About the Technical Reviewers

These reviewers contributed their considerable hands-on expertise to the entire development process for Developing Online Games . As the book was being written, these dedicated professionals reviewed all the material for technical content, organization, and flow. Their feedback was critical to ensuring that Developing Online Games fits our readers' need for the highest-quality technical information.

Richard Allan Bartle co-wrote the first virtual world, MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), in 1978, thus being at the forefront of the online games industry from its inception. A former university lecturer in artificial intelligence, he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design and development. As an independent consultant, Richard has worked with almost every major online games company in the UK and the US to exist over the past 20 years . In addition to virtual worlds , he also maintains an interest in mobile phone games. His designs to date have elicited over a million SMS messages a month in the UK alone.

Richard lives with his wife, Gail, and their two children, Jennifer and Madeleine, in a village just outside Colchester, Essex, England. He works in virtual worlds.

Scott Hartsman joined the EverQuest team as Technical Director in late 2001, just in time for Shadows of Luclin . His roles have included support, design, programming, management, and he has been involved with 20 titles spanning 6 online services over the past 15 years. Scott got his start in the industry writing content for a small commercial MUD called Scepter , moved on to GemStone II and GemStone III from there, and somewhere along the line realized that he could quite contentedly spend the rest of his career building online worlds.

Gordon Walton has been authoring games and managing game development since 1977. He has a bachelor of science degree from Texas A&M in computer science. He has personally developed more than two dozen games and managed the development of hundreds more.

Gordon has spoken at every Game Developers Conference since it began , on topics ranging from game design to programming to business. He has had his own development company (twice), been development manager for Three-Sixty Pacific and Konami America, vice president of development for GameTek, senior vice president and general manager of Kesmai Studios, vice president of online services for Origin Systems managing Ultima Online , and is currently vice president and executive producer of The Sims Online at Maxis. Gordon is personally committed to building the medium of MMP games to surpass the reach and impact of standalone computer games.