030 --> 00:25:15.099
I have a particular bar that I go to

00:25:15.099 --> 00:25:17.760
and I want to just sit around
and talk to random people

00:25:17.760 --> 00:25:21.000
and I mean, I\'ve been going
there for over a decade

00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:22.653
and it\'s just always there.

00:25:23.580 --> 00:25:25.833
Let\'s head over to The Kinky Kitty.

00:25:27.060 --> 00:25:29.940
Taka\'s is a big dragon who owns this club,

00:25:29.940 --> 00:25:32.100
and you should get some pop-up dialogues

00:25:32.100 --> 00:25:34.842
that you have to answer
and if you answer wrong,

00:25:34.842 --> 00:25:35.675
it\'ll kick you out.

00:25:37.403 --> 00:25:39.603
It\'s a little bit cyber punk actually.

00:25:41.721 --> 00:25:44.010
This is one of the places I like hang out,

00:25:44.010 --> 00:25:46.380
chat with some people I
know or sometimes I meet

00:25:46.380 --> 00:25:47.730
some new people.

00:25:47.730 --> 00:25:50.220
I know one of the bartenders
here, she\'s actually

00:25:50.220 --> 00:25:52.173
a bartender in real life.

00:25:53.444 --> 00:25:55.177
So, when I chat with her
sometimes she\'ll say,

00:25:55.177 --> 00:25:59.236
\"Oh yeah, it was a really rough
night at the bar last night,

00:25:59.236 --> 00:26:00.630
you know it was some big holiday

00:26:00.630 --> 00:26:03.780
event and I had to work
late and I\'m exhausted.\"

00:26:03.780 --> 00:26:05.220
So what does she do?

00:26:05.220 --> 00:26:08.170
She comes on here and pretends
to be a bartender some more.

00:26:10.500 --> 00:26:13.410
She knows that Felorin
likes a chocolate milk,

00:26:13.410 --> 00:26:15.300
so I don\'t even have to order one anymore,

00:26:15.300 --> 00:26:17.580
she\'ll just slide me a
chocolate milk with a straw

00:26:17.580 --> 00:26:20.970
over the bar and I\'ll
lap at it with my tongue

00:26:20.970 --> 00:26:24.843
because I\'m a cat and
that\'s amusing to me.

00:26:33.750 --> 00:26:36.240
If you guys want to peek in on The Wylde,

00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.150
Emerald and Gar made that\'s
so big, it actually strains

00:26:39.150 --> 00:26:41.940
the performance of our
system a little bit.

00:26:41.940 --> 00:26:45.180
There\'s all these different
biomes, different types

00:26:45.180 --> 00:26:49.050
of terrain and plants, so we
could just cycle through them.

00:26:49.050 --> 00:26:52.710
So here\'s tropical beach,
I love these dolphins

00:26:52.710 --> 00:26:55.290
and this coral, ugh, so beautiful,

00:26:55.290 --> 00:26:59.520
and we got coastal
meadow and I see there\'s

00:26:59.520 --> 00:27:02.010
some dreams here, there\'s a Beltane dream

00:27:02.010 --> 00:27:03.900
and here\'s the farm.

00:27:03.900 --> 00:27:06.600
Talzhemir put a lot of work and effort,

00:27:06.600 --> 00:27:08.640
she actually hired one
of our players Honcho

00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:11.430
to do some scripting
and patch art for her.

00:27:11.430 --> 00:27:15.000
She had a big farm that
had a lot of community

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:20.000
collaborative, you know gathering
crops and raising animals

00:27:20.790 --> 00:27:23.430
and taking resources and selling
them and buying new things

00:27:23.430 --> 00:27:24.390
for the farm.

00:27:24.390 --> 00:27:26.971
That went on for years, that was something

00:27:26.971 --> 00:27:27.893
people really enjoyed.

00:27:29.370 --> 00:27:31.710
Oh, this is such a gorgeous
dream and if you look

00:27:31.710 --> 00:27:34.140
at the whole map of this thing, it\'s just

00:27:34.140 --> 00:27:36.903
a really neat layout and it\'s just huge.

00:27:38.430 --> 00:27:41.190
One of the things people
like to do is play is like,

00:27:41.190 --> 00:27:43.350
feral four-legged animals.

00:27:43.350 --> 00:27:45.600
Like when those Warrior
Cats books were popular,

00:27:45.600 --> 00:27:47.670
a lot of people did dreams based on those,

00:27:47.670 --> 00:27:51.360
but The Wylde was intended
to be an upload nexus

00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:53.953
for a lot of those types
of dreams for people

00:27:53.953 --> 00:27:56.053
who like to play actual animal characters.

00:28:13.170 --> 00:28:16.350
Our intention was to keep this
running as long as we live

00:28:16.350 --> 00:28:20.250
and hopefully it would
continue to run after we die.

00:28:20.250 --> 00:28:23.790
This game, I believe to
be the most cost efficient

00:28:23.790 --> 00:28:27.660
per user multiplayer online
game in the industry.

00:28:27.660 --> 00:28:30.690
It\'s very economical
to run servers for this

00:28:30.690 --> 00:28:33.510
and because not only my
programming is efficient,

00:28:33.510 --> 00:28:36.840
but my technical design,
my architectural design

00:28:36.840 --> 00:28:38.100
is efficient.

00:28:38.100 --> 00:28:40.319
You know, games like Ultima Online,

00:28:40.319 --> 00:28:41.873
they came up with shards,

00:28:41.873 --> 00:28:44.640
\"Okay, we\'ll have one world
per X number of players.\"

00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:45.960
that was their solution.

00:28:45.960 --> 00:28:47.880
We\'ll always just be one world.

00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:51.870
I designed it in the 90s
to be able to spread across

00:28:51.870 --> 00:28:55.860
multiple server computers,
so if we ever got really big,

00:28:55.860 --> 00:28:59.640
which I hope to and still
hope again someday we might,

00:28:59.640 --> 00:29:02.760
we could just get more
servers and accommodate

00:29:02.760 --> 00:29:05.760
any number of people, but still
keep them all in one world.

00:29:05.760 --> 00:29:07.770
But I haven\'t found out
how well that works,

00:29:07.770 --> 00:29:10.670
because you know what, we\'re
still running on one machine.

00:29:11.670 --> 00:29:15.960
We hit peaks of like
5,500 to 6,000 players

00:29:15.960 --> 00:29:19.200
and I\'m looking at the
server loading statistics,

00:29:19.200 --> 00:29:22.020
the machine is not straining to do this

00:29:22.020 --> 00:29:24.270
and I think it could handle over 10,000,

00:29:24.270 --> 00:29:25.103
maybe a lot.

00:29:25.982 --> 00:29:28.380
I just don\'t know how much it
could handle on one machine

00:29:28.380 --> 00:29:30.900
and of course we\'ve
upgraded every few years,

00:29:30.900 --> 00:29:33.960
you know we\'re on a much
more powerful machine,

00:29:33.960 --> 00:29:36.120
so God only knows what
this machine could handle,

00:29:36.120 --> 00:29:39.360
I hope to overload it someday and use my

00:29:39.360 --> 00:29:40.923
distribution capability.

00:29:56.850 --> 00:29:59.340
What I want to do with
Furcadia is have like

00:29:59.340 --> 00:30:01.980
people from every country,
every ethnic group,

00:30:01.980 --> 00:30:06.630
every religion, you know
every political view.

00:30:06.630 --> 00:30:09.870
Get \'em to talk to each other
and if you talk to people,

00:30:09.870 --> 00:30:12.240
you know you can\'t hate them quite as much

00:30:12.240 --> 00:30:15.000
as if you don\'t know any
member of that group.

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:17.550
Whenever I meet someone
from a country I\'d never met

00:30:17.550 --> 00:30:21.060
one person from before,
I\'d stop and if they were

00:30:21.060 --> 00:30:23.880
willing to talk, I\'d say,
\"Hey, what are things like

00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:26.067
in your country? Tell
me about life there.\"

00:30:28.170 --> 00:30:30.390
We also have always been very supportive

00:30:30.390 --> 00:30:34.200
of things like the LGBTQ
community, a lot of them

00:30:34.200 --> 00:30:35.310
really appreciate that.

00:30:35.310 --> 00:30:37.593
They know for Furcadia
is a friendly space,

00:30:38.670 --> 00:30:42.240
their dreams dedicated
to some of those groups

00:30:42.240 --> 00:30:43.803
and we\'re glad to see \'em.

00:30:47.220 --> 00:30:50.430
You know we\'ve had kids,
we\'ve had grandmothers,

00:30:50.430 --> 00:30:52.290
people from all over the world.

00:30:52.290 --> 00:30:56.100
In the early years,
there were a lot of kids

00:30:56.100 --> 00:31:00.930
and teens in early 20s
and as the game\'s gone on,

00:31:00.930 --> 00:31:03.540
and a lot of those players
have stuck around for years

00:31:03.540 --> 00:31:06.450
and for decades, some people
have literally stayed with us

00:31:06.450 --> 00:31:07.560
for decades.

00:31:07.560 --> 00:31:10.770
We got a lot more people
in their, 30s and 40s

00:31:10.770 --> 00:31:13.560
and 50s, just because people who were,

00:31:13.560 --> 00:31:16.503
you know in their 20s are just older now.

00:31:17.340 --> 00:31:22.340
But we saw that around 60 to
65% of our players were female,

00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:25.470
so I would sit in panels or events at the

00:31:25.470 --> 00:31:27.750
Game Developers Conference
and people would be

00:31:27.750 --> 00:31:30.997
talking in the 90s and early 2000s,

00:31:30.997 --> 00:31:32.820
\"How can we get more
women to play our game?\"

00:31:32.820 --> 00:31:34.773
I just sit in the room and smile.

00:31:37.350 --> 00:31:40.410
But yeah, it\'s a very friendly
and welcoming community.

00:31:40.410 --> 00:31:43.530
I think having someone
offer to welcome you

00:31:43.530 --> 00:31:47.100
and show you around when you
first arrive that we did,

00:31:47.100 --> 00:31:49.050
I think that really helped foster that.

00:31:56.520 --> 00:31:59.940
So general, I would say there\'s
a much higher percentage

00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:03.210
of artists than there is
in the general population.

00:32:03.210 --> 00:32:05.340
Some people are building
dreams and scripting

00:32:05.340 --> 00:32:07.110
and musicians and writers.

00:32:07.110 --> 00:32:10.410
So a high level of creativity,
high level of friendliness

00:32:10.410 --> 00:32:12.213
and openness and kindness.

00:32:13.770 --> 00:32:18.390
We used to be very flattered
in the early years of MMOs

00:32:18.390 --> 00:32:20.190
when other companies
were starting to show up

00:32:20.190 --> 00:32:21.360
on our turf.

00:32:21.360 --> 00:32:24.150
We\'d hear from people in the
industry, they\'d be pitching

00:32:24.150 --> 00:32:25.537
to their management or whoever.

00:32:25.537 --> 00:32:27.660
\"We want to have this
feature like this game

00:32:27.660 --> 00:32:30.990
and combat like that game, and
we want to have a community

00:32:30.990 --> 00:32:33.150
as good as Furcadia\'s community.\"

00:32:33.150 --> 00:32:35.760
I still think we have one
of the best communities

00:32:35.760 --> 00:32:38.220
of any online game ans we
always have, because of the way

00:32:38.220 --> 00:32:39.630
we nurtured it.

00:32:39.630 --> 00:32:41.790
As well as the fact that,
you know if we didn\'t do

00:32:41.790 --> 00:32:45.300
anything else, that creating
a place, especially one

00:32:45.300 --> 00:32:48.510
with custom art makes you
popular, that really kind of

00:32:48.510 --> 00:32:50.700
encouraged the development
of a creative community

00:32:50.700 --> 00:32:52.343
just all on its own.

00:33:16.535 --> 00:33:19.785
(upbeat ambient music)