David Allen – Quest Online QOL Co-Founder

Article by Matthew Micha

Author’s Note: This article was written after a short one-on-one discussion with David Allen.  I am currently working on researching the origins of the online gaming industry, and I found this information interesting and an important part of the overall story. I am not claiming David Allen created online gaming, but am sharing this article because it is a small piece of MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) history.  In the future, I plan to compile all information I gather and share that with the gaming world.

Impressions of a Discussion with David Allen, Co-Founder of Quest Online (QOL) and Creator of Alganon

David Allen is the co-founder of Quest Online and the individual who created Alganon. David Allen ran the company, hired all team members, and managed the project from January 2006 to February 2010.

David Allen says “There’s no doubt QOL was a unique company. As far as I’m aware it was the first virtual company to produce a commercial MMOG in the industry. This is a pretty big deal since many companies look to accomplish a similar low-cost and low-overhead solution.”

For those who may not be familiar with the term “virtual” in this context a virtual company refers to a company that operates with no central physical office. All team members generally work from home or from satellite offices. Meetings and discussions are held virtually, and all work is typically done via some sort of collaborative workspace. The benefit of a properly run virtual company is a state of the art company that operates with minimal overhead and maximum production.

David adds “Unless one has been through the process it is hard to understand how difficult it is to start a company, raise capital, hire the talent and get people focused and started on a product the scale of a MMOG; and most importantly, provide a clear vision understood and supported by the team and take it to release.

With such a small percentage of funded games ever making it to release, Alganon was a great accomplishment for all involved. While many MMOGs of this size can have budgets ranging as high as $50 million dollars or more, our development costs at launch were a fraction of this amount. QOL truly accomplished what most experienced game studios would call “impossible” especially given QOL owned all of its servers and technology including the client, server, support tools, world building tools, online social network system, online library & character repository, micro-transaction (Merchant) and e-commerce transaction system, CSGM tools, and could act as its own distributor.”

In an industry where gaming companies swallow tens of millions of dollars and never get a product to market David Allen has been successful at creating four released products (Mordor, Demise, Horizons, and Alganon), and building two companies (Artifact Entertainment and Quest Online) that shipped commercial MMO products.

As I dive more into the history of the MMOG industry, I quickly found QOL was not just a unique company, but a company I believe was ahead of its time. I have yet to find a company like QOL that accomplished what it did; raising its own capital, starting from scratch, building all of its technology, owning the tech outright, and creating an infrastructure allowing the company to essentially operate as its own publisher and distributor. From a business perspective, this was exceptional and something all gaming companies and entrepreneurs can learn from. In talking with David, I wanted to learn what he did for the four years he built and ran QOL and Alganon.

According to David Allen, “Many wonder what my exact role at QOL was. I created Alganon, which included the overall core design of the game (races, classes, world, domains, creatures, history, deities, studies, myalganon, library, and the tribute market micro-transaction system) and handed those systems to the appropriate directors, designers and developers. They took off running with it and did an exceptional job expanding and refining the systems and turning it into ‘their game’.

I acted as executive producer and ensured the core milestones were defined and met. I also handled all hiring, terminations, payroll and finances. I also handled business relations, fundraising, investor relations, monthly updates, creation of business and supportive materials, and did a lot of the ‘little things’ that needed to be done, ranging from texture conversions, UI design, area poly count/processing review, animation and particle review, environmental adjustments, etc. I hosted our weekly meetings, managed the creation of concept art, music and sound FX direction and implementation, and provided guidance for things such as racial cultures as they pertained to structures, colors, overall visual look and feel, and voice over direction and implementation. I also handled business relations for distribution, our CDN system and merchant accounts.

While I provided leadership and guidance for the company and “created” and designed Alganon and many of the core systems, the resulting product was only possible based on the dedication, hard work, focus and efforts of dozens of talented individuals. Everyone had a part to play and everyone involved in the design, development, production and release of Alganon deserves credit.”

David also added that there was so much more planned and designed for Alganon than what they had at release. The company had to work with the limited funds and make the most of what they had, and David feels “we were completely successful in achieving that goal”. However the market shifted, interest in fantasy MMOGs changed and David says that because of this shift it was very difficult to obtain visibility for Alganon.

Thank you to David Allen for spending the time with me.