It was a discussion of how GameTap came to possess Uru. Chogon came forward to recount his tale of how it came to be. And in fact was going on longer than I think alot of us knew about.
How did UruLive and GameTap come together?
It is actually a longer story than you would think. Long before UbiSoft was involved with Uru, we (Cyan) were looking for a publisher/venture capitalist to fund this new and completely different MMOG, code named Mud Pie, derived from DIRT, which later became known as Uru. During this search for a publisher/VC we entertained many interested parties with a fledgling demo that, we would have to admit, not many people "got". Except for one, who "got it" immediately and that was Blake Lewin from Turner. Blake and Rand also connected on a personal level immediately which started a long friendship. At that time (I'm stretching memory cells but I want to say in 2002?), we almost became a Turner product but then circumstance prevented it. We continued on developing Mud Pie and later UbiSoft picked it up as Uru.
Time passes. Then after Myst 5, around Sept of 2005, Cyan ran out of money to fund new projects and we laid the entire staff off. That news went out and landed on Blake's desk. On what looked like the last day for Cyan, Tony and Rand were giving the "it's been fun but we're sorry" speeches. Right after that meeting, Tony came up to me and asked if I would like to fly to Atlanta with Rand, Moke and himself to talk to Turner. I responded with a puzzled "Sure." Evidently, Blake had continued to follow Cyan and Uru closely with the help of another Turner employee Eric Largè who worked in a completely different department. Eric was also the owner of the Tapestry Until Uru shard.
When we arrived at Turner, we went to non-stop meetings for two days, meeting with many different Turner departments where Blake championed Cyan and Uru. From those meeting, Cyan was awarded a number of special projects (sorry, I can't tell you what they were) for Turner as well as work on MystOnline:UruLive. A little while later, we could see that we would need to bring the Until Uru fans together. So, Eric Largè set up the D'mala shard at Turner, doing that all the while he was doing his normal Turner day job (which was actually at night).
Blake never lost sight of the UruLive vision and worked hard to make it a reality again. We his help, we secured a spot for MOUL in the GameTap catalog, GameTap added international billing (crucial for MOUL) and got Cyan and TransGaming together to create a Mac version.
But of course, even though Blake was a major influence for MOUL and Cyan, there are many people at Turner and GameTap that were very instrumental in bringing Cyan and UruLive back and we definitely have a kinship with. Trent, Chanh, Wendy, Roberto, Miomir, Eric Diez and many, many more.
And that is the way I remember it...
Thanks,
Chogon (aka Mark DeForest)
What I find interesting is that GameTap was interested in Uru long before Ubisoft. And that the friendship between Blake and Rand is what sparked GameTap's interest. Something tellls me that that friendship will have alot to do with Cyan getting the rights back from Turner.
