Scepter of Goth

Bob created the world's first commercial MMORPG company, GāmBit MultiSystems.

 

MECC and TIES

After being raised in the borough of Queens in New York City (and in New Jersey just long enough for a tornado) Bob's family moved to his mother's native Minnesota. This was fortunate, because Minnesota had unique resources: two state-wide timeshare computer systems, MECC and TIES for the use of high school students. The industrious students of the mid-1970s quickly created all the elements of what is today called 'social media' - email, multi-user chat, forum discussions, and interactive multi-user games. One of those games was "Milieu" written by Alan Klietz.

 

Scepter of Goth

In 1983 Apple Computers persuaded the Minnesota legislature to dispose of their groundbreaking mainframe service and use the money to put Apple ][ computers in every Minnesota classroom. For MECC users it was as if someone today decided to turn off the Internet. Thinking that MECC users might welcome a commercial replacement in order to hold the MECC community together. Bob contacted Alan Kleitz. Because Alan was an absolute genius he quickly created the software for GāmBit MultiSystems, and rewrote his ridiculously popular "Milieu" program as "Scepter of Goth."

GāmBit and Scepter were also ridiculously popular, and circumstances soon led to franchising GāmBit to 13 cities in the USA and Canada. Scepter of Goth turned out to be the world's first commercial Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG. GāmBit's franchisees went on to become innovators of the MMORPG industry: from GāmBit's humble beginnings MMOs have grown into a multi-billion-dollar per year industry.