was discovered by Japanese
upper management.
That was when Kelly Flock,
Smedley’s boss, gave him his own
dose of good news and bad news.
“Kelly just didn’t have the backing
from Tokyo to launch a PC business,”
Smedley explains. “But he did have
the backing to let us go out and look
for corporate suitors.”
It was a bittersweet moment. Sony
had put enough money into
EverQuestthat they didn’t want to
can the project, but they weren’t
going to continue feeding it, either.
Despite trying to hide it from his own
bosses, Flock believed thatEverQuest
had potential, so he had arranged a
deal – Smedley and his team could
continue to work onEverQuestas a
partially-independent studio, but they
would need to find another corporate
investor to split the bill.
Though a Microsoft offer was on
the table ready to be signed Smedley
ultimately found a corporate suitor in
a different Sony company called Sony
Online Entertainment. The EverQuest
team formed their own company,MEET YOUR IDOLS
Crossing paths with
Lord Britishtheir account and continue playing their character”
McQuaid noticed. “We had to constantly police and pull
people away from EverQuest so that other people could
experience it. And some people even got a little
belligerent. When you’re prying people away from your
own game that you’re trying to demo, that’s a good sign.”
Richard Garriott’s groundbreaking MMO, Ultima
Online, had also launched a year earlier and proven that
online RPGs with monthly subscriptions could be
profitable. Interest in online gaming was surging as
EverQuest inched closer to release.
And then Sony’s upper management found out about
Smedley’s little secret.
With the constant mergers and restructuring of
Sony’s various corporate divisions in the late ’90s, it was
more like a barbarian horde than a Roman legion – a
loose assemblage of tribes that, more often than not,
devoured each other.
What you need to know is that at some point, Sony
Interactive Studios of America
became 989 Studios and then, some
time after, shifted focus towards
developing PlayStation 2 games in
anticipation of the console’s launch.
For over two years Smedley had been
running interference and doing his
best to keep EverQuest a secret.
Somewhere in that corporate
shuffle Smedley’s passion project
BELOW: Fantasy:
where it’s never too
cold for a revealing
leather onesie.During Everquest’s development, McQuaid
had the surreal opportunity meet his hero
and inspiration, Richard Garriott, and show
him the game. McQuaid has a picture that
he still keeps nearby. “That was just an
amazing moment, sitting down with him,”
McQuaid says. “He’s the nicest guy in the
world too. He checked out EverQuest and
played it for a while and was asking
questions. It was a mind-blowing day. I can
check that off my bucket list.”
Today, years later, McQuaid and
Garriott are good friends.EverQuest
FEATURE