The Story of Gene Endrody: How One Man Made An MMO

Minecraft may be the greatest indie success of all time. However, there are many other inspiring tales in the gaming industry. One such example is none other than Gene Endrody, the founder of Maid Marian Entertainment, and the sole developer behind the free web-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) known as Sherwood Dungeon. A Developer With Little Programming Knowledge The official site for Sherwood Dungeon. Source: FANDOM Although he has spent his time working on digital media and computer graphics for more than 20 years across many companies, Endrody is an incredibly influential designer. With the mere power of Adobe Director and Shockwave in the early 2000s, he was able to create amazing 3D games with little to no programming knowledge that millions of people have since played. Through his experience as a Technical Art Director at Radical Games, he was in a position to pursue his passions. Unlike working in the industry with a traditional developer role, this tenure gave him exposure to the whole process of making games instead of specializing in just one thing. The Start of Sherwood Sherwood Classic, 2002. Source: Maid Marian A self-described "card-carrying, Lord of the Rings loving, fantasy freak", he played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons (DND) during his teenage years. Initially, he wanted to do animation based in Sherwood Forest and reserved the URL for MaidMarian.com in 1996. Working with public domain properties such as King Arthur and Robin Hood appeared as the best strategy for an indie developer, according to Endrody. In 2002, after long hours and careful design, Endrody released Sherwood Temple (today known as Sherwood Classic) on Maid Marian, funded entirely from ads at the start. At the time, the notion of being able to play a fully 3D MMORPG entirely for free within a web browser with thousands of other players was truly groundbreaking. Servers were structured as chatrooms, with the ability for players to jump between the same copy of the world to enter another social circle at will. The gameplay centered around you creating a name for your character and then customizing your helmet and the color of your armor. You could run around a massive open world, fight randomly generated monsters, and, most especially, engage in PvP with friends and others. Interestingly, the only name you could not reserve for your character was Gene, as any time Endrody himself stepped into the world, his tag read "Sir Gene" to let you know it was really him. World PvP At Its Finest World PvP, 2006-2009. Source: Sherwood Network In addition to chatrooms and the freedom to socialize, the greatest part of the original experience was Clans. While there wasn't an official system in place to allow for someone to join/leave a guild, nor anything to programmatically determine ranking, players filled the gap. They renamed their characters based on the community they chose to join and altered their tag to include their current rank in the Clan. Clans were the pillar of the social scene. Source: Elite Chaos X Clans would often go to war with other Clans, claiming entire chatroom servers as their territory, then fighting one another in glorious battle as each person's death made them respawn far out of the battlefield. These communities would go on to make their own websites to organize "raids" on other Clans and serve as a recruitment center. Modernization Character sheet from Sherwood Dungeon. Source: Maid Marian Over the next few years, the game would see substantial improvements, offering superior graphics, race/gender options, paid accessories like Pets/Mounts, and endless procedurally generated dungeons that would allow the player to level up, acquiring stronger weapons and runes. In 2005, the game was rebranded to Sherwood Dungeon. With over 1.5 million unique visitors a month in spite of the success of other MMOs that had recently released at the time such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and City of Heroes, it became one of the largest and fastest growing browser-based games on the Internet. Pets/Mounts were eventually added as paid features to Sherwood Dungeon. Source: Don Fortune. Since then, Sherwood Dungeon has received many updates to its original Flash version until it was re-released as a standalone PC game in 2019 with ports to mobile devices as well. In addition to Sherwood Dungeon, Endrody's premier title, he has created experiences such as the social sim Marian's World, the top-down shooter Ratinator, and the multiplayer combat game Tank Ball. Legacy The Dungeon with endless floors. Source: Maid Marian After spending a decade of his life working on Maid Marian Entertainment between April 2006 and January 2016, Endrody moved on to work for mobile developer Hothead Games. Today, he is the Director of Live Operations at PopReach Corporation. His story remains an inspiration for new and upcoming indie developers.

The Story of Gene Endrody: How One Man Made An MMO

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