Kesmai was a pioneering game developer and online game publisher, founded in 1981 by Kelton Flinn and John Taylor. The company was best known for the combat flight sim '' Air Warrior'' on the

GEnie GEnie (General Electric Network for Information Exchange) was an online service provider, online service created by a General Electric business, GEIS (now GXS Inc., GXS), that ran from 1985 through the end of 1999. In 1994, GEnie claimed around ...

online service, one of the first graphical

MMOG A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players to interact in the same online game world. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although there are games th ...

s, launched in 1987. They also developed an ASCII-based

MUD Mud (, or Middle Dutch) is loam, silt or clay mixed with water. Mud is usually formed after rainfall or near water sources. Ancient mud deposits hardened over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone (generally cal ...

, '' Island of Kesmai'', and empire building game, '' MegaWars III'', which ran on

CompuServe CompuServe, Inc. (CompuServe Information Service, Inc., also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi) was an American Internet company that provided the first major commercial online service provider, online service. It opened in 1969 as a times ...

, and later,

. The company was acquired by

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian - American retired business magnate, investor, and media mogul. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of List of assets owned by News Corp, local, national, a ...

's News Corp. in 1994. The company continued to develop massively multiplayer games such as ''Air Warrior 2'' and ''

Legends of Kesmai ''Island of Kesmai'' is a discontinued multi-user dungeon (MUD) online game. An early entry in the genre, the game was innovative in its use of roguelike pseudo-graphics. It is considered a major forerunner of modern massively multiplayer ...

''. They distributed their games through AOL and eventually a new gaming service formed with three other publishers, GameStorm. AOL purchased

in 1997 and retooled its AOL Games Channel in a way that placed Kesmai unfavorably compared to its own games division, WorldPlay. Kesmai sued AOL for monopolistic practices. The suit was settled out of court with undisclosed terms. In 1999, the company was sold to

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

, and the company's studios were subsequently closed in 2001. Upon closure a number of the Kesmai staff went to work for Lodestone Games, also located in

Charlottesville Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in Virginia, United States. It is the seat of government of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Quee ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

; while others remained in the former Kesmai offices but became part of EA.com and later Maxis East. Flinn selected the name ''Kesmai'' from a set of names that were output by a random name generator that he wrote for in-game use.

Games

References

Defunct video game companies of the United States MUD organizations Defunct companies based in Virginia Video game companies established in 1981 Video game companies disestablished in 2001 1981 establishments in Virginia 2001 disestablishments in Virginia Electronic Arts subsidiaries {{MUD-stub