Jim Landes

Jim Landes (born 1958, San Rafael, California) is an American game designer and early gaming pioneer.
Personal History
Landes gained a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. He currently lives in Muskegon, Michigan.
Career
In 1980 he joined Horizon Simulations in Medford, Oregon. Though the company folded in 1981 it produced Shadowhawk I, a first-person space shooter for Apple and Atari microcomputers.
In 1983 he founded Midnight Games based in Anchorage Alaska. The company moved to Sacramento, California before ending up in Medford, Oregon. They were sold to FE Transport in 1993 which was then sold to Harlequin Games in 2003.
Currently Jim is working for Muskegon Community College in Michigan heading up their 2 year Associate Arts programs in interactive Media that encompasses Game Design, programming and Media Arts.
Games Produced
Midnight Games
1981 - Swords of Pelarn - Hand moderated Play by mail game.
1984-85 - Epic - Computer moderated Fantasy Empire Building Game.
1986-1993 - A computer moderated Mega Game.
Digital Lore
2003-2007 - Designed but not released the Lorecrafter game Publishing System.
Non-Professional Releases
2008-2009 - As a hobby released Prophesy of Pendor, a mod for the single player game Mount&Blade that blends literature, performance art and a game into a single entertainment offering.
Games Development interview
Swords of Pelarn was a hand moderated fantasy role playing game based upon a role-playing game world developed in 1977-1980. From the thousands of turns produced with that game, Jim Landes mapped out the most common orders that players performed and realized that this could be a computer moderated offering. He taught himself how to program, took the basic combat system and in 1983-84 created and released the first prototype of what would eventually become "Legends" and called it "Epic". At around the same time he released a sci-fi variant called ECLIPSE.
In 1986 he licenced the EPIC games system to PBM Enterprises in Australia, and shortly after, to Rhann Games in the United Kingdom. By the end of 1987 EPIC had become one the world's first global pbm games offering extensive player interaction. Through partnership with PBM Enterprises greater professionalism was achieved in the marketing, promotion, presentation and communication of EPIC to players and the games market, resulting in a surge in player numbers. After the success of Epic, and armed with the experience of computer programming and moderation, he designed Legends in 1987-90. In March 1988 Jim visited PBM Enterprises in Melbourne, Australia and collaborated with Tony Bovo, Terry Cuddy, Robert Brown and Doug Townsend on achieving a quantum shift in the professional marketing of Legends to establish a new benchmark in excellence for pbm moderated games. This included preparing the game for eventual application to email and the emerging internet. Legends achieved simultaneous 'worldwide' released in February 1990 with the first game module called "Crown of Avalon". The game engine was designed by Jim Landes and the look and feel of the game, including extroardinary artwork by Danny Willis (White Dwarf, was provided by PBM Enterprises. The game was an overnight success and became the biggest selling game of its type in the world.
In 1993 several personal challenges forced Jim to sell Midnight Games to Edi Birsan and in mid 1994, Jim left and walked away from gaming completely to go back to University to complete his education.
"Legends was the right idea, but not the optimal medium for this offering. I am glad to see that the Legends Editor was created, and it helped bridge the gap of what Legends was and what it could have been with a better trained developer behind it."
Jim returned to gaming in 2003 and worked with several other entrepreneurs to create and develop Digital Lore and Lorecrafter. A game publishing system where not only a massively multiplayer online game is created, but design tools are provided to players to create, upload and receive royalties from, their own game worlds and creations. The major problems with massively multiplayer online game were solved in this offering; including but not limited to a self creating content in the form of a dynamic game environment; casual and hard core player dependence by use of a true multi-player game system where player organizations gave in-game benefits (i.e. lowbies became important to the hard core players to maintain shared guild bonuses); Player drift, by way of a single fee for access to hundreds or thousands of game worlds to explore and adventure in.
This concept of a self publishing, sustaining and dynamic massively multiplayer online game is currently on-hold due to real world constraints.
Jim's Design Philosophy in quotes
"The strength of a game is not how you play, not how long you play, but rather how often you think of the game when you are not playing."
"It is always about that unanswered question that makes a game "strong". Whether it be what is around that next corner, or the myriad of "What if" questions that come to the player and sow the seeds of inquiry. The mistake I think most designers make at this moment in time, is that they equate "content" with "Strength". I believe this to be an error of perception."
"Strength is fluidity of play, unique and changing situations, new information, and what amounts to be non static interaction with both the players and the game environment. This type of strength is not generated by eye-candy, but by the underlying game simulation that runs the game system and what has been all but ignored for the last 20 years."

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