"The Story of Turbine, a Startup!", by Johnny Monsarrat

The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Story 1

2009-11-21T01:32:50Z

How Turbine Entertainment was Founded

Turbine Entertainment Software is an Internet computer games company. Turbine's games, called "massively multiplayer games", each involve a virtual world, which thousands of players can visit simultaneously through the Internet. The gameplay and artwork are extensive, and it's all based on cutting-edge 3D graphics and server software. The first game, Asheron's Call, and its sequel, are published by Microsoft, and shipped in 1999 and 2001. This is the story of how I founded and ran the company. — Jon Monsarrat, jonmon@alum.mit.edu.

I don't speak officially for Turbine. Click to contact Turbine directly.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea

April 1994. I was a PhD student at Brown University, building mobile

A screenshot from Asheron

robots and programming them to roll around. It was great fun to stay up all night hacking away at the code. Managing projects and going to robot contests was to me more fun than the mathematically-oriented artificial intelligence research I was supposed to be doing.

Eventually, I realized my heart was really not in academia. Meanwhile, I was getting more and more excited about starting a company.

This idea really got me going. I've always been a "projects-based personality". At MIT we'd call that the "work hard, play hard" attitude. I get hooked on some undertaking, and just go go go with it. Like most entrepreneurs, I was long on enthusiasm and short on experience.

The olthoi was the first monster
written for Asheron

For some reason, every programmer seems to want to write a computer game. So a game seemed like a logical product to me. But it couldn't just be any game. This had to use the most cutting edge technology. If it wasn't a challenge, it wouldn't be fun. At MIT, I had done a lot of live roleplaying with a strangely-named group called The MIT Assassins' Guild. It sounds scary, but it's basically improvisational theater: Dungeons & Dragons, live and on stage. I was one of the actors and playwrights. Click for a description of live roleplaying.

So a company that put live roleplaying on the Internet would be very cool. I'd almost started a company to do so back in 1991. Imagine thousands of people in some kind of huge graphical chat, playing wizards and fighters and magicians. They call this a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD), but it would be more than a MUD. It would be a huge party. It would be the biggest, longest roleplaying game ever.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Story 2

2009-11-21T00:37:40Z

Four Guys and a Garage... without the Garage!

I knew a lot about roleplaying, but always been too busy for MUDs. However, the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Brown was a hackers' paradise, and a bunch of us tossed around names for a company, eventually choosing "Cyberspace, Inc.". (Click any picture to enlarge.)

Chris and I work on the graphics engine

Connecting the artists

I became the company's CEO. We didn't have a garage, so we set up shop in my studio apartment. Talk about "living at work"! We only had one laptop computer, and could barely afford one desktop computer for UI development. Tim Miller, one of the computer graphics experts at Brown, gave me a stack of research papers and lots of advice, and I started writing the 3D graphics software.

Meanwhile, we began the game design. A great looking game that's no fun is a failure. I had a live roleplaying angle on everything, shedding some light on workable game balance and plot mechanics. We wanted to fix some of the game design problems in MUDs. For example, experienced players killing new players is always a problem. I suggested a "pyramid scheme", similar to Amway's, by which a new player could "pledge allegiance" to a more experienced player. The old player would get an automatic percentage of the new player's earnings. But this would create an incentive for older players to support, not attack, the newbies. This was a new idea for MUDs that later the press would latch onto.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Story 3

2009-11-20T23:38:43Z

An Unusual Way to Raise Money

In September 1994, I was struck by an unusual way to raise money. I was walking in Providence, and suddenly an accident forced a car up onto the sidewalk. Bam! I went flying. Fortunately I survived, and thanks

t">
With artists Zach and Joe
to integrate 3D art with the graphics engine

to the personal injury system I got some insurance money. It wasn't much, but it let me afford to become Turbine's first full-time employee in January 1995.

None of us had any experience in business, but I'd done lots of leadership at school and thought I could hack it. So I got some books, spoke with businesspeople, and tried to figure it out. In early 1995, the startup center at Brown University gave us a lot of advice on starting a company and helped me to compile our first business plan. We gave presentations to businesspeople and they asked us a lot of tough questions. At first I had practically none of the answers. However, by keeping an open mind and learning from my mistakes, things slowly came together.

As our first full-time employee, I was able to write a computer graphics engine. This engine got us some attention and combined with

Jeremy and Toby discuss game design.

our business plan gave the company enough stability to merit some investment. We nearly took investment from individual "angels", but we decided instead to get funding from friends and family. We also hired talented visionaries who believed in the company, and accepted lower salaries plus a ton of stock. This made our investment money last longer. Over seventy people have worked for Turbine at one time or another, but one that stands out is Chris Dyl, who joined in May 1995, and who has probably done the most programming at Turbine over its history.

In fact, over the next year we raised everything we needed from private individuals who saw something special in our company. This faith in our future was a real gift that kept our company alive and going. It allowed us to remain independent as the company grew more valuable. Bringing in some money enabled us to hire our first employees. We assembled a superb team. We also changed the name from "Cyberspace" to "Second Nature Interactive". (A year later it became "Turbine".)

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Story 4

2009-11-20T22:39:18Z

Demos, Demos, and More Demos

In summer 1995, the company moved its base out of my apartment into my

Chris gives our first demo to outsiders

mother's house near Providence. At first, we only used the living room. Then we spread into the family room and the basement. Soon we had six team members working so hard they'd started living in the place, and Mom moved out! It was a very hot summer and we had no air conditioning. But at last we built enough of a product to be able to give real demos. And our business plan and business savvy kept improving.

By this time we had the game roughly planned out. We had hired a game designer, Toby Ragaini, who built the backstory for the game. I had architected, at the highest level, the modules for the large software engine that supports the game. Plus several of the modules had been mapped out in detail. My own projects were designing and writing a graphics engine, a toolkit for our artists to use the

The huge mural at Turbine

system, the "physics system" that allowed objects to collide with one another and interact in our 3D virtual world. Ironically, although I'd left academia, doing this design took quite a bit of academic research. I loved it. The team spent hours and hours in design meetings and poring over research papers. But I became too busy for programming, instead focusing entirely on business. Other programmers took my modules and completed them. (All these systems would of course go through many improvements and revisions before the game shipped.)

Getting any product mass produced, advertised, and distributed around the country is too expensive for any new startup. Large companies,

the publishers, specialize in finding talent and bringing that talent to the world. We needed a business to get our product to market. We were the developers hoping to get spotted by talent scouts at publishing companies.

The entire summer's work went towards this goal. Our business advisors thought we were ready to show our stuff to the outside world. For this grand opening, I took a trip to the "Online Game Developers Conference" in September 1995, run by a major market research company. With nothing but a one-page screen snapshot and our company story, I met and mingled with lots of companies in the online world. Until then, it was only an informed guess that we had a hot company with a solid vision. But we started to get feedback from people in the industry. At the conference, Turbine did better than we had hoped. Large companies like America Online and Compuserve were approachable. People loved the concept. I met many people from game companies that didn't seem to have the same vision and technology. We were ready to begin a serious search for a publisher.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Story 5

2009-11-20T21:40:02Z

Hunting Publishers at Conferences

Finally, we moved into office space we could be proud of in Providence.

Typical view at a computer games conference

It was difficult to hire people in Providence, so in 1996 we ended up moving to Westwood, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. I had too many business responsibilities, and hired longtime gaming friend Rickland Powell to help out, as executive vice-president.

The first part of 1996 involved a ton of flying around the country, giving presentations to prospective publishers. I'd hired a businessman, Dan Scherlis, with a Harvard MBA to run the trip. Here's how conventions work. You fly out to a computer games conference, along with your business reps, your technical reps, and your game designers and artists. Using your contacts and generally networking around, you drag people off to see your demo. This typically involves a lot of

Dan, juggling with four hands?

prowling around the conference show floor.

If you've never been to a computer conference, I suggest going sometime just for the excitement. Computer game conferences are even wilder. Every company tries to impress you with glitz and glamour. They set up 20-foot stages with whirling lights, rock music, and projection TVs. Everywhere you see models, and free toys and t-shirts they're giving away. Some of the companies have booths covering such large floor spaces that you can get lost in them! Of course, everywhere there are blazing computer screens with

Light saber battles: Dan and Tim

computer game demos. "We're hot! Do a deal with us!" every banner seems to shout.

By mid-1996, Turbine was a company of 30 people: administrators, game testers, game designers, artists, and of course lots of programmers. Putting together an entire online world is similar to setting up an amusement park. It's a huge undertaking, involving tons of artwork, music, gamewriting, and the entire programming infrastructure to make it work.

I'd had a great time meeting people, working like crazy, managing the projects and putting together presentations for outsiders. Together we'd attracted many publishers who were "checking us out". But I wondered whether someone with a business background should be our CEO. In the end, I gave up the position to Dan in late 1996, remaining chairman of the board, and becoming the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), which gave me member-at-large responsibilities to foster cool technology. This included the artificial intelligence system to drive monsters to and fro in the game's virtual world. Meanwhile, I became the #2 businessperson for guiding the company and negotiating with the outside world. We ended up signing Microsoft as our first publisher.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Story 6

2009-11-20T18:40:45Z

And the Rest is History

AC shipped in 1999 to many awards and much praise. Dozens of people contributed to the original Asheron's Call. I'm really glad to have contributed and to have worked with such skilled people.

Being CEO was all-consuming, and I think ultimately led me to neglect my health and social life. As the #2, I got some time to think about my career. Eventually I decided to get );

Ga">
Doing business by phone.
Gaining weight was one of the wake up
calls that made me re-evaluate my career.

an MBA and switch to a more serious industry. I left Turbine to go to MIT's Sloan School of Management, staying active on Turbine's board.

Next are a bunch of photos!

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Rehoboth 1

2009-11-20T17:41:51Z

Rehoboth Office

Turbine's first office was at my Mom's house in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.

Chris Dyl working on the physics model.	Jeremy, Chris, and Larry debugging the code.
Doing an interview	Jeremy writing the networking code
Chris and me working on the computer graphics.	Larry Skow, assembly programmer for graphics.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Rehoboth 2

2009-11-20T15:42:23Z

Rehoboth Office

The living room was turned into a communal work area.

Jeremy on the phone	Me, designing the huge module scheme that defines the overall software plan for the game.
Geeks in their natural habitat. We considered naming the company Sleepless Geeks Incorporated, but	Chris figures out the file format for Lightwave so we can read in the artists
The living room work area. The saw horse thing in the back is a high table my brother built for me, so I could pedal my exercise bicycle while using the computer.	Guess whose code works and whose doesn

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Demo Day

2009-11-20T14:42:55Z

Demo Day

Before we spoke with any publishers, we gave "internal" demos to businesspeople friendly to the company.

The demo of a man walking through a simple house, with the user interface laid out.	Tim describes one of the technologies that gives our company an edge over the competition.
We learned a lot about running a business through preparing for these demos. Here we get salmon as a reward.	Celebrating after the demo. Zach, Larry, Scott, Toby, Chris, Jeremy.
We stuck to a	We

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Rehoboth 3

2009-11-20T13:43:24Z

Expansion at Rehoboth

Camp Turbine. We started expanding until about 10 people worked in Mom's house in Rehoboth, most of them parking in the driveway and basically living there. Me, well, of course I lived there to begin with. We worked very hard... staying up until 4am and reviving around noon.

Larry wearing sunglasses at night	Coding, coding, coding...
Here	The artists took over the family room.
A beautiful sunset, as seen indoors from the artists room.	Ian Wilmoth and Zach Shukan, working with me to attach their models to our graphics software.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Rehoboth 4

2009-11-20T12:43:56Z

Expansion at Rehoboth

Here are some shots of the chaos that the artists' room became. After a while, my Mom couldn't take it anymore... she moved out and went to live with her boyfriend.

Zach Shukan, Ian Wilmoth, Joe Angell Students at RISD and our first three artists.	You can see from the mess why my mother may have wanted to leave.
Joe working with the video camera. We shot videos of hobbyists swordfighting to make more convincing animations.	Joe is demoing the animated Olthoi monster.
Crashing	Joe Angell using Lightwave to animate monsters in 3D.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Providence 1

2009-11-20T10:44:27Z

New Office in Providence, Rhode Island

In late 1995 we moved into a new office in Providence, Rhode Island. As well as our working space improving, we had gained some investment and some organizational efficiency. We grew to 15 employees here.

Jeff Langevin, office manager, and Rickland Powell, Executive VP	The company became too large for me to spend time programming. I was too busy managing, hiring, fund-raising, dealing with our lawyer, and trying to get a publisher.
The main corridor. This space later became the local Republican Party office.	The game and the vision are exciting enough to have us all working to exhaustion.
Larry and Chris	Jeremy

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Providence 2

2009-11-20T09:44:56Z

Doing some Demos that Get Noticed

Finally we got some recognition by going to an industry conference. Several companies, including America Online and Compuserve, wanted demos. Meanwhile, we had some new hires.

Rickland and Jeremy during one of our many corporate pizza events.	New employees: Jon Charette and Dan O\
We bought an old arcade machine, Spy Hunter.	Nick Atlas, a new game writer
Up all night again	Jeff and Rickland find the best deals on a new phone system and furniture
We didnt quite have enough chairs in the office, but our employees came and went at odds hours, so we just kept swapping chairs around and it was OK!

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Providence 3

2009-11-20T08:45:23Z

New Investment Means We Can Grow

A continuing cycle of demos and investment allowed us to hire more programmers, artists, and game writers. So far, we've managed to get by just on money from friends and family. This was thanks to our staff, who believed in the vision of the company and were willing to live like students.

Mike Ferrier, a programmer who worked on the user interface and the character builder.	Tim Brennan, working on the server code for
Rickland and Tim	Larry, Jeff, and Chris
Jon Charette, system support, and Toby Ragaini, head game writer	Jeremy, working on the networking and user interface, while managing half the company.

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The Johnny Monsarrat Turbine Story: Providence 4

2009-11-20T07:45:50Z

Ready to Move to Boston

It seemed inevitable. We were having difficulty hiring enough programmers in Providence, so we decided to move up closer to Boston. Meanwhile, we grew to 20 employees.

Tim with Jason Booth, who became the head of the art department	Zach and Ian with yet another RISD artist, Mike Sheidow, an illustrator who made the Turbine logo
Toby and Jason	Tim Miller, computer graphics programmer from Brown University
Tim Brennan looking relaxed. Must have just fixed a bug!	Jay DeMarrais, a mathematics whiz and new graphics programmer. Jay created the software that draws landscapes.

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