David Allen (born July 30, 1972) is a

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

who is most recently known as the creator of Alganon, a fantasy based

MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

developed by Quest Online, a company he co-founded in 2006.

Game designer and entrepreneur

Born in

Denver, Colorado Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

, Allen grew up in

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside (King County, Washington), Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area, and the f ...

where he actively played on the PLATO network, beginning of his interest in online gaming and programming. With a background of programming and development on the Windows platform, his first retail creation was '' Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol'' (released 1994) a dungeon-romp built for Windows 3.x. The sequel was a more evolved version of Mordor called ''Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan'' (released 2000). While finishing ''Demise'', Allen created the concept for the MMORPG called '' Horizons: Empire of Istaria'' and founded Artifact Entertainment in 1999 where he proceeded to raise capital and build the game, relocating to

Mesa, Arizona Mesa ( ) is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. The population was 504,258 at the 2020 census. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, third-most populous city in Arizona, after Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, T ...

in the process. Allen departed Artifact in July 2001. He founded Pharaoh Productions later in 2001 where he designed a game called ''Dominion'' which was a mix of MMORPG and ''Diablo'' play style, but featuring dynamic content. Allen was unable to secure funding for Pharaoh and closed the company in 2004. He returned to the industry in 2006 relocating to

Chandler, Arizona Chandler is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, and a suburb in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the List of municipalities in Arizona, fourth-most populous city in Arizona ...

and co-founding a new company called Quest Online where he created a MMOG called ''Crusade'' which was later renamed to '' Alganon''. ''Alganon'' launched in December 2009 with a

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

called MyAlganon that included an online Library system where players could browse game data including items, quests, and characters.

Other activities

Allen has written two published books. The ''Visual Basic 4 Network Gaming Adventure Set'', was published in 1995, which showed readers how to create games in Visual Basic 4. He also published a work of fiction called ''Eight Days'' through

Amazon Kindle Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, Audible audiobooks, and other digital media via wireless networking ...

in 2013. He also writes and publishes stories on a personal website called ''StoryBag''.

Companies created

* VB Designs (1996) * Artifact Entertainment (1999) * Pharaoh Productions (2001) * Quest Online (2006)

Games created

* ''

Mordor In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional continent of Middle-earth, Mordor (; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is a dark realm. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, and to the south of Mirkwood. Mount ...

'' (Released 1995) * ''

Demise Demise is an Anglo-Norman legal term (from French ''démettre'', from Latin ''dimittere'', to send away) for the transfer of an estate, especially by lease. It has an operative effect in a lease, implying a covenant "for quiet enjoyment". The ...

'' (Released 2000) * '' Horizons'' (Released 2003) * ''Dominion'' (Not Released) * '' Alganon'' (Released 2009)

References

External links