Its creators hoped the game would break even within two years by garnering 70,000 players paying $10 a month. They doubled that in six months.
Today, these figures pale in comparison with the 11.5 million people who play World of Warcraft, an online game released in 2004. But in 1999, the EverQuest flood nearly ground San Diego's Internet traffic to a halt.
"John really helped invent this genre," said Geoff Keighley, executive in charge of game content at MTV Networks.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, March 24, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 35 words Type of Material: Correction
Online games: An article in Monday's Business section about online games said EverQuest was rated "Mature," meaning only adults are supposed to play. It is rated "Teen," meaning it's suitable for players 13 and older.
Players loved EverQuest, sometimes a little too much. Some clocked more hours in the game than they did for work, leading people to call the game "EverCrack." There was also a lot of bullying. Smedley hired hundreds of employees to constantly patrol it, resolve conflicts and banish players who got out of hand.
The game is rated "Mature," which means only adults are supposed to play. That doesn't prevent teens from finding their way in, often by getting permission from their parents. Smedley once took a call from an outraged parent who demanded to know why his son was banned.
"I told him his son used bad language," Smedley said. "The parent insisted that his son never cursed. So I pulled up the logs of what his son had typed in the game and e-mailed it to him right then. He read it and said, 'I'll take care of this.' "
The incident taught Smedley to be more aware of what his own kids were doing online.
Instead of a pool table and a pinball machine, the game room of Smedley's San Diego-area house has half a dozen high-end computers, each with a 30-inch monitor.
One Sunday afternoon last year, Catherine, 11, fiendishly typed away at her keyboard, constructing an online story involving a unicorn in a game called Neopets. His two younger girls, Emily, 9, and Rose, 7, clicked through pages filled with cute animals in another online game called Webkinz. And Patrick, 14, toggled between EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
Smedley peered behind Catherine's shoulder, marveling at the story she was creating with her online friends.
"There's a whole subculture of kids her age who do nothing but write stories," Smedley said. "We added a similar feature to Free Realms just because of what Catherine does in this game."
Other developers at Sony have also recruited their own children, bringing them into the company's test lab to get input. Some of the characters in the game are named after those young testers.
