Matt Mihaly

Matt Mihaly / Matthew Mihaly (born June 21, 1972) is an American CEO and Creative Director of Sparkplay Media and Chairman, founder, CEO, and formerly Creative Director at Iron Realms Entertainment. He is known for pioneering the sale of virtual assets in online games. His MUD pseudonym is Sarapis.^[1]

Biography

Mihaly attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, receiving a Bachelor's degree in political science, or 'government', as Cornell calls it, in 1994. During college, Matt became involved with MUDs, especially BatMUD, where he was a wizard.^[2]

In 1996, Mihaly founded Iron Realms Entertainment and served as lead designer and producer on Achaea.

In 1997, he pioneered the Virtual Asset Sales (VAS) model, holding auctions for virtual weapons and armor in Achaea.

In 2000, he served as Senior Consultant to the Secretary-General of the World Summit of Young Entrepreneurs, in New York, New York, leading development of a system with very low technology requirements to permit entrepreneurs in impoverished 3rd-world countries to participate.^[3]

Mihaly has since overseen the release of four successful MUDs, with another in the pipeline, and is producing and serving as lead designer on Iron Realms' first graphical game, Earth Eternal. He speaks at conferences like Dragoncon,^[4] the Game Developers Conference^[5] and the Social Gaming Summit.^[6] He served as technical editor on Richard Bartle's book, Designing Virtual Worlds,^[7] and contributed an essay to Lee Sheldon's book, "Character Development and Storytelling for Games"^[8]

In 2007, Iron Realms announced it was spinning off Sparkplay Media from Iron Realms to produce Earth Eternal, a 3D anthropomorphic MMO.

In 2008, Mihaly raised $4.25 million from venture capital firms Redpoint Ventures and Prism Ventureworks in order to expand the development of Sparkplay's platform and games.

In 2010, after never leaving Open Beta, Sparkplay Media ran out of money and sold Earth Eternal to another MMO company (at the time of this wiki update the legal paperwork is not yet completed). In the early morning hours of September 1st, 2010, the Earth Eternal forums and game were taken offline. No official explanation has been provided as to why the game and servers were shut down or when they may be brought back up.

Games

• Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands (Lead designer, Producer; Iron Realms 1997 - 2005)
• Aetolia, the Midnight Age (Creative Director; Iron Realms 2001)
• Imperian (Creative Director; Iron Realms 2003)
• Lusternia (Creative Director; Iron Realms 2004)
• Midkemia Online (Creative Director; Iron Realms)
• Tears of Polaris (Creative Director; Iron Realms 2008)
• Earth Eternal (Creative Director, Lead Designer; Sparkplay Media 2009)

Notes and references

1. ^ Davis, Steven (2006-09-08). "The World of text MMOs / MUDs - An Interview with Matt Mihaly, CEO of Iron Realms Entertainment". PlayNoEvil. http://www.playnoevil.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/765-The-World-of-text-MMOs-MUDs-An-Interview-with-Matt-Mihaly,-CEO-of-Iron-Realms-Entertainment.html. Retrieved 2010-05-20. 
2. ^ Neely, Kim (1994-12-01). "Caught in the Net". Rolling Stone (696): 61–66. 
3. ^ "Wired Article on World Summit of Young Entrepreneurs"
4. ^ "Dragoncon session"
5. ^ "Game Developer's Conference 2007 sessions"
6. ^ "Social Gaming Summit"
7. ^ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders. ISBN 0-1310-1816-7. 
8. ^ "Character Development and Storytelling for Games

• "The Forge" (blog)
• "Wired Article on Gleam" (Wired)
• "Computer Gaming World on Gleam"

Persondata
Name	Mihaly, Matt
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Date of birth	1972-06-21
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