Dan Elggren, Studio Lead of Stargate Worlds, joins us for candid two-hour discussion on bringing the Massively Multiplayer Online game to life — and the difficult months that led up to the project’s cancellation.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Reminders
0:27 – Archive USS Midway Footage
2:56 – Opening Montage by Eric Belisle and Nick LaMartina
4:11 – Opening Credits
4:35 – Dan Elggren, Studio Lead, and Katie Postma, Lead Community Manager
6:13 – “The Best Team of People”
7:05 – What Stargate Worlds Means to Dan
8:38 – The First Video Game Dan Fell In Love With
9:44 – When Dan Joined the Industry
10:30 – TenTonHammer Interview from Leipzig, Germany
11:47 – Stargate Worlds Was 20% From Completion
14:13 – Hindsight is 20/20
14:47 – Dan’s Journey to Studio Lead
15:26 – Earth & Beyond
16:13 – “I Can’t Do This Commute Anymore”
17:43 – When Katie Found Out Dan Was Joining
18:29 – BigWorld (Backend) and Unreal (Front End)
19:50 – Dan Was Already a Fan
20:47 – Dan’s Favorite Stargate Episode
21:53 – The Perfect MMO Space
22:50 – The Cost of Stargate Worlds
24:02 – Advantages to Self-Publishing
25:24 – A Complicated Piece of Software
27:18 – Stargate Worlds Funding
28:05 – Building Pipelines
30:33 – Pipelines and Sticky Notes
31:38 – Stargate Worlds Team Size
32:17 – Dan’s Producers
34:13 – Rebecca and Erin: The Dynamic Duo
37:07 – World of Warcraft Guild
38:08 – Howard Lyon, Art Director
43:03 – Demetrius Comes, Technical Director
45:20 – BigWorld and Unreal Part 2
45:59 – Licensing Third Party Tools
47:05 – Bringing Stargate Worlds Into 2026
50:44 – Chris Klug, Creative Director
52:29 – “We Could’ve Pulled It Back”
54:51 – Dan’s First Non-Original IP
55:55 – Dancing Asgard
57:51 – When Dan Put David In His Place
1:01:18 – Life Lessons and Catharsis
1:04:30 – Passionate People
1:05:21 – The Best Way to Deal with Conflict
1:06:43 – Vision and Brilliance
1:08:07 – Cover System
1:11:06 – Flanking
1:12:21 – Cluttered User Interface VS Immersion
1:12:57 – Nicole Lazzaro of XEODesign
1:14:17 – Utilizing Third Party Tools to Compete
1:15:15 – Unknowns
1:17:34 – Minigames
1:21:23 – We Weren’t a Crunch Team
1:23:47 – Dan’s Leadership
1:27:51 – The Finish Line
1:31:13 – Different Choices
1:33:03 – “Diversify” or Ship ASAP?
1:35:10 – Running Low on Funds
1:37:08 – When Katie Left
1:37:47 – Helping People Find Jobs
1:39:16 – Am I Cursed?
1:41:27 – When Dan Left
1:44:07 – “You’re Just Trying to Make a Great Game”
1:46:29 – Part of the Journey
1:49:47 – Signed Stargate Worlds Posters
1:51:01 – Who Dan Misses the Most
1:54:03 – Irene Matár’s Jaffa
1:56:26 – Stargate Universe (“Air, Part 1”)
1:58:01 – Richard Dean Anderson
1:59:36 – “Hey, You Need a Suit!”
2:01:24 – Brad Wright
2:05:06 – Thank You, Dan!
2:07:12 – One Last Story
2:08:37 – Post-Interview Discussion
2:12:52 – Like, Share, Subscribe
2:13:42 – End Credits

***
“Stargate,” “Stargate SG-1,” “Stargate Atlantis,” “Stargate Universe,” and all related materials are owned by Amazon MGM Studios.

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read [clip]:
Oh, that’s the game. They’re showing the game. Is that cool or what? There’s nothing like it.

Dan Elggren [clip]:
Hey, Chris, what do you think?

Christopher Judge [clip]:
[inaudible]

Ben Browder [clip]:
You know the P90 doesn’t sound like that. The T36 makes sound like that. The P90 does not sound like that.

David Read [clip]:
What do you think about that?

Christopher Judge [clip]:
That’s awesome.

Ben Browder [clip]:
They need to put it out on PS3.

Christopher Judge [clip]:
[inaudible]

David Read [clip]:
Would you play as your own characters or as each other’s characters?

Ben Browder [clip]:
I’d definitely play Vala.

Dan Elggren [clip]:
That game is gonna be the best game out there.

David Read [clip]:
There’s a lot of console games out there that I don’t want to play though.

Dan Elggren [clip]:
That’s why you gotta come over to the studio.

Christopher Judge [clip]:
Done. I’m just gonna grab a drink.

Dan Elggren [clip]:
You guys gotta get over to the studio to see that thing.

Ben Browder [clip]:
Yeah. When are we going?

David Read [clip]:
You set it up. We’ll pay for you and get you on over.

Ben Browder [clip]:
Where are you guys working?

Dan Elggren [clip]:
Mesa, Arizona.

Ben Browder [clip]:
Mesa, Arizona. Are you developing it for the PS3 and the Xbox 360?

Dan Elggren [clip]:
No, I don’t think they’re starting out with that. They are doing the PC release.

David Read:
Welcome back to Dial the Gate, the Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I cannot articulate the… Joy is not the right word. Satisfaction is not the right word. Hence, I cannot articulate what it is to come back with this particular group of people for this particular episode. Katie Postma has returned. Lead community manager of Stargate Worlds, and my predecessor. But more importantly in this episode, Dan Elggren, who is the studio lead of Stargate Worlds, is with me for the first time since… I think the last time that I saw you was the Midway.

Dan Elggren:
Oh, yeah.

David Read:
So, it is a treat to have you here, sir. How are you?

Dan Elggren:
I’m excellent. It’s, like I was telling you guys earlier, the memories and the fond memories that I have. Just seeing you two, it just warms my heart. So, I’m just so good to be here.

David Read:
I’m so thrilled that you agreed to sit down and talk. There’s so many feelings that come from seeing you, Dan. And it’s a treat to have you. I’m really curious as to what you have to say, especially looking back on this project at this point in your life, the 20-year anniversary of it getting rolling as I believe this year. And everyone’s probably at a very different place in their lives who worked on the project. But in addition to that, the thing that really stands out for me is the fact that you said in our correspondence — and Katie is here to also be a sounding board as well. She’s gonna co-host this with me. And she’s feeling a little under the weather, so we’re getting that out there now. So, she’s not gonna be as talkative as she was last time — is that you said that this is the best team of people that you ever worked with. You said that to me privately. So, if you don’t want that getting out there to your other teams, let me know. If that’s the case, there is a host of Stargate fandom out there that deserves to know why. And it’s all the more reason that we sit down and we have these conversations about the title, about the people who were working on it, and about what it meant to everyone with you at the top of this juggernaut. What does Stargate Worlds mean to you after all this time?

Dan Elggren:
When I talk about Stargate Worlds, one, it’s on my wall, so I always have it in reference, and this is a lot of my meetings and conversations I have… and even interviews that I have in the past. And the reason I say Stargate Worlds is one of my favorite times and hardest times in my career is, you get those standard interview questions where they ask you that question. “What’s your favorite time or your favorite project?” And it’s always been Stargate Worlds. And at the root of it, it is the people. A lot of us were early on in our career, and there’s so many people that this was their first game job. And they’ve gone on to make amazing games and do some amazing things in the industry, and it’s amazing to watch them grow. I watched Erin Ali at GDC give a talk a couple years ago, and I’m down there in the audience beaming, she’s amazing, seeing what she’s been able to accomplish, and so many others, the few that I’ve been able to keep track of and keep in contact with. There’s a little bit of that, we went to war together. And we came out of the trenches, and that bond, I think, is unbreakable ’cause we had to go through so many different fun times and hard times. It will always be that core memory for me, an amazing part of my career.

David Read:
What is the first video game that you fell in love with?

Dan Elggren:
First video game I ever fell in love with? That’s going back to my college days. I remember being in the computer lab, and then the first time somebody pulled up Warcraft, RTS in the lab as a LAN party. I’m like, “Wait, what is this? That’s interesting.” I always wanted to go into games and start off, but it wasn’t a core trajectory for me to build games. But I was doing recruiting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and this game company was across the street, said, “Hey, we’re looking for QA testers. Come and help us out.” And, testing on early games of Field and Stream hunting games and Championship Bass, and those were the early days of the game industry, the bubble market as we like to call it. So, it was a lot of fun starting off in the game industry. And no matter how rough the industry’s been, and even these last few years, there’s something about it and the people that you work with that keeps drawing you back to it.

David Read:
Man. So, what year would that have been? What year was your first year getting involved in this industry?

Dan Elggren:
That first game company was back in ’97. I’ve been making games for, what, 28, 29 years now. It’s been this interesting roller coaster. You get the console curves that come through and completely disrupt the industry for a time period. And obviously what we hit in the recession and those types of things that were pretty big, dramatic shifts. But at the end of the day, it’s about the people. It’s the people you work with and those connections that you make and going through and shipping a game, and we were close.

John Hoskin:
I’m John Hoskin for tentonhammer.com. We’re here at GCDC in Leipzig, Germany.

Dan Elggren:
We’re doing the friends and family stress test right now where we have a very few amount of people go and get on the servers, making sure the servers are working. But very rapidly, we’re actually gonna be opening up the doors to a larger audience. We’re gonna do gameplay testing, which is really gonna focus on how does the game play, how does it feel, how does the community interact within these environments? So, it’s getting out there and really registering so we can get as many people into the game as possible. We actually kicked off our community website probably two years ago. Here we are, we’re barely starting pre-production for this game. And that’s one of the first things we did is make sure that we actually opened up to the community. And we still have people that are still part of that community from day one of that launch. With our community manager, the building up guilds and commands right from the get-go, that gets this foundation outside of the game. And then once you get in the game, we wanted to really embed people into some of the commands. We wanted to have smaller teams, which are mini guilds that will allow people to — if you don’t have 40 friends, we don’t wanna force you to try to find 40 friends. And that’s where Katie Postma, our community manager, is really gonna make that big difference in utilizing those areas.

John Hoskin:
And Katie will be thrilled that you mentioned her in the video.

Dan Elggren:
I figured she would. I threw one out for her.

Dan Elggren:
We had a game. We were at that last 20% of that game. And I always say last 20% is 80% of the work. And that’s what we were fighting with, is get that last 20% done, which is a lot of work. And that’s when it hit us, when everything shifted. But that time is precious.

Katie Postma:
Do you feel that it was 20% left? We had gone through Alpha; we’d gone through closed Beta. I don’t think we were yet in open Beta, unless that was after my time. But I was there in closed Beta because I was in the room with the guys and they’d say, “OK, add 10 more, add 20 more.” I was adding them in real time and DM’ing people that, “Hey, if you can get home from work, you can come in the Beta this afternoon.” I remember those days very well. But to me, it felt like more than 80% at that point. I’m wondering, why do you consider it still 20%? I was a noob at the time, obviously.

Dan Elggren:
And that time when we were in the Alpha and going to potentially that Beta, and I was literally watching a video of sitting in the back of a Humvee at Leipzig and talking about starting the Alpha. And we were starting to bring on people — a lot of friends and family. And that’s when Demetrius and the engineering team were really taking what we’d built with the BigWorld backend in Unreal, something that had never really been done before. And being able to start proving that this technology works and really show off how this game could perform at these higher levels. And I think that, the game was there in all those different pieces. The reason I say it’s 20% is — ’cause you start getting to that point where you really start bringing on people into that type of scale. It’s not just the server or the monitoring of being able to get that. It’s the little details of that little shift of how that player interacts or that little animation. And those little details, I think, are really that last bit of polish that really puts the game over the edge to really make a difference.

Katie Postma:
That you don’t see until you see hundreds of people playing. ‘Cause the team can play it all day long, but we’re so used to it. It’s not until you have those hundreds, that critical mass of people seeing it. That’s true.

Dan Elggren:
And then there’s definitely something to be said that I wish we would’ve done more to push the game out faster, in the essence of getting it into more users’ hands faster. ‘Cause hindsight’s 20/20. We didn’t really know that the game was gonna hit those hard times. And if we would’ve known we were gonna hit this wall of these hard times, I think if we would’ve gotten that game out there and maybe into some type of a subscription base, I think we would’ve had a different story to tell. With more people on it, and maybe even some paying customers on it. We were two steps away from that.

David Read:
How do you go from getting involved in the QA side of things in the late ’90s to studio lead? What transformation occurred for you in a pretty compressed period of time, all things considered? What was that journey like for you over those next nine, ten years? What happened?

Dan Elggren:
I got sucked into the game industry. Also, young family, moving. So, I started in Salt Lake, and I went and joined this small company. You might’ve heard of Westwood Studios in Las Vegas. A little tiny company, first MMO, building Earth & Beyond. And working with that amazing team at Westwood and working on Command & Conquer, these RTS. And then Westwood’s going through its own closures and moving us all out to LA. And going from LA where I was there — I don’t know if you guys know, EA-Spouse days and all the letters that came from that — I was there in that environment and EA-Spouse came out from that studio, working there.

Katie Postma:
I didn’t realize you were there. Wow. That was a big deal.

Dan Elggren:
It was a lot of weekends and a lot of hard hours trying to work on some amazing games, like Medal of Honor is another sort of great franchise, and working as a production leader on sort of some of those products. And it’s funny ’cause I got to this point, I told my wife, “I can’t do this commute anymore.” I was driving all the way from northern LA all the way down. On a good day it was 45 minutes each way. On average, it was two to three hours of commuting. And I wouldn’t see my kids all week type of thing, and I was like, “I’m done.” And I think the very next day I was on that commute, a recruiter called me and said, “Hey, there’s this company called Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment in Arizona.” I’m like, “Yes, please. Hook me up. And please, anything you do…”

Katie Postma:
But you knew Chris from early on. So, did he give your name to the recruiter? Wasn’t he–

Dan Elggren:
Yeah.

Katie Postma:
I thought so. OK, OK. That makes perfect sense. He’d be dumb not to.

Dan Elggren:
No, I had two or three phone calls with Chris and a couple others, like Joe. They hired me over the phone. I never flew out to Arizona once. I had family here too, so to me it was, yes, you offered me the job. Yes, I’m signed up. I took the job over the phone, and then within a two-week time period, I was already in Arizona working. And unfortunately, I left my wife, and she still holds that against me a little bit, to back up the house and, but she did–

Katie Postma:
You left her temporarily, not forever.

Dan Elggren:
Temporarily. Yes, thank you. Thank you for clarifying that.

Katie Postma:
Because I’m like, “I’m pretty sure I’ve met her several times since then.”

Dan Elggren:
I think I did that to her a couple times. But she’s still with me and still puts up with me, which I’m very grateful for.

David Read:
The bills don’t pay themselves.

Katie Postma:
I remember how excited Chris was when he told us you were joining. He was so, so excited. There were a few moments — but that was ’cause I was there early, early days, which we’ve talked about before. But there were a few things that happened and fell into place and it kept feeling like, “Oh, this is real. This is happening.” And that was a giant leap forward for everyone there when you joined.

Dan Elggren:
I think I was employee 10 or 11. It was still really early, still really small. We weren’t even in that main office yet. I remember showing up there and we were in this cramped little space and everybody was trying to figure out how to get any type of asset into BigWorld.

David Read:
Can you explain BigWorld real quick to the laymans in the room?

Katie Postma:
All Big World guys are great.

Dan Elggren:
They’re great.

David Read:
What is that? Is it a tool? What is it?

Dan Elggren:
It was the Unreal of the days, but it was, Unreal in the essence of it was an MMO Unreal. So, their tool was allowing us to — we wanted to build an MMO, and that was the tool of the day. But their back end was great, and that’s exactly what we wanted to utilize. Their front end is what we struggled with. Our artists and designers couldn’t get anything through their pipeline to get any assets in the game. That was a big shift on how we went from, “OK, how do we unlock our artists and designers to be able to create this game? But keep all the amazing stuff that we had for the backend.” Because Unreal had no backend. There was nothing we could do to sort of go to the scale we wanted with the backend. So, it was that shift of going from, “All right, how do we get these two to marry and talk to each other?” And that’s where Demetrius and that team were able to like, “All right, let’s take out the backend of Unreal and put in this BigWorld backend.” And that’s, again, I think some of the early images that you saw of the game were us just now unlocking the team and building in Unreal, and they were able to turn on the lights and really start moving.

David Read:
How familiar with Stargate before moving to Arizona?

Dan Elggren:
I showed up, and Joe — of course — he’s like, “OK, you need to watch all these shows.” I’m like, “Done.”

Katie Postma:
And he hands you the DVD set. I know, it’s so funny.

Dan Elggren:
I appreciate that, but I’ve already watched all of them. I was already a fan, and I’ve already seen all the shows; even before I showed up. So that was another plus. Oh cool, not only do I get out of LA and I get to go work with some fun people that I already knew, and I get to work on a franchise that I already love. So, it was cool, win, yes. Let’s go.

David Read:
Any favorite character or episode?

Dan Elggren:
Oof. There’s so many.

David Read:
I know. There’s only 354 of them now.

Dan Elggren:
How do you sort of pick your favorite child? As I was watching some of the recaps — watching Christopher Judge — like Avatar, where they were going back. Is Avatar where he goes and he’s playing the game of the original SG-1 shooter and that type of stuff, which is a lot of fun.

David Read:
Yeah, they used the footage from The Alliance.

Dan Elggren:
I thought that was good, and Richard Dean Anderson has always been such a great character in that, and he was able to really, I think, bring a lot of that show to life because of that personality. So, Avatar is probably the one that sticks out the most.

Katie Postma:
You like SG-1 ahead of the–

Dan Elggren:
Yeah. SG-1. Atlantis was fun. It was something different. It was fun meeting all those show creators and people at Comic-Con. Yeah, it’s like SG-1 is always the true — but even going all the way back to the movie, the original movie was amazing to me. That’s what started it.

David Read:
That gate lends itself to the perfect MMO space because you can go — you don’t need a Hearthstone per se, you just need a gate and your ability to access it, and there’s so much potential in that. I remember seeing the original logo — which I think is so simple, but so perfect at the same time — of Stargate Worlds. It’s just the name of the game and that horizon line. You don’t need more complicated than that. It says potential —

Katie Postma:
Yep, the event horizon.

David Read:
It’s the curvature of a planet. This is all that you need because beyond this, there be dragons. Beyond this is adventure. I do want to establish fairly quickly here, the enormity of what this was, so excluding marketing costs, Dan, if you can correct me where I’m wrong. In the middle 2000s a triple-A title could cost between 10 and 30 million to develop and ship. We’re not talking about marketing. In 2004, WoW cost approximately 63 million to ship vanilla — the original version. I have been told that Stargate Worlds would have taken approximately 21 million to ship before marketing costs. Does that sound right?

Dan Elggren:
It does. An interesting story – I don’t know if we are jumping ahead – but the reason that 20 million sort of sticks out to me – and this might just be hearsay — at the end, we were talking to a lot of potential partners, and Sony being one of those, how do we continue to sort of build this out? And Sony, one of their offers, I found out after the fact, was around that 20-million-mark type of thing. And my reason for hearsay is because my understanding was that we had that offer, but the owners of the company decided to turn that down.

Katie Postma:
I think it’s OK to say this: they saw the potential in self-publishing and creating a publishing arm, which was Firesky at the time. Yeah. I think that was part of the motivation to not go with a third party.

Dan Elggren:
The biggest return is for us as an individual studio and being able to have that sort of autonomy. And there’s definitely a lot of value in that. Of course, again, hindsight, you’re like, “Oh, man, we missed out on an opportunity to sort of get funding,” and that type of thing. But when you’re in the heat of the battle, you want to have the ability to take what you guys were all so passionate about and build a ship. And be able to have that autonomy. And you add another third-party publisher in there with a contract that dictates what you are supposed to do or not do, it makes a big difference in what your flexibility is.

David Read:
For sure. And it could have potentially, depending on when they were wanting to get involved, it could have made it more expensive too. It’s like, “Well, if this is…” I’m not sure when along the line this offer would have been, but if they want certain changes, it’s gonna cost more money. So, there’s a lot of moving pieces here. It’s a gradual progression of downs. You don’t just throw it all the way to the end zone on the other side. So, it’s a complicated piece of machinery. At the time, I don’t remember who told me this, if it was Chris Klug or someone– it may have been you, Dan. At that point in 2007, there was no more complicated piece of software in any kind of similar space than an MMO. There were only two, three of these things to exist. It was just so unwieldy.

Dan Elggren:
Back in that day, yeah. I think the reason Sony was so interested in us is ’cause we sort of cracked that nut of the BigWorld and Unreal connection. And to be able to have a MMO using Unreal at that scale was unheard of. No wonder they were so excited to sort of partner with us, ’cause I’m pretty sure at that point in time they were trying to do the same thing but hadn’t been able to sort of crack that nut.

David Read:
I see. OK. And then bringing you guys in would have then given them potentially the secret sauce to create more of that kind of content.

Dan Elggren:
Absolutely.

Katie Postma:
You talk about the ball game, they were looking three, four plays ahead, and as Dan pointed out, if we could have gotten that first down, we would have been able to go a lot farther, right? But they were looking ahead, like we talked about with Nick last time. They had started not one, but two other potential game studios — I mean, same studio, but for other games — that we were starting to go visit and see what they were doing.

Dan Elggren:
We were starting to shop around and to sort of try to find potential investors/partners that can really sort of help us through that, especially the hard time in 2007 and 2008 type of thing. ‘Cause up to that point, Stargate was fully funded through angel investors. You gotta remember, we had investors walking through that building all the time. Ty Detmer or, you name, ex-football player, whoever they could get their hands on to come in through. Come to find out, my wife’s uncle was an investor. I had no clue that he was investing in the studio. And it wasn’t like a lot of money for each investor. They were just small investments into the studio, getting us sort of the money we needed to continue on. And that’s when the recession hit. All those investments dried up, and then that’s where we just had no money.

David Read:
So, you’re employee number 10; in that neighborhood. What was involved for you on the day-to-day when you’re just getting rolling here. You’re building an enormous Goliath of something that’s only been done successfully a handful of times before. You’re asked to shepherd this thing to completion. What do you… I’m tongue-tied just sitting here, putting down a bullet point list of what happens next. What do you do, Dan? Can you take us through the process? What does your day look like at this point early on?

Dan Elggren:
We talked about it a little bit already. The sheer fact that we had no pipelines. That was the first step; is how do we unlock the small team that we already had to start being able to create assets for the game? Knowing that we had a huge technical battle ahead of us, we had to start building out, ’cause I think for a period of time, we had some artists and some designers that were building out these amazing concepts, all paper designs, and building out these assets and trying to sort of figure it out, but we had no way to get them in the game. Some of those early prototypes that we had used in BigWorld, it would take us weeks upon weeks to get simple assets to go from initial 3D Studio Max, I think it was, into the game. And that type of pipeline; it’ll kill you. You can’t do that. That was one of the first steps, is how do we get asset development unlocked? Once we sort of made that call, and that was a lot of negotiations with Unreal, figuring out what the license would be, and also trying not to burn the bridge with BigWorld, ’cause we were talking about ripping their backend out. After we went through all those negotiations, and when we were able to start unlocking the team and using Unreal, that’s when we could start growing. And that’s where a lot of our assets and developers that we were able to bring in, a little animation team in, and Howard was able to come in at that point and really start making a huge difference on sort of what the art team was gonna look like. And Austin comes in, and Chris was really gonna open up the design team. It’s like all those things just started unlocking. And then from there, we started figuring out, all right, now that we can unlock the developers — the good news is Chris was always building the game. He already had the core concept of what it was, and now we just needed to sort of build out those pipelines. OK, now we have a flow. And you guys remember the studio. Every wall was covered with pipelines.

David Read:
Every wall.

Dan Elggren:
We had Gantt charts and images of everything, and we’d stand in front of the sticky notes and we’d fight with the super sticky notes versus the non-sticky notes, trying to keep things on the wall and trying to keep things organized ’cause we didn’t have a good software tool set for project management. It was all Excel spreadsheets and Rebecca and Erin wrangling every single piece of that game to put it up on the wall. Funny thing is, those are some of my fond memories, sitting in front of that wall, talking about all those different things with the team.

Katie Postma:
A’s and O’s. A’s and O’s.

Dan Elggren:
I had my little stamp …

David Read:
That’s right, A’s and O’s.

Dan Elggren:
… and I’d stamp things. It was good times with the team, ’cause we’d all come together and we’d all sort of work in tandem to sort of build on the same thing, so it was a lot of fun. But those were the early days of creating all the pipelines, and then once we had that and the team started growing pretty rapidly, I think… What was the total size? It was 70?

Katie Postma:
78?

Dan Elggren:
Just our team.

Katie Postma:
I thought there was an eight at the end, so it could have been 68.

Dan Elggren:
It was right around a 70-ish number.

David Read:
So, we didn’t exceed 100? Interesting. The Stargate Worlds team didn’t.

Dan Elggren:
The Stargate Worlds team did not. You add all the Firesky folks and HR and marketing, and that exceeds a lot of that. And then Firesky was really starting to grow towards the end there. But yeah, we were small but we did a lot, which was amazing, what we were able to build with just that small team.

David Read:
OK. I want to talk about the people that you really leaned on a lot on the day-to-day to get things done. I was talking with a couple of other folks, one other person in particular, who called out Rebecca Orozco and Erin Ali. He went to a subsequent project and he found their equivalents to be lacking in terms of him being able to lean on them and get things done. Who were these two? What was their function? What did they do and how did they make your life easier?

Katie Postma:
Oh man, what didn’t they do?

Dan Elggren:
Exactly. What didn’t they do?

David Read:
I don’t even know what their titles are.

Dan Elggren:
They were producers, and this was their first gig in the game industry. I remember Erin coming in for her interview and she had a little three-ring binder where she had organized all these different things and she was going through all of her different organization pieces, and it was top notch even before she walked in the door, and it was a no-brainer to hire her. And then bringing in Rebecca, those two were just a dynamic duo. I think, if you think about that, a team even that size and the skill of a project that size, you had two brand-new, fresh producers and myself trying to wrangle that, and a lot of that fell on them. Because they were — I think one had all the creative art and the other one had all the engineering, and they were able to manage all those different pieces day to day and ensuring that things were flowing, managing fires that were coming up on a regular basis, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Erin and Rebecca at Blizzard and other places, and it’s amazing. They would blow people out of the water every single place that they went. They’re just amazing developers.

Katie Postma:
I just remember the day-to-day and I, as you know, was remote, so I was there a week a month or one week every six weeks or whatever it was at the time, and coming in, they were my touch points. Because they kind of had their finger on the pulse of everything. But that didn’t just include the work. That included everything personal that was going on with anybody. If anybody was having a bad day, if anybody was sick, if anybody had just had a baby or a new dog or anything, the two of them knew. They had to know the full game, they had to know all the work, they had to know what each other was doing, and then they also had to know what every single person was doing around them at all times, both at work and at home. I just remember going to them with anything, “Hey, why is this not working out? Why is this person reluctant to do this work at this point?” And then they’d explain everything that had been going on, politically or personally or professionally. It was crazy, but they were incredible. Incredible.

Dan Elggren:
And not only were they really good at knowing everything that was going on, but they were also the morale builders, too. Erin bringing in, I can’t remember the name of that game where she had the helmet. It was her favorite game of all time, and she would come to stand-up with the helmet on and it would bring everybody to tears, rolling in laughter, as we’d go through some of those difficult times and those difficult decisions. They were always a light in the room, so I give them so much credit for being so amazing.

Katie Postma:
And organizing those final moments.

David Read:
I just remember her with a mustache. That’s all. I don’t know what the mustache was from. I just remember her in a mustache, and this brings a smile to my face.

Katie Postma:
It sounds like Erin.

Dan Elggren:
So, we’re looking to get character creation at first playable. What you guys are seeing right now isn’t there yet, but it’s what we’re going for. We’re looking for suppression working in-game, mini-game call-in system, mob alignment, which we’ve been working on currently, first functional pets, vendors, getting the Stargate and Ring Transporters functioning, mission-giver icons, and cool-down UI in-game.

Katie Postma:
They were the heart. They were the heart of the office, for sure.

Dan Elggren:
No. I can’t say enough good things about them. I’ve had, obviously, those few touchpoints. Every now and then I’ll meet up with Erin at GDC, and — I actually have been sitting on the blanket that I got for hiring Rebecca at Blizzard because that was the bonus I got for being the hiring manager for hiring Rebecca. Sweet. It’s amazing. I got my Blizzard blanket from Rebecca. But I knew that no matter where they’d go, they would blow it away. And they have. I think they’ve had both amazing careers.

Katie Postma:
I just wanna do a tiny point. Joe used to brag that I was the guild leader of a guild in WoW, and we played forever and ever. I’ve been leading a guild for 23 years now. Everyone who played WoW was in that guild. As we left Stargate Worlds and went to other places, including Blizzard, they were still in our guild. So, I had to tell my officers, “Nothing to see. There might be the occasional Blizz employee in here. Act cool, guys.” So, that was fun. We got to keep playing with them after they were back at Blizz. That was a good time.

David Read:
I loved Kilrogg. I remember that server.

Katie Postma:
It’s great.

David Read:
My original character’s still in — I guess it’s probably still around.

Katie Postma:
Yep. It’s still around. You’re probably still in the guild. We didn’t move the guild, but we recreated the guild on a more populated server, but we still have the Kilrogg guild. That’s still the original.

David Read:
Dan, were you responsible for bringing Howard Lyon in?

Dan Elggren:
Yeah, I convinced him to give up his regular painting job because he’d always tell me, “I just want to paint, man. I just want to go paint.” I think I took him out to lunch a couple of times because I think I got him through some type of friend or network. I was able to finally convince him, “Dude, you would be amazing at this, and come try this video game with us.” And you guys are gonna talk to him again at some point, and he’s still awesome. He’s still… Everything about him breathes creativity. Going to lunch with him on a regular basis, he’d look over at the root in the parking lot and he’s like, “Look at that texture,” and looking at how tendrils move and… Like dude, that is amazing how creative that brain is and everything about him.

Katie Postma:
His whole family. Speaking of tendrils, yeah. They’re incredible.

Dan Elggren:
I saw Shari a couple weeks ago at a museum. We were talking about some of those good old days and every single one of them. It just–

Katie Postma:
The best.

Dan Elggren:
The best. Really good, down-to-earth people that I —

Katie Postma:
And always teaching and always reaching out and being active and helping support other creatives and young people, and I love them.

Dan Elggren:
My daughter, she’s in the art program at the local high school. And she comes home the other day and she’s like, “Yeah, my teacher spent the entire day talking about Howard Lyon.” ‘Cause he now lives here. He’s just a few blocks from me, and they spent the whole day talking about Howard and his art and everything that he does. And I’m like, “It’s such a small world.” And what they’ve been able to accomplish in the art world.

David Read:
Every time I turned around, I would be encountering him. I went out to the big buildings in the LDS Church, the one that was put into Gilbert in 2000. What are they called? They’re not the wards. They’re the bigger ones.

Dan Elggren:
The temples.

David Read:
The temples. I got to go into it while they were still doing tours with a friend of mine. And I walked through this place and I was like, “I bet Howard’s fingers have been on these walls at some point.” I didn’t find out before, but I found out afterward. I reached out to him and I said, “Did you have any hand in that?” And he said, “Did you see the paintings in the baptismal areas?” I’m like, “Yes.” He said, “That was me.” I was like, “Man, of course.” He’s so good. He is a fine artist. The fact that we got him for this thing was such a coup. The Agnos painting is in my den. It’s… I think it’s one of the better interpretations of the Lantean architecture from the ancient era that exist. So, that was Howard. And I can’t wait to have him on. It’s gonna take forever to unspool all this stuff with him. But he is a powerhouse. You can’t get in his way.

Dan Elggren:
I’m excited. I can’t wait for that episode. He’s such a good dude. And I’ve finally been able to reconnect with him over the last couple weeks. He’s always been a positive influence in my life. And it was such a blessing having him during that time period because he was that creative, visual sort of leader for the game, and all the style and visual sort of direction came from him. And it’s amazing to me how few art directors can do what he did in leading the creative vision the way that he did. And you don’t realize it unless you have somebody like Howard that can really drive the creative vision like he did.

Katie Postma:
But he didn’t come from video gaming, correct? He came from tabletops.

David Read:
Really?

Katie Postma:
Yeah.

Dan Elggren:
He’s done a lot of book covers, and he’s done a lot of Magic cards.

Katie Postma:
Magic: The Gathering cards.

David Read:
Right. OK, that’s what I was thinking.

Dan Elggren:
And I think in Diablo III or IV, he did most of those icons. So, he’s sort of dabbled in that sort of side of things, but at the end of the day, if you ask him, and I’m sure he’ll sort of back this up, he just loves to paint…. and that’s his happy place. And that’s ultimately what he was able to go back and do and continue his career doing. And he’s continued to make an awesome impact in so many different lives.

David Read:
Who else do we need to call out at this junction? I know there’s a list. We haven’t talked about engineering too terribly much. Who was really critical on that backend there, making sure the scaffolding to this thing was strong?

Dan Elggren:
Demetrius.

David Read:
Demetrius Comes.

Dan Elggren:
He helped, and he put together an amazing team that was able to have all these different strengths of pulling these things together.

Katie Postma:
Mark and Conan.

Dan Elggren:
And one unique thing about Demetrius is, he’s color blind. That’s one of the things that we spent all of our time doing, is he and Howard took that to heart as, how do we ensure that we have this game to support color blind individuals? A lot of our UI and a lot of our sort of systems were built around that. And Demetrius was our test case for all of our color-blind implementation.

Katie Postma:
That’s accessibility achieved before that even was a thing, and now it’s everywhere. That’s pretty great.

Dan Elggren:
Demetrius definitely led the entire technical infrastructure. And we talk about that BigWorld-Unreal integration like it was nothing. And the reason I think we felt like it was nothing is because Demetrius just… the way that he would dissect that and then communicate how we’re gonna do it, he did that in such an organized fashion that it allowed us to have that confidence that we could do that. Here, we said Sony couldn’t do it. Sony was struggling to find a way to have these larger backend infrastructures, and our little team in Arizona was able to pull that all together, and the technical sort of depth of that team was able to do it.

Katie Postma:
Sorry, David. Did that end up going other places after that? Did that kind of edify any other teams or was that able to be leveraged anywhere else?

David Read:
That’s a good question. OK.

Dan Elggren:
Not that I know of. That might be, I don’t know if you’re able to get Demetrius on or whatnot, but I do think that once the team sort of broke apart — obviously there’s Stargate Resistance and the stuff that they were able to do with that. But that didn’t really take into consideration anything that we did with BigWorld. That was just Unreal. So, I think that when they pulled the plugs on the servers, they lost all that capability.

David Read:
OK. I’m just trying to build my understanding here. So, BigWorld and Unreal were integrated with one another? So, you got these things to play along with each other in order to make the backend of Stargate Worlds work? It wasn’t trading one out for the other?

Dan Elggren:
Yeah, it was literally ripping out whatever sort of limitation of the backend that was on Unreal. And integrating all the BigWorld sort of capabilities. ‘Cause again, BigWorld was a very capable backend system, but it just lacked any type of frontend. And everybody knew that. So, that’s what we were able to do. And make it into a product that was as close as it was with a….

Katie Postma:
But there also had to be licensing deals struck with all of that as well. You had to have separate agreements to be able to even do that stuff. ‘Cause you’re buying it out of a box and you’re, like you say, if you’re integrating something else into it then all of a sudden, your service agreements — all that changes.

Dan Elggren:
You’re spot on. The way that sort of licensing works is — we were licensing Unreal, and what you could do is every version, you can upgrade your game to the latest version and you can continue to do that. But at some point-in-time, if you wanted source code — that’s the little chunk of change, right, that you need to sort of pull out. And that was a big commitment for a small little team to buy the source code. And then, also not be able to…

Katie Postma:
And then the upgrades don’t work.

Dan Elggren:
Exactly.

Katie Postma:
You have to make them work every time. Wow.

Dan Elggren:
Yeah. If you do wanna pull any of the latest technology that’s coming from Unreal, it’s either you say, “Oh, well, can’t do it,” or you take a lot of time to upgrade yourself.

David Read:
I think that this is a great point in this conversation to bring this up. There are a number of people who are going to ask, “Well, if someone had the cash and the wherewithal to bring this thing to its 20% home stretch and get this thing out there, why isn’t it done?” And it’s lacking the fact that this was built on Unreal 3 and that technology is a product of its time and you can’t just bring it into Unreal 5. Can you please illustrate that for us?

Katie Postma:
No. Wouldn’t wanna either.

Dan Elggren:
I think what you’re saying is every little bit of feature set that you have in there, how lighting’s done, how things are drawn, it takes a lot of time. You look at Blizzard. They took a lot of their old games now, like the old Warcraft games and their old Diablo games, and they’ve sort of modernized them. That wasn’t like, “Oh, I took all these assets and just up-rezzd them and I threw them in an engine,” type of thing. It took a full development team building those games almost anew ’cause that technology shifts so dramatically. Especially back in those days. The technology of those editors in Unreal and Unity and all those things shift so fast that you’re getting updates every couple weeks. And you either choose to take them or you don’t. And you have to understand that every single time you take an update, it has an impact to your velocity as a team. So, at some point in time, you gotta rip that Band-Aid off and only focus on your game and understand that you’re not gonna see the latest new technology and try to get the game out the door. And like you’re saying, David, at some point in time, you can’t just reignite that and then throw new assets into Unreal 5 and all of a sudden that just works. No, there’s a lot of deep integration that you have to go through just to get that thing up and running again.

David Read:
That’s it. And as things get unrolled to you guys, you can assimilate a new piece of Unreal into the system architecture. And I’m guessing that it would introduce bugs that you would have to account for and then chase around and pin down and fix.

Dan Elggren:
Yeah. It took some time. And some of those — the longer that we waited to get updates, the harder it would be to sort of integrate. And there were definitely times where we were like, “OK. No.” We’d have to look almost feature by feature of exactly what they were offering and decide, “Oh, is it worth it? Oh, no.” And then the next one comes, “Oh, is it worth it? Oh, crap. Yeah, that one is worth it.”

Katie Postma:
And knowing the farther away you get from having updated, the more trouble you’re gonna have. If you go from .1 to .6, there could be incremental changes in two to five. You have to go back and kinda fix those too. The elements we’re talking about, David, how far graphics have come, how far sound and music has come.

David Read:
Oh my God. Yeah. Generations.

Katie Postma:
We’re back to having 10% done on the game when you think about us having the score and the concept and the story, which isn’t nothing, but everything else, I think you’d have to start and rebuild from scratch. It’d be fun. You wanna do that again?

Dan Elggren:
I think we’d all be pretty excited to work on it again. Finally getting a Stargate game to actually ship that’s good. That would be amazing.

Katie Postma:
That would be pretty fun.

David Read:
Absolutely. Now, there’s so much that goes into something this large. And it’s not just the right people to bring on to pull it off. It’s also recognizing truly what the IP is, what it’s known for, what it wants to be, and to make sure that you’re going to have a tone that’s going to, A, reflect, but B, to do honor to that which people have already fallen in love with. How critical was Chris to pulling that off and how much did you work with Chris Klug on the week-to-week to shape that vision into creating something that was Stargate?

Dan Elggren:
Chris and that team had a very strong vision of what it was, and they had the depth in that team to be able to pull off all the different subsystems — the Bryan Hines and all the different individual sort of contributors that you had within the design team. They all owned a piece of that puzzle and they’re all very capable of sort of managing that. And for us, for me especially, it was, hold on. How do we keep them from doing everything? ‘Cause they wanted to do everything. At some point in time, you just gotta, “All right, we certainly gotta rein this thing back in so we can actually ship this thing at some point.” Because their ideas were endless.

Katie Postma:
The feature creep.

Dan Elggren:
Yeah. And you also gotta realize that at this point in time, MMOs were an established genre. And there was an expectation, especially when you had a game like World of Warcraft that was just this huge behemoth that was bringing in money hand over fist. And the expectation that you felt as a developer, as an MMO, is that you need to sort of match what they’ve already done. And as you were saying, here we are, you’ve got one of the 60 million-plus just to get the vanilla WoW out. And we’re trying to do that.

David Read:
The original version.

Dan Elggren:
And we’re trying to do that on budget. And WoW had had years of development and live services. And now, even though vanilla WoW was this, it’s now this that we’re trying to sort of feed the beast and sort of compete with in some fashion. We could have pulled it back. I don’t think we needed to compete at that level. And we should have just said, “All right, no, here’s the base minimum of our expectations of what this game will be and let’s build it.”

Katie Postma:
That’s the EQ.

Dan Elggren:
Or be EVE. EVE just started off small and built that community over time to this behemoth that it was. But it —

David Read:
I did not know that about EVE Online. OK.

Dan Elggren:
It started really small.

Katie Postma:
It was great, but that’s a really good example actually, and it is in space, which is also appropriate. It’s such a different thing, and Stargate Worlds, we didn’t just wanna be WoW set in the Stargate IP. In the Stargate-verse. So, again, hindsight, but I agree, we should have just based what we wanted to do on what we could achieve and with whom and how many community members we had at the time and gone from there. I agree. [inaudible]

Dan Elggren:
Even get 10 to 100,000 people in the game and playing it, and getting that feedback would shape the decisions that we’d make versus us trying to assume what decisions we would make. It’s not like we had bad decisions or we were making the wrong choices with that at that time. They’re all really good decisions, but you’re right, hindsight, we should’ve just got it out faster.

Katie Postma:
Was Stargate Worlds the first non-original IP you worked on?

Dan Elggren:
No. I worked on Earth and Beyond. So that was my first one of those.

Katie Postma:
Was that based on a show?

Dan Elggren:
No. Original. That was out of Westwood.

Katie Postma:
No, that’s what I’m saying. Was Stargate Worlds the first non-original IP?

David Read:
Did something previously exist before it that it was adapting to?

Dan Elggren:
Having that sort of history of Stargate as well, I think also adds a little bit of a weight to it. We wanted to make sure we were hitting the fans’ satisfaction. To make sure that we were meeting what they would expect out of a Stargate game. And I think that is hard with an IP like that.

Katie Postma:
There is that.

Dan Elggren:
And of course, like you’re saying, an original IP like Earth and Beyond, nobody really has any sort of pre-set idea of what that game should be, type of thing.

Katie Postma:
There’s that, there’s the fan service, there’s the service to the board at MGM, those guys? Sitting around a table, thinking they… Who know nothing about games. Nothing. Maybe their kids do, but maybe not.

David Read:
And that annoying fan in the room who’s saying that the Asgard shouldn’t be dancing.

Dan Elggren:
[inaudible]

David Read:
Can I spill the beans, Dan? Can I spill the beans?

Dan Elggren:
Please.

David Read:
That was the two of us. That was me and Dan. And I’ll never forget Dan looking at me and saying, “The Asgard will dance,” and I’m like… And to this day, I’m like, “You know what? Yeah. The Asgard shoulda danced.” Would I have been happy about it? No. But the Asgard would have danced. I think ideally, part of me had the mindset of, “We shoulda put a little cheat code in there or something to unlock the Asgard dancing.”

Katie Postma:
It’s an easter egg.

David Read:
Right. We didn’t do it. The fans did it. Or have a couple of servers where they didn’t. Because apparently there are WoW servers where you have to speak in the…

Katie Postma:
Role-playing.

David Read:
You can go in there and role-play. I remember standing on that particular hill, just taking the arrows and thinking to myself, “Boy, oh, boy. What have you come to?”

Katie Postma:
But I think it’s a metaphor. Sorry to speak for you, Dan. I can imagine Dan not caring whether or not they danced, but just wanting the meeting to be done and us to all get on with our lives and developing game. At some point, you’re just like, “We’re done here.”

Dan Elggren:
It was interesting, there was a time — ’cause I sat in that little corner in the design room — and I was sitting there at my desk, and sometimes I’d be sitting there, and I’d hear somebody be like, “So-and-so-and-so,” and Dan said, “Da-da-da-da-da,” Dan said,” and I don’t recall saying any of that. But they’d use me to sort of get their point across. I’m like, “Wait, no. That’s not the way it works.”

David Read:
You taught me… This is the point in the show where we get a little bit more emotional or sensitive. You taught me, you made me grow up a little bit faster. And I thank you for that. I held a meeting where I brought in all of the principal folks, and Howard, Chris, you, and time is money. And I was trying to get some content going for the community side of things, as one does in the community management position. And you may not even remember this, Dan. You may. Howard said, “Stargate recipes.” And I said, “No. Next.” And Dan didn’t let me get away with it. Dan said, “Hold on, just a second.”

Katie Postma:
No bad ideas.

David Read:
“You’re not going to… you just dismissed it?” Come on. And I was thinking to myself, “Yeah, I just dismissed Howard Lyon’s idea.” What I should’ve done was, “That’s a good idea, Howard. Let’s put that on the board.” Thinking to myself, “I’m just gonna sit this one aside. It may come to something, but right now, I don’t think it…” And he was a big enough guy to call me out on it in front of everybody and say, “No. Come on. We don’t need to go there.” And my boss made Dan apologize to me later on. To this day, that was, in my opinion, unnecessary. Because he taught me something… And I couldn’t apologize to Dan fast enough, first of all as soon as this thing was over. And I went and apologized to Howard and everything else. And I take umbrage to the fact that my boss went to you and said to you what he said, because I do not think to this day that I was owed an apology from you. I think you put me in my place and were a big enough man to respect me, another guy, to tell me what was right and what was wrong in that instant and not let it go. And that’s one of those life lessons that I have taken from my 20s into my 40s that has always stayed with me. And people who love you and care about you as a human being, and in terms of wanting the best for you, and wherever it is that you’re going to go next, those people will say the right thing, even when it’s painful, when it matters, and when it needs to be heard. And I don’t think we do that enough anymore.

Katie Postma:
Takes so long sometimes.

David Read:
Thank you for having the balls to say, “Hey! No. Don’t do that.” Let’s do the right thing when it matters.

Katie Postma:
You’re very hard on yourself. I know it was a formative time in your life and career, but you’re also very hard on yourself, David.

David Read:
And you are very touchy-feely. And both are OK.

Katie Postma:
Who, me? No. I can probably remember all the times I messed up and the ways in which I endeavored to fix it too. And I have stuff to say to people 20 years later, like, “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t take that moment more seriously,” or, “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the credit.” I didn’t realize….

David Read:
I should illustrate why I brought that up. Part of it is because it’s not… The primary reason is not, ‘I’m going to air laundry.’ And that’s not the intent here. The intent is the joy of bringing us all together and laughing at some things at our own expense later. But also, I’m trying to create a program with Dial the Gate that enables people to illustrate the parts of their lives where they made mistakes and learn something from them. And so, what you hear as me being hard on myself is me trying to… I’ve got a hair up my nose that is driving me nuts, folks, and I apologize.

Katie Postma:
You’re cutting that out, aren’t you?

David Read:
Sure. You know I’m not. I am trying to illustrate… that there is catharsis and there are good things to be found in admitting when you could have done better.

Katie Postma:
Taking accountability. Sure, you can take accountability. But also, I like the fact that you recognize now, looking back you can look at it objectively and see what Dan was actually offering to you in that moment.

David Read:
For this one, I knew it in five minutes. I had to get over the fact that I was standing in front of a group of people and had been defenestrated to a small degree. And then once I got over, it was… Before my presentation was done, it was like, “I see what he did there,” because I know that he’s an honorable person. I know his character and I know why that was done. He was defending the man who he brought on, but also, he was doing it for me. So…

Katie Postma:
You can’t defenestrate someone when it’s a windowless room.

Dan Elggren:
Which ours was.

David Read:
Have you seen Robocop?

Katie Postma:
Wow. The other thing I was gonna say is, when you keep saying, “My boss, my boss,” was that Darren? Is that who you’re talking —

David Read:
Darren Steel. ‘Cause Darren was sitting in the room too, and I appreciated that Darren went to bat for me. But what I told Darren then and what I feel now is that it wasn’t appropriate because Dan wasn’t wrong. Could Dan have perhaps said it a little differently?

Dan Elggren:
Most likely.

David Read:
Sure. But at the same time…

Katie Postma:
And Darren was always about making sure that the dev team and the marketing and — community happened to fall later under, which is when you got there David, I think they were transitioning from being under production to under marketing.

David Read:
Exactly. And then we went downstairs around the same time and it felt very disconnected as a result. But —

Katie Postma:
I felt bad for you.

David Read:
To finish off my earlier point, I can only guess, Dan, that you said it the way that you said it because you knew that I could take it and you knew that I would walk away with that as a life lesson from that meeting.

Dan Elggren:
But it’s amazing to me in those times. There was a lot of passion. We had a bunch of passionate people in those rooms fighting tooth and nail for so many different things. And we were all trying to do our best and figure this out as we were going. And I recall there were a couple scenarios where somebody would come up to me afterwards and say, “Oh, man, you didn’t say hi to me in the hall,” or something like that, or, “You were rude to me,” or something like that. And I’m like, “I don’t remember that at all.” And…

Katie Postma:
You were putting out three fires on your way down.

Dan Elggren:
I’m sorry. Whatever the reason I did that, it wasn’t personal type of thing. And I think that we’re also close enough as a group. We were very tight knit. I think we wanted to be able to sort of have hard conversations. ‘Cause if you ask me even today, it’s… The best way to deal with conflict is head on. It’s like you always try to… You don’t let things linger. So, the faster you nip it… to say, “All right,” “What are we trying to fight here?” ‘Cause I remember… I don’t know if this was Bucher or a couple engineers, but they were going at it on Slack, or I can’t remember what we were using for our communication. Email probably. Then they were just —

Katie Postma:
Skype?

Dan Elggren:
Yeah, Skype. It was back and forth, and back and forth. I only need paragraphs. Back and forth, back and forth. And finally, I get up and I walk over to the engineering bullpen, and these two engineers are literally sitting back-to-back and they’re going at each other online. And it was a matter of turning both chairs around. “Please just talk.” That’s what it usually took. I think that helped a lot of us get through a lot of those hard moments. It was that instant, “All right, feedback.” We need to make sure that none of these issues… And I had no problem with Darren coming to me and saying, “Hey, maybe you were too short with that.” I have to live by the same rules. If I’m causing conflict, I expect somebody to call me out on it and to be able to say, “No, dude, you were wrong on that. You need to work through that.” It doesn’t really matter if I was right or wrong, that was still a conflict that we needed to make sure it was worked through.

Katie Postma:
Was there a single dumb person on the team? Some of this is stemming from the fact that there are all these brilliant minds. Everybody’s got their own version of the game in their head, including David, including me, including Darren. Everyone in engineering is envisioning this thing. And yes, as we see the concept art and then the art and then the systems and then the tools and everything else, and the animations, it starts to… Then our vision starts to align with the actual vision. But in the meantime, in our minds, what we’re doing is of grave importance and everything that we’re envisioning is how it should be, and so you’re gonna… I think of engineering and the brilliance in that 10-by-20-meter room, and how brilliant they all are.

David Read:
The IQ scores of the people in there; just ridiculous. And I remember certain days of being like, there was a note or something, or this was crunch week, or I forget the word that you guys called it, but it’s like, “Don’t walk into engineering.” They have their heads down. They are working towards this milestone or whatever the technical term was. You stayed out of their way because it was time to hit certain things.

Katie Postma:
But they’re really good.

Dan Elggren:
They did an amazing job with it.

David Read:
Cover. Did you have to fight to get this implemented when it was decided that we were gonna have the first-ever cover system in a MMO — until the Tabula Rasa guys came over and decided that they were gonna pull that rug right out from under us before we were gonna release? ‘Cause I heard this after the fact. They came and saw us — this may be an urban legend — and came and visited and then the following week announced that they were gonna have a cover system put into their game, and that was gonna be our thing. That was gonna be one of the things that was shipped on the box, was that this was a part of our design that we were introducing to the MMO space. Is that correct or am I remembering that completely wrong?

Dan Elggren:
The cover system, I remember — back when I was at EA working on Medal of Honor and thinking about how we utilize cover within Medal of Honor and then how we built the worlds to utilize cover. If you think about it, programmatically, especially when you’re talking a bunch of NPCs, how they see the world is obviously not like a player. They don’t see that cover. You gotta insert all those different elements into the environment to ensure that NPCs can see and utilize cover. I remember, before I left EA and Medal of Honor, we were working on cover systems and I thought it was so brilliant how it changed the dynamics of how NPCs move throughout the world. Because if you remember the old Medal of Honor games, all these NPCs would start streaming out of the woodworks and you’d sit there and you’d mow ’em all down and there was really no thought process to it, but they were evolving to utilize more cover and more of that evolution. Coming into Stargate and thinking about, “Oh, here we are. We have a lot of the same mechanics of a shooter game, but even though we’re third person and we also have a lot of NPCs,” and we didn’t wanna be like any typical environment in Warcraft or any other MMO where you walk into a group of NPCs and you start mowing ’em all down and tossing out spells. We wanted to have the world be more dynamic, and I think that was a killer feature that really did set us apart as an MMO, but it still allowed us to have a lot of the same dynamic NPC hotspots, but they felt like every single time you engaged with it, the NPCs would do something different. And it was a lot of fun to see those things starting to come together. And it was a shame that, one, we couldn’t get it out there and then somebody else took that idea and ran with it.

David Read:
It was that — and when I talk about cover to anyone who’s still not being completely aware, using terrain or objects to conceal yourselves from the enemy, either in approaching them or in combat to protect yourself from ammunition that’s coming your way, staff blasts or bullets — the thing that blew me away that you guys had working, and it’s something that Katie illustrated in the last episode that we did, was that you could enter a room, you could fire at something or they could spot you, and then your team would go towards these things and then the others would flank and then come at you from the sides. And it was like, “That’s wild.” They’re engaging with one another in a way where they’re gonna come and get you if you don’t think strategically to get yourself out of it. Because especially, one’s gonna come straight and then these two are gonna come from the side and that had never been seen in a game before to my knowledge, at least nothing of this type. And you guys were doing it. You were pulling it off. And with Nick’s engagement system, with the music playing in there, it got intense.

Dan Elggren:
And the UI was starting to feel good. It had the little indicator of where you were in cover and it shifted based on where you were in the object and it was very dynamic on how you moved throughout the world and —

Katie Postma:
The cameras were great.

Dan Elggren:
It started feeling really good. And we spent a lot of time in that moment-to-moment gameplay to get that to feel right. And I know I saw some reviews where they’re talking about some of the UI being too busy and we were in this world of MMO/third-person shooter game and we’re trying to marry those two with all the different abilities and all the other things, and trying to get both of those to feel right took a lot of iteration.

Katie Postma:
That’s every game I’ve ever worked on, especially early days. It’s always the UI is too cluttered because you have all these elements. You’re trying to be immersive but you’re also trying to give them all the tools. And unless it’s a very, very simple game, you need all of that. Do you remember, I think you were there, Dan, when we had Nicole Lazzaro come from Xeo Design and play and review the onboarding experience and the first-time-player experience, and the experience of the UI and stuff. I just wanna give her a shout-out ’cause she’s awesome, but I just think the team seemed to be ahead of its time in being able to pinpoint any weakness that… I don’t have UX experience. Do you? No. Does somebody know? Well then, we’ll get somebody in. We’ll get this third party. I know we had third party doing some QA and some weapons design… Working with teams before and since, there is some of that on some teams, but it takes a pretty big team to realize… to find those gaps and to be willing to reach out, especially if there’s no hiring budget at that moment, to bring someone on full-time, to reach out and get somebody in the gap. Did we — I don’t know if I was privy to all of it, but we did… Was that your experience at other studios or was this something that was kind of unique to Stargate World?

Dan Elggren:
No, it’s… I’ve always believed in utilizing third-party resources. ‘Cause how do you stay slim in a world where studios are building 300 to 400 man teams, and how do you compete with that? You have to use third-party vendors to be able to do that. You can’t just hire 300 people and then at the end of it not know what to do with them. And that’s, I think, the fault of a lot of triple-A studios. Yeah, using third-party studios is the way to sort of bring in codev, and we used that for a lot of art assets. We had Howard and his team bringing all the ideas to life, and then we’d farm it out to other studios to sort of help create those assets. Same thing with design. At some point in time, you’re at your limits of what your capabilities are, and so you needed to reach out to sort of bring those in. So, we built up a good network of other codev studios to help us out with a lot of that stuff.

David Read:
Were there any specific components to this machine that you guys were building that you honestly thought, “I don’t know how we’re gonna get this done. I would love for us to be able to create XYZ, but there’s… I’m not seeing a way to achieve that. I’m gonna pull in Indiana Jones and I’m gonna take a leap of faith here that the technology is there, and we will find a way to crack this thing.”

Dan Elggren:
I think the things that, at some point in time, I think each discipline went through that phase of, “Oh, crap, how are we gonna be able to tackle this?” There’s so much to do within each one of those realms. With design, there’s so many different systems you have to go build, and we don’t have the resources to be able to do it. And art, for sure, you think about, oh cool, you can go through a Stargate, and then each one is a new world. It’s like, oh crap, each time you go through a Stargate you have to build each one of those assets. And Howard was able… he’s painting these things, and he’s building up all these different visuals, but how do you then go through and have each one of those assets created or animated? And then you have Nick pumping out these sound effects like a full dev studio of sound designers. He was a machine doing that. And each one of those disciplines went through that realm of, “OK, how are we gonna figure out how we piece all these different elements together?” And so, either we did that through Co-Dev, or we had the team that worked miracles to sort of pull certain things… But I think Nick talked last time about Chance coming in and helping out with some of the audio assets. And we underestimated what Nick could do. He took that on… He almost took that as a challenge, like, “Oh, you’re gonna bring somebody else in to bring assets? No, I got this.” And he would just start delivering tenfold of what anybody could do. And each department sort of took each one of those challenges ahead of them and started building out these different elements to really accelerate our production cycle beyond what any team our size could normally do.

David Read:
Tell me about mini-games. I remember you sending me a message saying, “Come upstairs at XY time, and bring your camera.” And I’ve tried to find the video, and I don’t know if I’ve got it anymore. But you and Chris Klug had a bet on mini-games. Do you recall this?

Dan Elggren:
I don’t. You gotta fill me in on this one.

David Read:
So, there was a specific milestone, or it was just being able to get mini-games into Stargate Worlds. And Chris is standing there, and you’re standing there, and I’m taping, and you say, “Chris challenged us to get mini-games into Stargate Worlds. And he said that if we got mini-games into Stargate Worlds, Chris would dance for us. So now we’re gonna see mini-games working in Stargate Worlds, and then we’re gonna see Chris dance.” And that’s exactly what happened.

Katie Postma:
Was it April 1st?

David Read:
No.

Katie Postma:
It wasn’t like April 1st or anything?

David Read:
No. The mini-games were working. They got them to work. And Chris did a little jig, unlike any I have ever seen before or since. It was… I wouldn’t call it dancing, but it was wonderful to get that on film. And to see this thing, this architecture, being implemented on top of this world was just so cool. And it’s one of the things that I, as a gamer — I fancy myself a gamer, but I haven’t played in ages — and also a Stargate fan, was really looking forward to seeing. What was this going to look like? How were they gonna implement this and pull this off, and what was the level of difficulty? How intuitive would they have been? Can you talk about that process? ‘Cause you had the 36,000-foot view. You got to tell them, “Go implement this thing, and here’s our target for this.”

Dan Elggren:
And the trick, if I recall correctly, is it was a little bit like we talked about earlier, that it was hard. We have so much to do and so little time to do it, and how do we get it all in? And then you also had several people that were passionate about, “Oh, I have this idea that I wanna get in there,” like mini-games or something like that. And I think Chris was right for this. I was like, “Oh, that’s too much.” We already have so many other things we need to get done. And then it was a passion, a plea of one artist that’s really passionate about that, that would just go above and beyond and work to get that in, because they felt so strongly that that needed to be a key part of that gameplay. And it’s really hard to tell somebody, “Oh, no, you can’t do that,” when they’re just gonna go the extra mile to get it done. And we had so many different times where we had people just doing that type of scenario, building it up with these amazing systems to get them in the game, because they just felt so passionate about getting them in. And I believe mini-games was one of those things, and that became a core feature that, you look at a lot of the videos, and mini-games comes up almost all the time — the wire-cutting game and the sound effect that went through it, because it… So, it’s not just one designer saying, “I have a paper concept.” It was that individual then working with audio and then working with art to be able to pull all those pieces together, and then fit it into the schedule on top of everything else they gotta get done. And that passion was… it’s contagious, because then the next person wants to go and build it and get it done. I’d love you guys to correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t feel like we were a crunch team. I don’t feel like we were a team that was killing ourselves. I think we worked hard, and we worked to get things done. But I feel like we all had good life balance type of thing. [inaudible]

David Read:
Only a couple of times…

Katie Postma:
I was gonna say, there were a couple of times where, “Oh, we need this by Leipzig, so everybody’s gonna stay late on Thursday, but we’ll bring pizza in.” It was never like, “Sit at your desk and bleed from the eyeballs.” It was more, “Look guys, next week at this time…” This is another area where Erin and Rebecca were amazing, because they’d be like, “OK, we’re gonna clear the decks. We’re gonna have… There’s gonna be places where if you need to nap, you can.” Stuff like that. But they’d have food, and they’d have support systems in place if we were gonna do this. I never had to crunch, but there were times that we’d get busier, and you guys would bake in all the considerations needed, like, “Tell your wife, tell your kids. Tell the babysitter.”

Dan Elggren:
I feel like we were realistic. We weren’t trying to build unrealistic schedules. And again, maybe that’s just me forgetting things over time, and those hard times of working those late hours.

Katie Postma:
No, definitely, the difference between… Joe and I had just come from Ubi[soft].com, and the difference between what you call crunch there and Stargate Worlds, we all agreed that we never wanted to do that. And I don’t know what EA was like, but I can imagine.

Dan Elggren:
I was telling you guys before the call, I was at EA during the EA spouse letters days, and people that have been in the industry long enough know what that means. And that’s the environment I came from. I’d have my executive producer calling me and say, “Oh, this other team’s working the weekend, so you guys all need to come work the weekend.” And, “Wait, we’re pre-production. Why are we working the weekend?”

David Read:
Optics.

Dan Elggren:
He wanted to show face, like, “Oh, my team’s working hard,” type of thing. It was that type of mantra. So, we’d lose our weekends and our nights all the time, because somebody wanted to play the political game of “I’m better than you” type of thing. But we came into Stargate not wanting that type of environment.

Katie Postma:
We knew what we wanted, and we knew what we didn’t want. Having been other places.

David Read:
The response that I’ve gotten from people that I’ve reached out to, that we worked with, and from people who have reached out to me that we worked with, was, “This was a great place to be. This was a great place to work.” And if you worked people to the bone, that is not what they recall 20 years from now. Now some of them may have some saucy stories, but it was all about what went down at the end. It’s not about the process from milestone to milestone. That was the term. There were… You guys used milestones, correct?

Dan Elggren:
Yeah.

David Read:
OK, good. I’ve just been throwing this term out. I was like, “I hope it’s the right one.” And one of the privileges of my position, and Katy’s position, was that we would get to take the temperature of the devs along with the fan base. And there was never, not that I can recall, a resentful person that was part of that team who wasn’t willing to say, “I’m going to tighten my bootstraps a little bit more, because the next few miles are gonna be some tough terrain,” and who weren’t willing to absolutely go there. There was not one resentful person. And I know you’re not asking this, but never did I ever hear a single person have a cross word for you. And I think considering the place that you’re in, that’s saying something, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. To have people look back on this thing 20 years later and be able to have the fond memories that they do of it, despite the crucible that they went through to get to where they are now, and the recession and everything else that was happening at that time, I think is a testament to your leadership. And I think that’s all there is to it.

Katie Postma:
I agree.

Dan Elggren:
Well, thank you. I look back at that time, and you talk about the emotional state of how that ended, and I still get emotional about it. I even talk to my wife. Those last few months were emotional. For all of us. You were losing friends. You were losing family members of this passion project. We talk about all these amazing times that we had working on this game, and those last few months, it wrecked us. And it really destroyed us to the core. And I’m sure we lost a lot of people from the game industry. It’s like, “OK, I’m not doing this.” You lose all this amazing talent that, at that point in time, it’s like, “I’m not gonna stay here with the game industry anymore.” And you don’t blame them. It’s one of those things that financially was devastating to so many people, including myself. It was a reset to that environment. So, hearing that people still look back to that team and think positively, even going through those hardships of how that ended, is… I think I was telling you earlier, it just warms my heart. ‘Cause I really don’t think negatively about anybody at Cheyenne at this point in my life. Even though we probably had some passionate conversations, or we did maybe get into some heated conversations. I think even this Stargate Resistance team; awesome. You guys took what we couldn’t get out of the door, and you guys were able to sort of turn that around into something at a very hard time. And I appreciate them. I give them a lot of credit for taking something that was what was left at that point, ’cause so many people had left at that point, and trying to build something out of it. It’s just, I think only positive things about everybody that was there.

David Read:
I want to ask, one of the things that I found out about you was that you were a person who didn’t quit. And one of the things that was told to me early on was, “This guy has never not shipped a title.” And at that point, that didn’t really mean anything to me, because this was the first thing that I had ever done in this space. And it’s like, “You ship.” It’s like, “No, you don’t always ship.” Not everyone makes it to the finish line. This was the first title that you didn’t ship. How do you look back on Worlds in that context? And I asked Nick about this, Nick LaMartina. I said, “Look, you worked with Dan far more than Katie or I did. From your perspective, was there a point where the finish line was clearly visible?” Was there a date that, OK, all things being equal, as they are right now, we’re gonna hit this, and things just were not equal? And how do you wanna approach the last third of this? Because part of me — if David will stop talking — is that I’m curious to know, from your perspective, had folks from above just stayed out of the way, and continued to pay bills, what realistically could have been achieved and when? And was it a matter of, had that not happened, I could’ve been able to get this done? Or was it something else? How do you look back on that particular period? And what do you have to say about that period?

Dan Elggren:
So, I guess answering a couple parts of that question is, when do I feel like we had a game and we were getting close to ship? And that’s looking at Leipzig. We’re presenting the game pretty much for the first time, and we had a lot of the gameplay, and we’re in Alpha, we had people on the servers, and we were starting to really make this game come… I thought we could see the finish line. It doesn’t take that much longer for us to sort of go through the steps. And at that point, it’s steps that you need to do to get it out the door. There wasn’t anything blocking us. It’s not like we hadn’t figured out core elements of what the game was. All those things were in place.

David Read:
And that’s middle 2008 for Leipzig?

David Read:
Yeah. And so it was at that point, it’s like, “OK, yeah. We could ship this game.” And that’s obviously right after that is when things really started to hit us financially. And being an angel-funded company that’s receiving funds month to month, week to week, and then having the recession hit us, it’s… And could we have… I look back, should I have focused more on what the front office was doing? Should I have spent more time making sure that my budgets were in place, ensuring that there were funds, there was a slush fund for rainy days, to ensure that we had enough money? And at one point in time, I think we did have enough money to get through the finish line. But that was taken up through other decisions, or however you wanna put it, by the front office, to invest in other things. Were those poor investments? Given a good economy, no. But given a bad economy, yes, they were horrible investments. We should have focused on what we all came there to do and ship Stargate World, without the distraction of other entities or other items. But in a good environment, yes, those were great investments. They were planning for a potential good future that had multiple games coming out of the studio and building this up into something that was more than just Stargate World. And there were great concepts coming out of that studio, but again, hindsight, yes, I would’ve appreciated making sure that I had that money set aside so that no matter what, we could have focused on ensuring that Stargate World would have seen the light of day.

David Read:
Did you have that level of control though?

Dan Elggren:
I was focused purely on Stargate, and ensuring that we were working on just that front, and all those decisions in that front office were completely outside of that. And so, I had no control. I mean, building out Firesky and the other studios, I was no part of that type of thing. Do I feel I should have tried to be more forceful in trying to ensure a small startup, but… I don’t know.

David Read:
I just remember hearing a lot of, “Diversifying our portfolio is a good thing. We really need to diversify this portfolio.” And I had never… at that point, I had only had an IRA. I had no idea what that meant, which has since been diversified. But Katie and I have had that conversation about this thing needed to ship. You had to get your first one out the door. Your ice cream had to be strong enough to bring people into the store, then you could implement other flavors beyond your base ice cream. And from where I was sitting, it seemed ambition was outweighing the target for the game to be what it was before the ambition had any real business of being the way that it was. And I don’t know if that’s because foxes were let into the hen house or it was baked into the cake from the beginning. But it’s frustrating to see that this thing was working and then no one could see that the financial crash was coming. And it really did play a big part in the undoing of this.

Katie Postma:
And even when we could see it coming, it was always, “Just give us two weeks. Just give us two…” There was always gonna be… I mean, we all prayed for a miracle or for it to turn around or for it to get better. But like Dan said, the recession on top of all of that just left our angel investors pretty scared for good reason.

Dan Elggren:
No, towards that end, it was week to week. Are we gonna get enough funds to pay the team? And not only are we gonna have enough funds to pay the team, what funds we do get, where do those funds… Because there’s a lot of times where we get funds, but not enough to pay the entire team. And so, it was like, OK, it was a decision of, do I pay everybody 20%? Do I pay these level…

Katie Postma:
Just the artists.

Dan Elggren:
…just the artists.

Katie Postma:
Just the engineers.

Dan Elggren:
And those were decisions that I was dealing with almost weekly. They’d come to me and say, “This is how much money we got.”

Katie Postma:
And that’s not what you signed on to do.

Dan Elggren:
No. And it’s like, OK. And so, I make sure we get as much money to the right people as quick as we could, ’cause everybody was like, “Oh, crap. If I don’t get paid this week, I’m not gonna be able to pay my rent.” And people were losing large sums of their investments and their livelihoods. And it just… How long can you live in an environment like that? Where every week you’re trying to make a decision of who gets paid and who doesn’t get paid type of thing.

David Read:
I can’t imagine going through that.

Katie Postma:
Brutal.

Dan Elggren:
And so, it rips your heart out, and there’s months where certain people just didn’t get paid, including myself. And you just figure it out.

Katie Postma:
At the start of it all, it was fall, and then that first Christmas. That holiday season was when it began. I kept in touch. I was gone and David followed, I think, six months later, but at that time–

David Read:
That was June of ’08, when I stepped out.

Katie Postma:
OK. And then by August, they had asked me to leave. And I do remember Darren using some language about the fact that it wasn’t based on merit, that there were larger things afoot and larger contributing factors. And I literally took that to mean, it’s because I didn’t move there and I didn’t immigrate to the States. And maybe that was part of it. And then fast-forward a couple of months where my friends, my amazing dear friends are going through this and I’m like, “Oh, I was one of the lucky ones. I got chucked off the Titanic.”

Dan Elggren:
The thing that kills me, there’s so many different things that kill me. But one of the things that kills me is not only did we obviously go through this horrible time and having to say goodbye to friends in a very difficult situation. At that point in time, my job was helping people find jobs. One, I was helping them to get paid, and then two, I was like, “All right, how, what connections do I have,” to be able to get people finding jobs, and some of those went to other studios, like 38 Studios. And that’s another can of worms. I think they went through the same thing we did, but tenfold. It was a bigger studio with a lot more money involved and they — and I actually talked to those guys. There was one point in time, I went and visited that studio and saw a lot of our former folks there, and it’s like they were at their pinnacle of where they were at, but at that point, the baseball player, I can’t remember his name, he was selling off his–

Katie Postma:
Kurt Schilling.

Dan Elggren:
Kurt Schilling. He was selling off his own material just to get people paid at some point in time. And then they ended up folding, and I think, I want to say Rebecca was there too. I think she was there.

Katie Postma:
I think she was, and Matt maybe.

Dan Elggren:
So, they went through it twice.

Katie Postma:
For Joe and me, Stargate was the second one for us. Actually, for Joe it might have been even third or fourth when you consider Matrix. But then you and I went to NetDevil. I went to Gazillion, you went to NetDevil. A few went to NetDevil. Jay, Jason. But then your project went great and mine was axed, so that was number three for me, Jumpgate Evolution. I’m like, “Oh, it’s me. It’s me.”

David Read:
I must be cursed.

Katie Postma:
I’m the problem, it’s me. You do go through it. Despite having worked on it, another MMO, a kids MMO that I had worked on, did get released. So, that was good. Even though I wasn’t there when it launched, it’s like, “OK, maybe it’s not.” And since then, of course, I’ve shipped stuff, but it’s tough.

Dan Elggren:
It’s tough.

Katie Postma:
It’s weird because when you go through it over and over again, and I can name names of people who it happened to even more than two or three of us, like…

Dan Elggren:
And recently too. Look at the game industry that it is today.

Katie Postma:
Today, now we’re all used to it. Now when it happens, you’re like, “All right, we prepared for this ’cause this has happened to us n times.” But back then, it was very new and we were surrounded by things that were doing well and that were getting this fairy tale ending and we just weren’t. It was rough. It was rough. There were a few of us that looked at each other and were like, “Is it me?” It was rough watching people have to go through it multiple times.

Dan Elggren:
And that’s the thing is, no matter how many times you go through it, and no matter how many times it’s not your fault. It’s nothing you did. No matter how good of a job you did, you still look at yourself as the problem. It’s very human to think, “Is it me? What am I doing wrong?” I remember, when I finally did leave and I went to NetDevil and I was working with those guys, my wife posted on her blog about leaving, and some news agency picked it up from my wife’s blog that I left, type of thing, because nobody communicated to the press that Cheyenne was going through all this hardship. This first article was based off my wife’s blog that we were moving and leaving Cheyenne and that type of thing, and my wife was devastated, all of this news of the team had been impacted and all that stuff. We left, and I don’t think she closed that blog immediately and I don’t think she ever reopened it type of thing ’cause–

Katie Postma:
Poor thing. ‘Cause she probably did people a favor doing it.

Dan Elggren:
It needed to get out there.

Katie Postma:
It had to come out at some point. Poor Ali.

David Read:
That’s the thing. No one knew what was going on, so I actually, in my homework to this, I found that. I wasn’t looking for it. I didn’t even know it existed before yesterday. And I clicked on it and it said that this original source is now private. I’m just now hearing, because I found the news story that it was created from, and then I went and looked it up, and it’s just years later. These little pieces of information are all that remain from that time, and in some cases, it’s all there was, because people were in shock. This thing was going to be a success, and I think it’s a great life lesson — it was one of the other things that I wanted to get to next about life lessons — is that you can’t always take things for granted. You do at your peril, because you’re not the be all end all in control of your destiny, and there are certain things that have to happen, and if they don’t, it doesn’t matter if you turn left or turn right, it doesn’t matter if you move this deck chair over here or over there. The thing is still hitting the iceberg. That’s all there is to it.

Katie Postma:
You’re always gonna be surrounded by people who are making choices every day that can affect you. You can make all the right choices, but if somebody has a different idea of what’s right or good… unfortunately.

Dan Elggren:
That’s a common question I get. OK, why did this fail? What would you have done differently if you knew that this was gonna hit the iceberg, per se? Would you have tried… Yes, I would have shipped sooner, or yes, I would have created smaller content. But it’s one of those things where, when you’re selling that ship, you don’t… Your whole mission is to make that thing as awesome as possible and as big as possible to sort of meet all the needs of the fans and of the investors to sort of really make sure you’re hitting a home run. And until you hit that iceberg, none of that hindsight matters. You’re just trying to make a great game. I’ve had people make the comment to me, “Oh, I would have had smaller worlds and I would have…” Yes, I agree.

Katie Postma:
That’s easy to say.

Dan Elggren:
It’s easy to say.

Katie Postma:
I’m gonna say it didn’t fail. Like you say, when people say, “Why did it fail?” The game itself, the team itself didn’t fail. Neither of those things failed in my mind.

David Read:
It ran out of money. That’s not the same in this context as the product not working. The product was working.

Katie Postma:
And it’s not us, it’s not burndown and it’s not runway. It literally isn’t any of those things. We didn’t fail. The game wouldn’t have failed, I don’t believe. It wasn’t failing at the time.

Dan Elggren:
And you look at all the content of Stargate games that were either out previously or out even after us. Stargate Worlds was an amazing game. It had a great base, it had a great concept, the design was solid, the worlds were… It was a great game. And I think all of our lives would have changed dramatically if we would have been able to ship that game like we all planned, because that success of a game like that would have changed all of our resumes, how we would have been able to go on from there. But at the same time, I look at LinkedIn of a lot of people on the team and a lot of our connections, and they’re all directors, executive producers, and they’re all doing awesome. If they stayed in the industry, they’re doing amazing. Rightfully so, because they had the talent, and it took maybe a little extra to sort of get that to the next level type of thing.

Katie Postma:
And one’s the host of Dial the Gate.

David Read:
Geez.

Katie Postma:
Look how far you’ve come.

David Read:
No. Life is not guaranteed. None of us are guaranteed a rosy path. And you can let those troubled years destroy you, or you can accept the fact that this is a part of your journey and derive the lessons from it that you’re gonna take with you for that next raid that you and your guild are gonna get together to fight.

Katie Postma:
If you’re wise, you’ll use the lessons.

David Read:
That’s it. You can just say, “Oh, owie, woe is me.” Sure, but what’s that gonna get you at the end? Dan, there is a certain utility in saying, “What could I have done differently to make this different?” What could I have done differently to change the outcome? I think there is a certain amount of self-assessment that is healthy, that if you don’t do that, or if you’re a type of person who doesn’t do that, you may be the type of person who is incapable of taking accountability for anything. And that in itself, you wanna talk — there’d be dragons in that direction, for sure. So, I do think that is a good way to lead your life. Getting subsumed and swamped in that thinking, to where it paralyzes you or makes you leave an industry, I think is probably going too far. And for anyone who did that with this game, who had their sights set on the video game industry, that would be a real shame. But not with the people that I’ve talked with.

Dan Elggren:
No, that’s what we talk about. We talk about all these amazing people, and they’re still amazing. They’re doing amazing things and changing these industries and these games for the better, ’cause of that talent they’re able to bring to it. You look back and, OK, you’re right. What lessons did I learn? And now that I can look even further back, what did I take to some of the other games I worked on in some of the other studios? Was I a little bit more cautious with the next MMO that I worked on, or the next game dev? And how did I sort of change that approach? Absolutely, I feel like I’m a better employee or a better sort of developer because I had some of these harder things that I had to deal with, especially in a young game industry like we have, where there’s so many people that don’t have this experience. I can see those dragons. I can see those things that nobody else has seen or had to see, ’cause I’ve lived it multiple times and been able to —

David Read:
Yeah, you’ve been to battle with them.

Dan Elggren:
We can sort of see that thing long before it hits the iceberg, and we can shift gears and I’ve been able to have some great games that have been able to get out of the door and to avoid some of those conflicts, and I’ve hit some of those icebergs again in some other studios. But I do think that, in the long run, no matter how hard and how painful they’ve been, that’s why I look back and Stargate is such an amazing team and an amazing time in my life, because that battle and that time in those trenches, you’ll never forget, ’cause they’re so close to your heart.

Katie Postma:
It was much more good than bad. Much more, good.

Dan Elggren:
Absolutely.

David Read:
It would have been nice to hang the game on my wall, for sure, but you’ve got something far more precious behind you there to your right. And frankly… I was going to give you my copy of this one, but evidently you don’t need it, so I’m just gonna put this back over here. That was going to be yours. That belonged to you if you didn’t already have one.

Katie Postma:
Does Nick have one?

Dan Elggren:
I have that.

Katie Postma:
Yeah, I do too somewhere.

David Read:
I’m not sure. I’ll have to check.

Katie Postma:
We moved, so I [inaudible].

David Read:
But signed, you have the signed one, as you should. Because this is your team, and they accomplished what they accomplished very much in part, if not entirely, because of a cool head that they had looking over them. And it means so much to me to be able to have this conversation with you and Katie now, to let you know how much you have meant to us and to remind you of how much you meant to that team. Who do you miss the most from that project? And, frankly, who are you looking forward to seeing next year?

Katie Postma:
The right answer is me, Dan, by the way.

Dan Elggren:
Katie, when you popped up on my LinkedIn and then when I saw Nick’s post with the Dial the Gate, I was clicking on that thing so fast. I made my comment long before I even finished watching the video… [inaudible] I couldn’t wait to sort of see the video and the team, and Howard, I’ve sort of reconnected with him, and I’ve had the pleasure of having Rebecca and Erin have little touch points throughout my career. And it’s so hard to… There’re so many amazing people. It’s funny, ’cause I was actually, just before the call, I stand over there by the poster, and I’m reading all the names, “Yeah. I totally remember them.” But you haven’t thought about them for years, ’cause you just haven’t crossed paths, but every single one of those names on that wall, still I have fond memories of them. Even if we went in a negative way or we had to part on rough terms, my memories of everybody that I had to deal with in that studio were positive in my mind. And that includes all the folks in Firesky, because I think they were all a bunch of passionate developers trying to make something great, and I have a ton of respect for them and what they were able to sort of do with the work that they were able to do, so… I don’t wanna go through and list out names, ’cause then I feel like I’m missing one or two people, right?

Katie Postma:
No, it was just to put you on the spot. Same. Every time, like when Nick did his post and I see the names of the people that are liking it, that are commenting, every time David or I remember another name, we yell the name out. We’ll see a name, “RC, oh, my gosh.”

David Read:
We’re still building it.

Katie Postma:
“He’s here.”

David Read:
We’re still building the list on the backend. “How did I forget this person?” It’s been 20 years.

Katie Postma:
Like when you just said Austin …

David Read:
There’s only so much.

Katie Postma:
… when you got in the call, you said, “Austin.” I’m like, “Austin,” how are we remembering all these names.

Dan Elggren:
Austin and I, we’re dear friends. Austin, I play games with him every Sunday night. He and I, we went on a trip, a once-in-a-lifetime trip into the Canyonlands National Park, and we spent a weekend in the White Rim Trail, and we have all these memories of this lifetime of being good friends and playing games together. But I feel like I can pick up that time with almost anybody in that studio, and I can sit down, we can have a meal with anybody, and have a good time, and talk about these fond memories with each other of spending that precious few years together and how much we miss and wish we could have that back.

Katie Postma:
It was a good time. Those are good times.

David Read:
Before we get too far from it, you have a Jaffa over your right shoulder here. Can you bring that character to the foreground?

Dan Elggren:
Absolutely.

David Read:
Tell us who made it, and give us a little story here. So, I have never seen this colored before. I have only seen it in gray clay, so I’m very interested.

Dan Elggren:
Irene is the original sculptor. She’s one of our animators on the team, and then my mom, who’s a painter, painted this for me. And you’ll see that she’s got quite the lean to her, and that’s from moving boxes, sitting in the heat, through different moves. But that’s not how she was originally sort of sculpted, but she still stands. She sits up here in the top corner. I had to bring her out, ’cause she’s so well done with so many different little pieces here, and I’m amazed that she’s been able to survive all these years.

Katie Postma:
Irene Matar.

David Read:
Irene Matar. Animator on Stargate Worlds and an incredible sculptor. Can we see the business end of that staff weapon at the bottom there?

Dan Elggren:
Oh yeah.

David Read:
Man, look at that.

Katie Postma:
I know, the details.

David Read:
It’s so… cool.

Dan Elggren:
It was so well sculpted, and I was able to add some color to it, ’cause my mom has so many different skills painting. I never got those painting skills, so I don’t know if… Skipped generation. My kids, amazing artists. But not me. She’s definitely always on my shelf, and again, the poster’s always there. Every office I’ve had since then, I’ve always had the poster, and then the Jaffa has always been there, a key reminder of just the… I love talking about it, and I love having it on my wall in my office.

David Read:
Anything else that Stargate fans should know as we go through this series? I’m hoping that we’re starting something that we’re still gonna be picking away at for a good long while, because there are a lot of stories to tell. Or does this all pretty much just sum it up?

Dan Elggren:
You know, I would say…

David Read:
I know, we’re gonna get off the phone and it’s gonna be like, “Ugh, I didn’t talk about this.” One of the things I didn’t talk about with Dan was —

Katie Postma:
We’ll have him back on.

David Read:
Yes, for sure. But like, Universe. Nick’s work is in Universe. David Blue is playing that character at the very beginning, in the introductory scene. Did you have anything to do with that? Can you tell us about that? That’s a canon use of that content.

Dan Elggren:
That was back in the day when the game was still strong. We built that little level, obviously for Universe and it was obviously directed to ensure that it had the right gameplay to be the best part within that scene. But that was all solid gameplay. And it translated so well into that scene — that was the game we were making. It wasn’t that far off from making that game and we were still at that peak of, “Oh, we’re gonna… It’s just a matter of time before we can take that and ship it.” So, it was fun to be able to have that highlighted. But then it was a little bit of a stab in the heart, seeing that after the fact, after we did go through those hard times, and knowing that, ugh, that game that he’s playing won’t actually make it out the door.

Katie Postma:
Oh my gosh, I was so proud.

David Read:
Agnose is canon. It’s a part of the story that exists. And I remember thinking… I was so proud of that when I saw “Air” Part One for the first time, ’cause a part of our creation got into this thing, and no one can take that from us.

Dan Elggren:
‘Cause that was also on Midway. We were on the ship where we were able to show that off, and also had the trailer there. And we had the after-party with all the show creators and — I don’t know if you guys remember, we were going through the voice actors, and Christopher Judge and all the other actors were like, “Yeah, sign me up. Yeah, I’ll do it.” But we couldn’t get Richard Dean Anderson. His agent just told us flat, no. His agent just came back and said, “No, we can’t do it.” But then we got to Comic-Con and we were at the show on the red carpet, and he’s sitting there watching all this content and he’s like, “Why aren’t I part of this game?” And apparently him and his agent weren’t talking. And so, there was this conversation that, “I wanna be, I’d love to be part of this game.” So, there was still a lot of heated debate between him and his agent trying to get him to be able to agree to do the voice acting for the game. But he was game, he was all for it, but it was his agent that was being tough to be able to get him through the door.

David Read:
There are those gatekeepers, and sometimes the gatekeepers don’t necessarily share everything with their clients because they want X, Y or Z. And the client doesn’t always know. Sometimes you have no choice. But any other highlights from Midway? Katie, you brought this up and I almost blew completely by.

Katie Postma:
Yeah, I did.

Dan Elggren:
The funny thing is, I went to Comic-Con. I packed my jeans, my t-shirts. I think we knew about the red carpet and that type of stuff. I wasn’t planning on being on the red carpet.

Katie Postma:
You looked good.

Dan Elggren:
They called me up and they’re like, “Hey, you need a suit.” And I’m like, “I’m in San Diego. I don’t live here. I don’t have a suit. I didn’t bring any…” I literally went down to whatever, Nordstrom’s or whatever it was, and bought a suit right before I went onto the red carpet in order to match the vibe. And it’s funny ’cause as you get on the red carpet, the press was sitting there asking me questions and it was one of those scenarios like, “Oh, yeah.” I was vibing. The questions and the answers were going well. And then he goes, “All right. We’re gonna turn the camera on now.” The camera wasn’t even on. And it was like, “Aww.” After that, it felt like I fell on my face. It was like, “Oh, crap. I didn’t…” It became a lot harder to answer the questions. But it was one of those moments of surreal, being on the red carpet with these actors. I was the warmup to get the actors ready.

David Read:
I was on that carpet line as press and I don’t remember interviewing you. I don’t know how we skipped each other. That would’ve been interesting at that point for me. Geez.

Dan Elggren:
For sure. The show, the actors, it was great humanizing them. Obviously, ’cause you put them up on a pedestal and some of them were actors. They were through-and-through Hollywood actors. And some of them were just down to earth, like Christopher Judge, and really nice people. Real. But I remember also talking to Brad Wright, and he was such an amazing supporter for Stargate Worlds. He had our back through everything. Even sitting on the panel at Comic-Con, he would talk us up. Coming from him and saying how amazing we were and how awesome this game was, and doing everything in his power to sort of support us was invigorating. Sometimes I look back, “How did we score this amazing license from this small studio in Arizona to be able to make this game?” And one of my last heartbreaks before I left to go to NetDevil was sending him an email and telling him that I was leaving and that the game wasn’t gonna come to fruition because of the financial situation we were in. And that was a really hard email, and he replied and he was very gracious, and obviously disappointed that we weren’t able to get this game out ’cause he was such a passionate follower and supporter of our game. And I’m sure he was definitely saddened to see it not happen type of thing, ’cause that was his baby for many years, something he put a lot of passion behind. And that we weren’t to deliver on part of that vision was hard.

David Read:
Was the Midway the first time that you had met him in person?

Dan Elggren:
I think it was at the panel. It was actually —

Katie Postma:
That’s right, the panel at Comic-Con in the big hall.

David Read:
Ballroom 20.

Dan Elggren:
That was massive. I had never been in front of a crowd that big. Or since then.

David Read:
4,000 people, man.

Dan Elggren:
That was a lot.

Katie Postma:
Because they put us between SG-1 and Atlantis or the other way around so that people had to stay for us if they were staying for the other two panels, but that was great. That was great fun.

Dan Elggren:
It was great.

David Read:
That’s awesome.

Dan Elggren:
And they were, like I said, generous and supportive of us. And I’ve worked with a lot of IPs since then, and it’s rare to have that strong of a supporter from your IP holder that’s willing to help you out.

Katie Postma:
Brad worked as the moderator for that panel and was asking you …

David Read:
He sure did.

Katie Postma:
… guys questions. That’s right.

Dan Elggren:
The show creators and the actors were such great people to work with.

Katie Postma:
They’re amazing people. They all were. We had so much fun with them at Comic-Con, all of them. Everybody, like you say, the talent sometimes can be the talent, but most of the time, they’re just, “My name’s Amanda. How are you? How old are your kids?” Or Mike saying, “Don’t tell Lexa that I’m having a cigarette, but let’s go this way.” Stuff like that. They’re so nice, and they’re so sweet and they genuinely were. And it was such a new thing for them. We often got questions like, “Explain how this is all gonna work,” ’cause they didn’t know what World of Warcraft was necessarily, or they didn’t know their kids were playing maybe Game Boys, but nothing to the extent that SGW was gonna be. So, they had a lot of really good questions and a lot of healthy interest in it, which was nice.

Dan Elggren:
They were all super excited about it and were willing to sort of do whatever they could. Didn’t Christopher Judge come to the office once?

David Read:
Yes, he did.

Katie Postma:
Yeah, a couple of times.

David Read:
He sure did. You got his photos with the team. I got a couple of them for sure. And Cliff Simon, who was also there at Midway. May he rest in peace.

Katie Postma:
That broke my heart.

David Read:
It was good times. It was good times. Dan, this has been great. Thank you so much for…

Dan Elggren:
Thanks for putting this together.

David Read:
…agreeing to do this. You’re very welcome. Brave is not even the right word. Thank you for being willing to come on and be part of this because you didn’t know what it was gonna be. You didn’t know what we were gonna ask. And I feel very privileged to have, with Katie, had this time with you to sit down and remember a poignant part of our lives, for better and for worse.

Dan Elggren:
Absolutely.

Katie Postma:
Mostly better.

Dan Elggren:
Mostly better. And like I said, hearing your names and seeing you guys on the video, I have nothing but positive things about you guys and everything you guys are doing. And I really appreciate everything you guys have done to continue to make this a positive experience, even though it could have taken it in a completely different direction. You could have reflected on the negative and made this out to be this horrible experience. And that’s not how most of us reflect on this. It’s ’cause it was such an amazing time.

Katie Postma:
It was. In large part, thanks to you. It’s all from the top down. Knowing we could count on you. You had an even-keeled temperament. You were just great, Dan. You were always very patient and kind and generous with your time. I know there were times you were probably walking down the hall, putting out three fires in your mind, and I never got that impression. I never felt like you didn’t see me or say hi and stop and take time, ’cause you had a game to ship, and community is a very different thing. We’re always looking outward and getting the questions. And you were always really generous with us and with the community, so thanks for that too.

David Read:
Katie shared, I guess this was while I was there. Katie and I were on a lunch break somewhere. We were doing something, and she made a comment to me. Katie was passing by the big board where we had all of our milestones, and she heard singing. And she came around the corner, and she said, “Dan, is that you?” I don’t know if you remember this, Katie.

Katie Postma:
I don’t.

David Read:
You were just like, “Yeah, I’m in my happy place.”

Dan Elggren:
And that’s a lot for me to sing. I’m not a singer.

Katie Postma:
You must have been very happy. It was…

Dan Elggren:
I must have been in a really good mood.

Katie Postma:
That’s a good note to end it on, that it was our happy place for a few years, all of us. So, that’s awesome.

David Read:
It’s a great chapter. I’m so privileged to have had the opportunity to work with you.

Dan Elggren:
Thanks a lot.

David Read:
And to be able to have the two of you on today meant everything to me. So, thank you.

Dan Elggren:
And let’s keep these conversations going. I don’t wanna wait another 10-plus years to see your guys’ face and have these conversations. Life is too short. Please, let’s keep talking.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Katie Postma:
For sure. Isn’t he the best?

David Read:
That was wild.

Katie Postma:
He’s so lovely. He’s so lovely.

David Read:
I knew what we were gonna get, and I didn’t know what we were gonna get. Is that even remotely possible?

Katie Postma:
Yes, because I had the same feeling. I thought, “He’s gonna have some good stories that we don’t even remember and some depth to some things that we do remember.” But also, I wasn’t sure if he would hold back at all. No. He was right there.

David Read:
The perfect balance.

Katie Postma:
It was. It was really good to talk to him. It was good to see him again. It was good to hear those memories. I’m glad he has carried so many positives out of it. That’s what I want for everyone that we talk to, but especially for the good guys. Not that they all aren’t good in some way, but he’s one of the best. So, I’m glad that he has been able to carry that with him as a good thing. He deserves that.

David Read:
Absolutely. This has been so cathartic for me. And that’s the word that I keep hearing from the devs who have reached out to me, and you. There is a certain amount of healing that comes with time, but also hearing things at a time when you’re prepared to hear them and when a certain amount of distance has occurred. And I don’t ever think that it’s too late to heal. I think that things happened to these people that were beyond their control. And it’s very easy to live in despair from those experiences and to carry an absolute sheer resentment from that time. And from the people I’ve communicated with and who have communicated with me, it’s just not the case. There’s certainly…

Katie Postma:
Surprisingly so.

David Read:
It was definitely not the greatest experience of their lives, but also in context of the 20-year time span, that’s also life. Those kinds of things happen. They created a brilliant Stargate product that was firing on all cylinders. But the engine that was running it ran out of gas. And that doesn’t mean that — yes, it means that the product was unsuccessful because it didn’t get into the hands of the gamers — but that doesn’t mean that the product wasn’t working. And that’s the distinction that I think we’ve been able to begin to make with this series of episodes on Dial the Gate, and that’s what I hope to continue to do with you. I am thrilled that you are here with me to move through this.

Katie Postma:
Always. I absolutely love it. It’s a joy for me and a privilege for me. I’m proud of what you’re building here, and I’m proud to be a small part of it.

David Read:
I’m thrilled to have you.

Katie Postma:
I’m a smaller part, but it’s so good to see these people, and I love them. I’m glad you and I both got to do our small part. As we said with Dan, it didn’t fail.

David Read:
No. Not from what it was. It failed from external things.

Katie Postma:
And if people take nothing else out of it, it’s that just because the end isn’t how you envisioned, it doesn’t mean that the sum of all the parts weren’t the greater good. It was really excellent. It was really good talking to him. I’m glad he was at the forefront of the series. It’s pretty great.

David Read:
I’m glad you’re here.

Katie Postma:
I’m glad you’re here.

David Read:
I’m glad I’m here.

Katie Postma:
Thank you for doing this. Thank you so much.

David Read:
You’re welcome.

Katie Postma:
I can’t wait for the next one.

David Read:
Absolutely. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, it does make a difference if you hit the Like button. It helps continue to grow the show and will continue to help us find our audience. If you have a Stargate friend out there, please consider sharing this with them, or a gamer friend, or someone who knew about Worlds. And if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click Subscribe. And giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops, and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. And clips from this episode will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the Dial the Gate YouTube channel. Katie, I can’t wait to see who we have next. I have no idea who it’s gonna be. And we’ll…

Katie Postma:
Gonna be good.

David Read:
…we’ll go from there. It’s gonna be great. Thank you for helping me with these.

Katie Postma:
My pleasure. Thank you.

David Read:
And we will see you on the other side.