Our Team
The development of Monsters & Memories 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. 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.
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 several Mortal Kombat titles. 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 & Memories.
Harrison
Harrison aka “Padas” has spent the past 11 years as a college instructor teaching various aspects of game design and digital art. His favorite subjects to teach are 3D modeling and texturing.
Aside from teaching, he has worked on films and TV commercials and has freelanced 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. In his own time, he enjoys making 3d characters. You might find some EQ fan art creations on his Instagram.
A huge MMO nerd, Connor 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 12 years as a programmer and 3D artist.
He is a founder of Lavaboots Studios, with whom he has produced three commercial games.
His inspiration to become a developer came directly from his love of MMOs such as EverQuest and his passion for creating worlds like those he grew up playing in.
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 heavy metal, jazz, classical, progressive rock, and electronic music, as well as providing soundtracks and sound design for a handful of indie games.
Robert is currently active in the Finnish bands Von Hertzen Brothers, Turisas, and Coska.
He’s a Commodore 64 aficionado, EverQuest classic devotee, audio fanatic, animal lover and sauna enthusiast.
Robert is contributing with music and sound design.
Alexander
Alexander aka “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 aka “KeithG” 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 an advocate for playable mandrakes.
He's a big EQ fan and 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 is now 3D modeling on GeoGuessr.
He found a love for MMOs while growing up playing Runescape, 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 led him to join the Monsters & 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 Monsters & Memories.
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’s 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 and worldbuilding, and also dabbles in QA for Monsters & Memories.
Montreseur
Hailing from a near-lifelong experience as an MMORPG player, with a decade as a 3D artist and later transitioning to technical art and engineering, Montreseur specializes in shaders, art pipelines, optimization, and tooling. He’s creating systems and tools to maximize visuals and immersion, bringing all the unique skill sets of 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 and 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 & 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.
Ivan’s passion for immersive gaming experiences and RPGs in particular began with classic titles such as Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and The Elder Scrolls.
He extended to MMOs and their incredible sense of community with Ultima Online, EverQuest (a formative gaming experience of his teen years), and 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’s 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 in characters, his primary focus is on quality and execution. One of the things he finds most important about the creative process is collaborating with 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. As an avid game player, he was hooked on MMOs like EverQuest and action RPGs like Diablo and Neverwinter Nights. From that point on, he had decided he wanted to make art in a different way and pursued a job in the games industry. After all this time, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Zack is focused on character and prop art for Monsters & Memories.
Dustin
Dustin aka “Bullet” has worked in the corporate IT infrastructure space for the past 12 years implementing and managing projects, acquisitions, new processes, and more. Providing professional service and understanding others' problems have been one of many keys to his success over the years.
Dustin plays various types of games including Wizardry, Dungeons & Dragons, P99, WoW, and more! He started exploring a new way to play RPGs from 2017 until 2020 by partnering with friends to create a roleplay community of thousands using Grand Theft Auto V.
Dustin will bring this past experience of professional services, client care, and RP community operations to assist with implementing a dedicated high fantasy roleplay community within Monsters & Memories.
John
John aka “JohnNS" comes from a computer technician background, a hobbiest in home automation and electronics, as well as experience in MMO volunteer programs involving community relations and bug hunting.
Like many on the team, John has a long history of MMO gaming.
John brings his investigation and problem solving skills to the QA team.
Tom
Tom aka “Blink” is a video editor and producer based out of the mid-west. He specializes in commercial, corporate, and live events content and has over 15 years of experience.
He got started with MMOs playing EverQuest back in 2000 and he’s been a huge fan of the genre ever since.
Jason
Jason aka “Fyreflyte" landed on the EverQuest QA team at SOE through a series of happy accidents, despite having majored in biology. He spent the next 10 years as a designer on EverQuest II, where he specialized in the creation and balance of game systems such as itemization and combat abilities.
An avid gamer since the early 80s, he first got hooked on adventure classics like King's Quest and the Ultima series. He spent many sleepless college nights playing EQ with friends and was thrilled to be met with that same sense of danger, wonder, and community when trying out Monsters & Memories during a weekend playtest.
Jason focuses the majority of his time on content and systems design, and occasionally fiddles with tool creation.
Mike
Mike, a 3D generalist who transitioned into a 3D artist in game development to fulfill his dreams, specializes in creating environments.
His journey in the MMO world began with vanilla World of Warcraft in 2006, followed by adventures in Lineage II. Classic single-player games from the turn of the millennium, such as Gothic, Age of Empires, and Tiberian Sun, have significantly shaped his imagination and development as an artist.
In his free time, Mike enjoys programming and has developed several prototypes in Unity.
Callum
Callum works as a software engineer building large-scale distributed databases for observability data and open source metrics and monitoring tools. MMOs were his introduction to programming, where he built and customized minor addons for games such as LOTRO, Warhammer Online, and more.
Monsters & Memories is his first step into games development. Callum is focused on building data and observability tooling for the team while dipping his toes in game performance and systems programming.
James
James aka “Bjern Stromgarde” is a forensic psychologist working in prisons and secure hospitals in England.
Beginning in the MUD community in 1995, James was an early player in Ultima Online and EverQuest. Since then, he’s embraced many MMORPGs as a fan of the genre.
James is focused on environment art.
Jake
Jake aka “Chinny” is a decade-long Twitch streamer turned data engineer, with a passion for MMOs and survival/craft games.
Some of his favorite games growing up were Shining Force and The Legend of Zelda series. As he transitioned to PC gaming, he discovered EverQuest, which led him to spend several years in Dark Age of Camelot and eventually move on to World of Warcraft amongst many other MMOs.
Channeling his love for building into the art of worldbuilding, Jake is focused on environment art for Monsters & Memories.
Eric
Eric aka “Loki” is a senior technical writer in the accounting software space, with an education in game design.
He took his first step into MMORPGs with EverQuest in 2000 and has since enjoyed the worlds of FFXI, EQ2, WoW, GW2, and many more. He’s also a bit of a Norse mythology buff.
Eric is focused on editing and writing for Monsters & Memories.
Erskine
Erskine aka “Kumadar" is a senior technical writer currently working in the financial software space.
He grew up on EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, and World of Warcraft. After playing on Project 1999 for six years, he moved on to WoW Classic where he proudly became the wielder of not one, but two Thunderfuries.
He can sometimes be found grinding Diablo 2 or Path of Exile and is a perennial struggler in Soulsborne games.
Erskine is focused on content design and worldbuilding.
Open Roles
We are currently looking for a 3D Animator, an Environment Artist, and a Texture Artist.
For folks that are interested in potentially pursuing a different role should one open, it never hurts to be a known quantity in our community.