187. GGG (PoE) Founders Go Rogue

3 of the 4 founders of Grinding Gear Games left after the sale to Tencent. What they are doing now will shock you. All have gone full anti Dark Patterns so they have my full attention.

Jonathon Rogers and Chris Wilson Split

I wrote about Path of Exile 2 last January, expressing disappointment with the direction of its metagame, economy, and monetisation. I did a follow up article in April. The company that made Path of Exile 1 and 2 was sold off years ago to Tencent. In that review I pointed to one of the founders, Jonathon Rogers, as being the ideological source of PoE 2’s ills. I was frustrated because I had talked to Chris Wilson, another founder, over a decade ago and he was well aware of the perils of the path the company is currently going down. But what I didn’t know is that Chris was already gone from the company. Actually, all of the founders except Rogers were gone a year ago or sooner.

This paints a picture of an ideological split between the original GGG founders, and that split couldn’t be more profound given the video that Chris Wilson posted this week railing against “Dark Patterns”. Asmongold has also reacted to the video so it’s getting a lot of attention. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t stay in contact because we seem very much aligned now as far as how to make games. I’ve reached out to him and will update this paper if he contacts me after it goes public.

Usually if a developer “goes rogue” against the Dark Pattern establishment, they keep their head down and their mouths shut. I’m an obvious exception. But now Chris Wilson has clearly aligned himself against that status quo also. His video is explicitly anti-Dark Patterns. But he goes a step further: His new studio (still in New Zealand) is called “Light Pattern”. A gamer may not realize what’s up here without the context, but this is clearly a shot across the bow of the gaming industry.

My instinct is that there was a huge falling out between Jonathon Rogers and the other founders. I doubt anyone will talk about it and I’m not going to ask them. Their actions speak louder than words. I will help Chris Wilson if I get the opportunity. His current project is unannounced so I don’t know if it is a Game as a Service project or not. Without light side tech his options are going to be a bit limited. I’d hate to watch him try to reinvent the wheel, that could be very expensive.

Erik Olofsson

Erik was the 3rd founder of GGG and their art director. Like the 4th founder (who I’m about to talk about also) his origins were in Magic the Gathering and Trading Card Games (TCGs). That seems to very much be a glue that bound the founders of GGG. Erik has founded a new studio to build Sorcery: Contested Realm. It looks beautiful as you would imagine, and it’s already on the market. He gave this interview about his new studio almost three years ago.

These guys all made a lot of money on the sale of GGG to Tencent, and I think even so Tencent got a good deal. It’s great to see these guys now working on passion projects that likely will be allowed to reach quality levels that struggling developers just won’t be able to do until they have a big hit that can fund their dream game.

Brian Weissman

Brian was the 4th founder and also a very serious competitive MtG player. He also happens to be very into competitive Frisbee (“Ultimate”) play. You can listen to him talk about Ultimate for 81 minutes here. He seems like he’s living the dream. Of the four original GGG founders, he was the last to join and seemed to be the money guy. I don’t know if that means he got an extra share from the sale of GGG or not.

What is clear is that he also has started a new studio, and he’s very passionate about what he is building. The game is called Reclusion and it seems to be an extremely robust retelling of the original Rogue game that started one of the largest genres in modern gaming. I played the original Rogue on the UCLA mainframes in 1980 and had university sysops chasing me because I was slowing down their mainframes. I had one of the highest scores in Rogue and I had the highest score in WARP (also in 1980), which was apparently an improved version of the original Star Trek game from 1971. I built my first computer in 1990 just to play Moria (a more robust text Rogue).

Yes computer games have been around longer than most of you have been alive.

Brian wants to revive and improve upon a robust iteration of Rogue called Dream Quest which you can still play on Steam. I’m going to go download it myself. In both Dream Quest and Rogue you get the option of a variety of races and perhaps classes on each run, giving both games huge replayability. Dream Quest is different from Rogue in that when you run into a monster a card battle starts. I can see why this appeals to Brian. His Reclusion game will apparently include aspects of Path of Exiles to make those battles much more modern. I’m curious to see if he can redefine the genre.

My Thoughts

It seems like the original GGG and Path of Exile game that started development in 2006 was a passion project of this quartet. I’m sure they had no idea just how successful they were going to be. At some point the success of GGG and its sale to Tencent had GGG dictating what the four would do, instead of the other way around. This was totally fine for Jonathon Rogers, but the other 3 founders yearned to feel that passion and excitement again. To make something fresh, new, and unpredictable. Not “gaming (and exploitation) by the numbers” like their baby had become.

I love seeing the three of them go back to their roots and moving to reboot the industry with player friendly products. Since they are old enough to remember what made games great before, instead of when they became Excel spreadsheet games, it makes sense that they are all going back in time to find key moments when gaming diverged onto gamer unfriendly paths. By picking up the Path before the divergence, they are starting fresh with new technology and big budgets to continue from before gaming went off course.

Erik and Brian seem to be doing it quietly. Chris is going full Rogue, which has me even more excited.