Our Team
The development of MnM began as a series of discussions during livestreams and interviews between a former EverQuest game designer, his colleagues from that project, and the fans who came to ask questions.
We often discussed how games of that era (MUDs - early 2000s) felt more like virtual worlds and created a sense of place. There was more social friction, more of a sense of community, and a greater sense of agency and wonder.
The topics became a more frequent part of our stream discussions, so we set out to deconstruct them, determine if we could recreate aspects of the feel, and potentially follow a design path that was all but abandoned as games like World of Warcraft saw greater mainstream and commercial success.
Our open, often livestreamed development, has enabled us to gather feedback and test these ideas with our community in real time. And the project has, in the 3 years since its inception, grown into a team of over 15 artists, designers, programmers, and others - including professional game developers, emulator developers, freelancers, and professionals from other industries.
Our open approach has also allowed us to test critical infrastructure and core gameplay, even while we’re still early in development.
Here is an overview and detailed technical summary of the test.
And here is a video retrospective showing the origins of the project.
Story
Team
Shawn
Shawn aka aLovingRobot has been working in the gaming industry for the past 20 years at companies like Sony Online Entertainment and KingsIsle Entertainment.
He was a Lead Designer on several MMO titles including EverQuest and DC Universe Online. Most recently, Shawn was the Executive Producer and Chief Product Officer at Star Stable Entertainment.
Shawn is focused on Creative Direction and Production.
Ali
Ali is a “farmer” in Bahrain by day and a Game Programmer, Designer, and Artist by night.
He hails to us from the MMO emulator community, and has a history of participating in game jams in his spare time.
Ali is spearheading many of the technical aspects of the project.
Nick
Nick has most recently worked in the gaming industry at NetherRealm Studios, during which he was part of the team that shipped Mortal Kombat 11. However, his history with gaming is much more storied.
An MMO veteran of 20+ years, Nick has spent a lot of his spare time working on several MMO related side projects. He’s also been a professional gamer, in which he streamed to a large audience as a Twitch Partner.
Nick is focused on design, project management, testing, community, and other responsibilities for Monsters and Memories.
Harrison
Harrison aka “Padas” has spent the past 11 years as a college instructor teaching various aspects of game design and digital art, and his favorite subjects to teach are 3D modeling and texturing.
Aside from teaching, he has worked on films and TV commercials, and has worked freelance on various video games, apps, architectural visualization, and VR projects.
Harrison has had a passion for MMOs for 20 years, after first stepping into Norrath and then immediately sending his ranger off the bridges of Kelethin. He has played several other MMOs over the years.
Harrison is focused on environment art and textures, and streams regularly on Twitch.
Connor
Connor aka “Zukan” is a professional 3D Artist currently working in marketing. On his own time however, he enjoys making 3d characters. You might find some EQ fan art creations on his Instagram.
A huge MMO nerd, Zukan got his start back in vanilla EverQuest and played many of the notable MMO’s between 2000-2015.
Connor is focused on creating NPC models and props, and streams on Twitch as well.
John
John has been working in the gaming industry for the past 10 years as a programmer and 3D artist, and has produced and released two commercial games.
His inspiration to become a developer came directly from the love of MMOs such as EverQuest, and a passion to create worlds like those he grew up playing in.
Gary
Gary is a Software Engineer whose day job is developing and maintaining distributed scalable SaaS cloud applications. He's a MMO veteran and has MMO development expertise from working on projects of his own.
Gary is focused on software development for Monsters and Memories.
Robert
Robert is a Swedish-born, Helsinki-based pianist and composer that has been active in the music industry for over 20 years.
He's been working in the studio environment and touring around the world as a keyboard player with various bands in a wide variety of music genres, including everything from heavy metal, jazz, classical, progressive rock to electronic music as well as providing soundtracks and sound design for a handful of indie games.
Currently active in the Finnish bands Von Hertzen Brothers, Turisas, and Coska.
Commodore 64 aficionado, EverQuest classic devotee, audio fanatic, animal lover and sauna enthusiast.
Robert is contributing with music and sound design.
Alexander
Alexander, also known as Goblin, is a fantasy illustrator, concept artist, and game artist. His focus is classic fantasy storytelling and thoughtful design. He believes that the generic becomes iconic when done with care, labor and truth.
He's also lighthearted and mischievous which is probably why he likes goblins so much.
He has a Twitter, ArtStation, and website if you want to dig a bit deeper. Plus, he streams on Twitch.
Keith
Keith (KeithG on Discord) is a software engineer by trade, specializing in cloud technology.
In his free time, he dabbles in game programming and music.
He also created Mandrake Farms, a stream edit Youtube channel to showcase MnM Twitch VODs and is advocate of playable Mandrakes.
He's a big EQ fan, and also a die-hard fighting game player.
William
William aka Urkenstaff is a Swedish game artist who previously worked with concept art, vfx and 3D modeling on Raft, and now with just 3D modeling on GeoGuessr.
He found a love for MMOs while growing up playing Runescape and World of Warcraft, and a lot of single player RPGs - his favorites being VtM: Bloodlines, Planescape: Torment, and the Elder Scrolls series.
Despite his MMO obsession, he didn't fully discover EverQuest until 2016 when he came across Project 1999 and decided to delve into the world of old school MMOs. This eventually lead him to join the Monsters and Memories team doing rigging and animation.
Simon
Simon aka "Baloo" begrudgingly works in the corporate world, where he advises companies on legal and management issues.
He was once dared at a party to try EverQuest. 20 years later, he spends most of his free time on level design and 3d modelling.
Simon is focused on Environment Art and Level Design for MnM.
Patrick
Patrick got his start in video games in 2005 and has been making 3D Character Art professionally ever since.
His love for games started young, when his Grandfather got him an NES for his birthday in the mid 80's and it was on from there. He eventually discovered MUDs, and EverQuest which sparked his career focus away from illustration and comics and into 3d virtual worlds.
Patrick is focused on Character and Prop asset creation, pipelines, system design and art management for MnM.
Brandon
Brandon, aka "First", has worked in the public sector for the last 16 years and is an avid gamer.
He was introduced to RPGs with ElfQuest and AD&D in grade school. A friend showed him Everquest during Beta and he has been hooked on MMOs ever since. He also has a deep love of Morrowind, and strategy games such as Master of Orion, Alpha Centauri, and Battletech.
Brandon is focused on Content Design & Worldbuilding, and also dabbles in QA for Monsters & Memories.
Montreseur
Hailing as a near lifelong MMORPG player, a decade as a 3D artist, later transitioning to technical art and engineering. Montreseur specializes in shaders, art pipelines, optimization, and tooling. Creating systems and tools to maximize visuals, immersion and bring all the unique skill sets in the team together.
Brian
Brian aka “Bilth" has worked in the gaming industry for 15 years as a programmer and game designer, creating small gaming experiences for companies like Nickelodeon and Disney. Interested in developing his artistic side, he learned to paint and 3D model in his free time and enjoys creating inviting & immersive scenes for players to experience.
A gamer at heart, Brian grew up playing role-playing games and is largely inspired by gaming worlds like those from EverQuest, Ultima, The Legend of Zelda series, and the Final Fantasies. On Monsters and Memories, he is contributing as an environment artist, creating props and populating scenes that players will get to experience first-hand.
Chip
Chip spent over a decade at Curse as a backend-focused engineer and architect on sites like Curse / CurseForge, Hearthpwn, and D&D Beyond before moving to WebGL programming to support D&D Beyond's 3D web features such as dice and maps.
He transitioned over to Unity development and currently works for a studio that creates specialized games for medical professionals. Starting with MUDs and then EQ, he's played most MMOs that have come out since, and is now spending some time in both WoW Classic and Project Quarm.
Ivan
Ivan, aka “Staab”, hails from Switzerland, where he lives with his wife and his two lively young boys.
He's active in the field of marketing within a large corporation.
His passion for immersive gaming experiences and RPGs in particular began with classic titles such as Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and The Elder Scrolls.
Extending to MMOs, and their incredible sense of community, with Ultima Online, EverQuest (a formative gaming experience of his teen years), as well as many others.
As a game designer, Ivan will be working to harness his passion to create captivating and challenging experiences, inspired by the classics but always with a twist!
Bill
Bill aka “Nickademus” works by day as a Software Engineer in the aerospace industry but outside of office hours, his passion has always been games.
He has been a Game Master of Tabletop RPGs for over 40 years, including five editions of Dungeons & Dragons, entertaining players with clever traps, complex puzzles and challenging combat scenarios.
Bill is focused on Game Design, assisting with quests, lore, and fleshing out the details in the darkest corners of Aêthoril.
Zack
Zack is a Senior Artist that has worked on multiple projects throughout his 20 years of game development. Specializing on characters; his primary focus is on quality and execution. One of the things he finds most important about the creative process is collaborating and encouraging his team to improve and hone their skills together.
His love for art started while sitting around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons drawing his fellow adventurers. An avid game player he was hooked on MMOs like EverQuest and Action-RPGs like Diablo and Neverwinter Nights. From that point he had decided he wanted to make art in a different way and pursued a job in the games industry. As a creative all this time later he could not imagine doing anything else.
Zack is focused on Character and Prop art for MnM.
Open Roles
There are currently no open roles.
For folks that are interested in potentially pursuing a role should one open, it never hurts to be a known quantity in our community.