https://twitter.com/ArtofNP/status/1451057598711549954?t=OwY0VUfOlq6SjYGs2MMyAg&s=19
Hey Moon, found your post here search for some reference photos of older cockpit designs that I didnāt have on hand. Iām an owner of the āDallasā set of Tesla pods. If you ever want more info on anything from history to technicals reach out and I'll be happy to share.
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https://archive.org/details/dengeki-oh-1994-5/page/174/mode/2up
Dang, I wish I read Japanese!
@Moon ditto!
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https://archive.org/details/dengeki-oh-1995-2/page/152/mode/2up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OGw_8TuBgQ
"Lostech: The BattleTech Center: 30 Years of Heavy Metal Mayhem", a documentary about the early eras of the company, was released back in September 2020. Itās a glorified zoom call, but It's fascinating (to me), and there is a lot of stuff in it worth discussing (how the original influence was a Full Bridge Simulator at the US Merchant Marine Academy, the many, many ways it was ahead of its time and how its influence can still be felt today [I'm going to have to try to make a list at some point]), but this post is going to be long enough so I might save my thoughts about the documentary for a later time. Suffice to say that there was one thing that bothered me about it: it's mostly concerned with how the company originally came together and it didn't really touch on the later life of the pods.
A few weeks later I was chatting with an old friend of mine who had recently moved to Arlington, TX. His wife was leaving town for a week long road trip to Colorado to buy marijuana, so I offered to keep him company while she was gone. Since this trip was going to put me within driving distance of The Last Center in Houston, I reached out to them via email and asked if someone there would be willing to be interviewed. They agreed. The documentary above was a labor of love released for free, if I felt it incomplete, why not take the matter into my own hands a bit? It takes a village, right? I would soon learn that I was far from alone in this volunteer mindset. Something about these pods inspires people to get involved.
I landed in Texas on a Saturday, our interview was scheduled for Friday. On Tuesday I was preparing some questions, so I could provide them in advance, and I realized that many of the questions I had might be more appropriately directed at the current owner of Virtual World Entertainment, Nick "Propwash" Smith, so I crossed my fingers and sent him an email.
I introduced myself as the author of this thread, since I knew he had already seen it (I knew that because he left a comment! @"PropWash"#p4854 ). I told him about my scheduled interview and asked if he would also be willing to be interviewed sometime. I did not expect the reaction I got. In his response email he told me
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Oh and by the way, your writing was hands-down the most thorough and truthful writing Iāve ever seen anybody outside of the āinner circleā. It was a remarkably on point for being researched on the internet
I was extremely flattered. Definitely the best compliment I received that year. He said he would be happy to do a zoom interview sometime, then asked if I was interested in doing a "get to know you" zoom chat to provide me with some information in preparation for Friday. Just a few hours later we were on a call, and my eyes were opened to a couple angles of this story that I hadnāt fully considered.
First, and I promise Iām not just saying this because it was nice to hear, he started off by telling me that my post was the āfirst time Iāve ever seen anything on the internet that was in the realm of correct, or at least an effort to be correctā. He could tell I must have put āactual effortā into it because many times when people write about this stuff, they fail to do basic research. He does not consider himself āinternet famousā, and people (even old fans from the 90ās) are often surprised to learn that VWE is still around in any capacity.
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āweāve been telling this story for a long time, but Iām just a guy at a conventionā
This lack of visibility is a problem for him and his mission. While he had other plans for VWE when he purchased it in 2005, he now primarily considers himself a preservationist. The preservation mission is a problem he attacks at two ends: physically preserving these pods so they are still around and people can experience them, and trying to get people to understand and care.
Toward the first goal, he views his function as āa curator of our own ownership community in order to keep them flyingā. The community of owners is the only thing that has allowed these pods to remain online as long as they have. They all know each other and by communicating about the sales of the pods, they are over time consolidating and stockpiling spare hardware, and in doing so keeping as many of the pods as possible from ending up in a dumpster somewhere. He makes a comparison to another one of his hobbies, volunteering to fly with WW2 warbirds (this is the provenance of his Propwash callsign): a rich guy has an old aircraft just rotting in his garage somewhere, decaying out of sight, not being properly maintained. āIf they canāt fly anymore it has no value. If they have no value, nobody cares. And eventually it gets scrapped or put in a museum and nobody ever sees it again.ā
Which brings us to the second, in my opinion much more difficult and interesting, prong of the preservationist effort: getting people to give a shit. Why should people give a shit? **He told me he wanted to talk to me because helping me tell this story served his mission**. My eyebrows lifted a bit when Propwash told me believes that Virtual World Entertainment has had a greater impact on the videogames than Pac-Man, because its influence can be felt by every gamer today. I also love the pods and felt they were ahead of their time, but was slightly incredulous about this claim, I wasnāt for long.
This was the first esport. āgamertags, achievements, live camera ships, structured multi-role gameplay with unique and distinct rolesā (Iāll add my own favorite examples: LITTERAL, PHYSICAL matchmaking lobbies, and Iād bet my lunch that Red Planet was the first multiplayer game with a vehicle horn, but I haven't confirmed that [this is that āahead of its timeā list I was talking about having to make one day, and there is plenty more I could add to it]), these were all innovations that later would become commonplace. But the connection between those trends and their modern descendants was not as ephemeral as I had assumed, there is in fact a traceable line. You see, when FASA Interactive was bought by Microsoft in 1999, many of those employees went on to work on Mechwarrior, Mechassault, and the Xbox Live launch team. And those same people would later move on to become major principals at Bungie, Epic, Sony, etc. Research on this has been frustrating because much of the work done for Virtual World does not have a Moby Games presence, and instead I've had to look at connections through other FASA projects at the time, like the Mechwarrior series.
A few examples:
[Dave āWickedā Abzug](https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,30653/), featured in the Lostec documentary, now with Volition
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David Abzug has been working in video games for twenty seven years. Starting out at one of the first ever location based VR systems in existence, David spent seven years running sites and training staff for Virtual World Entertainment before transitioning to the software side as a designer.
>Over his twenty years as a designer, David has worked on multiple AAA titles, ranging from real time strategy games through sims, flight games, shooters and open world action. Working on classic franchises such as Mechwarrior/BattleTech, Shadowrun, Crimson Skies and Saints Row, the games David has worked on have accumulated over a billion dollars in sales and a wide variety of awards. ā Bradly University Staff Bio
[TJ Wagner](https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,30632/): used to be the QA guy for cockpits, also producer of mechwarrior 4, mechassault 1 & 2, eventually landed back at Day 1 studios with [Denny](https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,2806/) [Thorly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denny_Thorley), prior president of Virtual World. Formerly Wargaming West, now Wargaming Chicago-Baltimore and doing World Of Tanks on console
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David Luehmann (Microsoftās FASA Studio director) and I worked together on the Sega Genesis BattleTech game and then again in the earliest stages of MechWarrior 4. We often talked about taking an āactionā approach to BattleTech and putting it on a console platform. About 9 months after Microsoft purchased FASA Interactive (which became FASA Studio), David and I started collaborating on ideas for making an action āMech game for the Xbox. The powers that be at Microsoft blessed the idea and prestoā¦ MechAssault was under way. Well, thatās the Readers Digest version anyhow.
>MechAssault was not originally intended to be online. When we started the game we planned to ship earlier then Xbox live, so it really didnāt make sense to support the service. In the pre-production phase of the game's development, it was decided that MechAssault would benefit from a lower camera perspective that would allow the player to see to the horizon. This change required additional technical work and would put our schedule much closer to the āLiveā launch. At this pointā¦ we had to āgo for itā and make MechAssault a launch title for the incredible online console service. ā Denny Thorley, MechAssaultin': The Interview (October 21, 2002)
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Some of the longtime employees that worked on the original MechAssult, including myself, are still hereā¦ ā_TJ Wagner, World of Tanksā Core Breach shows Chicago studio still loves mechs_ (January 30, 2019)
[Derek āMantisā Carroll](https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,30645/): worked at FASA studio until its closure in 2007, was a senior designer on the Halo series, later worked on Destiny 1 & 2
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The Internet hasnāt quite forgotten about the maps I made for Marathon, way back in 1995. Since then, I kept busy making games like MechWarrior 4, MechCommander 2, MechAssault (see a pattern?), and Shadowrun at FASA Studio until its closure in 2007. Now Iām working on all manner of secret stuff for Halo: Reach that I hope to share with everyone in a few months! ā Derek āMantisā Carroll, Bungie Staff Bio
These are just a few examples of the spider web of connections that spiral out of Virtual World and FASA. These people gained a lot of street cred because of their experience on in the early 00ās, and they've taken their Virtual World/FASA Interactive experience and spread it all over the industry in very influential ways.
Propwash proposes a āhilariousā research exercise. He posits that if you go back to Mech Commander, and all the people involved in FASA studio/VWE just prior to Microsoftās purchase, and then go see where all of them went afterwards, there's probably a super interesting story there. Because he believes you can connect the dots from there to some of the biggest titles on the planet. But this story has not yet been recorded for the public. He told me, āweāve been telling this story for a long time, but Iām just a guy at a conventionā.
That's why Propwash considered getting all these principal figures together for the Lostech documentary a ācoupā. Because credible figures going on record and setting the story straight is what is needed to turn this ārumorā into āhistoryā (and therefore ending a few wikipedia wars). Even if people can't experience the pods in person (something it's becoming progressively harder to do), the hope is that someday whenever someone plays a āmedicā or a ātankā in Overwatch (or whatever), they can understand the way Virtual World blazed that trail.
In his role as a preservationist, he sees multi-layered reasons to tell this story. āWe need people to know the story. We need people to get excited about the story, and we need people to get excited about the preservation of that story.ā Propwashās hope is that if we can get people to understand the historical influence, then eventually it can become a larger part of the video game historical canon, and thus have a better chance at immortality. In pursuit of that goal: more documentaries are planned, date TBD. The real story of the impact of these devices is only now being ādiscoveredā and told decades later.
While in Texas I also[ visited the National Videogame Museum](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/298-field-trip-national-videogame-museum-in-frisco-tx), and I tried to imagine what it would take for Virtual World to someday have an exhibit/presence there at least as large as the space they had dedicated to Cheetamen 2.
As our conversation came to an end, I happened to ask if Propwash was a military veteran (as I am, myself). Given his interest in warbirds, I didn't think the question was preposterous. He said no, but in my next update (hopefully not in another year from now, but weāll see) I want to share a military experience of my own that reminded me of the pods, and more thoroughly explore the way Virtual World was inspired by the military, which then went on to inspire things in gaming that we now accept as commonplace, such as how Virtual Worldās reward pins (inspired by military ribbons/medals/awards) and callsigns became āachievementsā and āgamertagsā.
I leave you with a second documentary, my own. The product of my trip to Houston to visit the last remaining public Battletech center. Itās a no-frills series of interviews with the two owners and two of their players/volunteers. Itās very rough, but I mostly just wanted to get this out into the world under a creative commons license, so that the information is out there and that perhaps someday someone can build off of it. If you do check it out, please let me know, Iād be delighted if anyone finds this interesting, and as simple as it is, I am proud of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqphoeiSomc
I bring to you today a parallel story of a 90ās LBE game that is now on itās final legs: The Last Ridge Racer.
The story begins, like mine did, in 1993, and tracks _Ridge Racer Full Scale_ to its last remaining location in 2017, and to the ongoing effort to preserve the last machine.
Many notes of the story are familiar to me after tracking the slow decline of Battletech centers, and I'm happy to see other likewise preservation efforts taking place here.