Don Daglow

Don Daglow (born ~1953) is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering computer baseball games, simulation games, role-playing games and the first graphical MMORPG, and for founding game developer Stormfront Studios.

In 2003 he was the recipient of the Classic Gaming Expo Achievement Award for "groundbreaking accomplishments that shaped the Video Game Industry."

University mainframe games in the 1970's

In 1971 Daglow was an English major studying playwriting at Pomona College in Claremont, California. A computer terminal connected to the Claremont Colleges PDP-10 mainframe computer was set up in his dorm, and he immediately saw this as a new form of writing. Like Kelton Flinn, another prolific game designer of the 1970s, his nine years of computer access as a student, grad student and grad school instructor throughout the 1970's gave him time to build a large body of major titles. Unlike Daglow and Flinn, most college students in the early 1970s lost all access to computers when they graduated, since home computers had not yet been invented.

Some of Daglow's titles were distributed to universities by the DECUS program-sharing organization, earning popularity in the free-play era of the 1970s college gaming scene.

His best known games and experiments of this era include:

Baseball (1971} — First-ever computer baseball game, now recorded in the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Daglow continued to expand Baseball throughout the 1970's, and ported the game to the Apple II in 1981, adding graphics in 1982. The simulation model in the Apple version in turn was ported to the Intellivision in 1982 as the basis for Intellivision World Series Baseball.
Star Trek (1972) — The second of two popular Star Trek computer games widely played in American colleges during this era.
Ecala (1973) — Improved version of the ELIZA computer conversation program. This project paved the way for his later work by suggesting new kinds of game interfaces.
Dungeon (1975) — The first computer role playing game, based on the then-new Dungeons and Dragons gaming system. The game was steadily expanded over the following five years.
Spanish Translator (1977) — As he experimented with parsers he created a context-sensitive Spanish translation program.
Killer Shrews (1978) — A simulation game based on the cult sci-fi film The Killer Shrews.
Educational Dungeon 1979 — An attempt to make rote computer-aided instruction (CAI) programs more interesting by taking Dungeon and making correct answers propel the story.

During the late 1970s Daglow worked as a teacher and graduate school instructor while pursuing his writing career. He was a winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities New Voices playwriting competition in 1975. His 1979 novelette The Blessing of La Llorona appeared in the April, 1982 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine.

Intellivision and Electronic Arts in the 1980's

In 1980 Daglow was hired as one of the original five in-house Intellivision programmers at Mattel during the first Console wars. As the team grew Daglow was promoted to Director of Intellivision Game Development. His titles there include:

Geography Challenge (1981) — an educational title for the ill-fated Intellivision Keyboard component.
Utopia — the first sim game or god game (1982). Utopia was a surprise hit and received wide press coverage for its unique design in an arcade-dominated era. The game has been named to two different video game halls of fame.
Intellivision World Series Baseball (1983) — the first video game to use multiple camera angles to display the action rather than a static playfield.

During the Video Game Crash of 1983 Daglow was recruited to join Electronic Arts by founder Trip Hawkins, where he joined the EA producer team of Joe Ybarra and Stewart Bonn. His EA titles include:

Realm of Impossibility (1984)
Adventure Construction Set (1985)
Racing Destruction Set (1985)
Mail Order Monsters (1985)
Thomas M. Disch's Amnesia (1986)
Lords of Conquest (1986)
World Tour Golf (1986)
Super Boulder Dash (1986)
Ultimate Wizard (1986)
Earl Weaver Baseball (1987) — again teamed with Eddie Dombrower. One of the earliest EA Sports titles, EWB was later named to the computer game Hall of Fame by Computer Gaming World and GameSpy. CGW named it as one of the top 25 games of all time in 1996.
Patton Versus Rommel (1987)
Return to Atlantis (1987)

In addition to Dombrower, Daglow often worked with former members of the Intellivision team during his years at EA, in particular programmer Rick Koenig, artist Connie Goldman and musician Dave Warhol.

Daglow spent 1987-88 at Brøderbund as head of the company's Entertainment and Education Division. Although he supervised the creation of games like the Ancient Art of War series, Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia, Star Wars and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, his role was executive rather than creative. He also took a lead role in signing the original distribution deal for SimCity with Maxis, and acquired the Star Wars license for Broderbund from LucasFilm.

Stormfront Studios in the 1990's and 2000's

Looking to return to hands-on game development, Daglow founded game developer Stormfront Studios in 1988 in San Rafael, California. The company continues to be an independent developer today. As of 2005, more than ten million Stormfront games have been sold.

Between 1988 and 1995 Daglow designed or co-designed the following titles:

Tony La Russa Baseball (1991-1997} — with Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett and Hudson Piehl, winner of multiple Game of the Year awards from Computer Gaming World and other publications.
Quantum Space (1989-1991) — The first original play by email game offered by a major online service
Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991) — A Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons RPG for SSI, went to #1 on the U.S. game charts.
Rebel Space (1992-1993) — with Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett and Hudson Piehl.
Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992) — Gold Box D&D RPG for SSI, the first game where an NPC could fall in love with a player character.
Neverwinter Nights (1991-1997) — The first graphical MMORPG, with programmer Cathryn Mataga, and the top revenue producing title in the first ten years of online games. NWN paved the way for Ultima Online (1997) and Everquest (1999).
Stronghold (1993) — The first 3D RTS game, with Mark Buchignani and David Bunnett
Old Time Baseball (1995) — a baseball sim with over 12,000 players and 100 years of teams.

By 1995 Stormfront had placed on the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing companies three times and Daglow had to step back from his design role and focus on the CEO position. Major Stormfront titles created over the last ten years include the multi-million selling NASCAR Racing for EA Sports, the award-winning Byzantine for Discovery Channel, Xbox launch title Blood Wake from Microsoft and The Two Towers (video game) for Electronic Arts, based on the Peter Jackson film from New Line Cinema.

In 2003 Daglow was elected to the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. He also serves on the San Francisco Advisory Board of the IGDA and the Advisory Board to the President of the Academy of Art University.

References

Picture of Daglow Decles and Minkoff Measures Mattel softball teams, 1982
Daglow, Don, The Changing Role of Computer Game Designers, Computer Gaming World, August, 1988, p. 18.
Daglow, Don, Through Hope-Colored Glasses: A Publisher's Perspective on Game Development, The Journal of Computer Game Design, 1(4) (1987), 3—5.
Daglow, Don, The Dark Ages of Game Design, Computer Gaming World, May, 1986, p. 12.

External links