"Don Daglow has earned much acclaim and multiple awards—including an Emmy—for designing some of the earliest video games in a range of different genres, including arguably the world’s first role-playing game (RPG) [Dungeon, 1976], the first world-building game [Intellivision Utopia, 1981], and the first graphical  massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) [Neverwinter Nights, 1991]. Indeed, you can draw a straight line between many of his contributions and blockbuster games like “Roblox,” “Grand Theft Auto” and “Minecraft” that help fuel an industry that rakes in nearly $200 billion in annual sales."
                                                                              -- Pomona College Magazine, Spring 2025, p. 30 

Don Daglow works with game publishers, game studios and indie game teams around the world across all major platforms, focusing on narrative design, game production and general business strategy. He also coaches studio leaders in game studio management. 

If you'd like to explore working together, he can be reached via ddaglow at gmail.

(For Don Daglow's author website and books, please click here)

Career Highlights

• Longest active career of any video game designer (1971-present).
  
  
• Along with John Carmack and Mike Morhaime, one of three game makers to receive both a Technical Emmy® Award (2008, for creating Neverwinter Nights) and a DICE Award (2002, Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering by Stormfront Studios for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers).
  
  
• Programmed BASBAL, first interactive baseball game and first use of AI in a sports game, on a PDP-10 mainframe computer (1971).
  
  
• Programmed Star Trek game mod (1971, based on an original design by William Peterson) on a PDP-10 mainframe computer; the game was widely available on 1970s university systems across the U.S.
  
  
• Programmed the Ecala chatbot on a PDP-10 mainframe computer (1971-72), an early AI-driven chatbot that demonstrated superior functionality to the pioneering originator of the concept. Eliza. The Ecala source code is preserved at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. Ecala also featured what appears to be the first-ever game "loading screen" to distract users from the delays in starting up the program.
  
  
• Programmed Dungeon, first PDP-10 mainframe Role Playing Game, first electronic RPG on a non-classroom computer system (1976), and the first RPG to offer line-of-sight graphics and fog of war.
  
  
• Served as one of the original five Intellivision console programmers in 1980 on the first day of operations in-house at Mattel; later named Director of Intellivision game development. Designed and programmed Utopia (1981), first console sim game, first console "God game" or city-builder, and the first  (or, based on definitions, one of the first) RTS game(s).
  
  
• Designed the first video game to use multiple camera angles: World Series Major League Baseball (1983), with Eddie Dombrower. Prior games portrayed static top-down views of playfields modeled on game boards.
  
  
• At start-up Electronic Arts, produced two of EA's first three sports games: World Tour Golf (1986), with Evan Robinson, Nicky Robinson & Paul Reiche, and Earl Weaver Baseball (1987), with Eddie Dombrower, plus 10 other games.
  
  
• Designed Earl Weaver Baseball as the first video game to use different on-screen graphics to depict People of Color, a controversial decision in 1987 that was lauded by sportswriter and author Howard Bryant. Prior to Weaver, Baseball, games used the same skin color for all players.
  
  
• Earl Weaver Baseball was the first electronic baseball game to introduce sabermetric stats and analytics, 16 years before the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis popularized analytics in baseball.
  
  
• Coined the term Console Wars, first used in 1987 in Computer Gaming World as Cartridge Wars before the term "console" came into use. The title "Console Wars" was featured in Don's presentations at GDC and other events starting in the late 1990s, and was popularized by Blake Harris' book in 2014.
  
  
• Led Entertainment & Education gane development at Broderbund Software (Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego, Sim City (distribution), Prince of Persia, Star Wars).
  
  
• Received 2008 Technical Emmy® Award for designing and producing Neverwinter Nights (on AOL 1991-1997), the first MMORPG to use graphics instead of text to show gameplay, alongside the award recipients for Everquest and World of Warcraft. The game defined the boundary between prior state-of-the-art all-text Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and modern graphical gameplay as the standard format for MMORPGs.
  
  
• Neverwinter Nights hosted the first online RPG game guilds, which players began organizing in the Summer of 1991, and was the first MMORPG game to offer both PvE and PvP combat.
  
  
• Designed the first fully-automated play-by-email game, Quantum Space (1989-92) on AOL.
  
  
• Wrote and produced the first-ever work of online serial fiction: QuantumLink Serial, AppleLink Serial, PC-Link Serial for Quantum Computer Services, later renamed America Online (1988-90).
  
  
• Neverwinter Nights, Quantum Space and The Serial debuted as online titles two to four years before the public opening of the Internet in April, 1993.
  
  
• Founded and led game development company Stormfront Studios 1988-2008, with initial long-term team members Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett, Katie Kelly and Hudson Piehl. Earned Inc. 500 CEO honors for business growth three times. Recognized in Electronic Games Magazine as “one of the best-known and respected producers in the history of the field.”
  
  
• Designed the interface that for the first time placed a circle on the screen at the feet of a player in a sports game to indicate who had the ball, in Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball (1991). This now-standard technique was later adopted by television "match moving" technology to use player highlight circles for coverage in football and other sports, and by most major video games from EA Sports, 2K, Xbox and other publishers, including Madden NFL, NBA 2K, NHL Hockey, etc. 
  
  
• Designed the interface that for the first time allowed players to field fly balls in a baseball video game, in Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball (1991). A circle on the field displays where the fly ball will land, and it moves to reflect the influence of wind on the ball's flight so a user can guide a player to the right location. The circle grows as the ball heads higher on its path, and narrows as the ball comes back down. During the 1990s this interface was adopted by all of the major baseball game franchises, including EA Sports' Triple Play Baseball, Sony's MLB The Show, Take Two's MLB 2K, Xbox World Series Baseball, etc. and it remains in use today in MLB The Show 2024 and other titles.
  
  
• Led design on SSI Gold Box D&D games Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Treasures of the Savage Frontier (with first NPC who could fall in love with a player or reject them based on in-game actions).
  
  
• Led design on Eagle Eye Mysteries franchise, published by EA Kids/Creative Wonders (featuring first use of computer-controlled stop-motion animation in video games).
  
  
• Led design on Stronghold, published by SSI (1993), "Dungeons and Dragons meets Sim City in an RTS". Stronghold was the first "3D" real time strategy game (RTS), and used multiple bit planes and parallax displacement mapping to create an illusion of 3D prior to the time when processors were fast enough to render true 3D. 
  
  
• Led team on original PC versions of Madden NFL for EA Sports; led team that created EA Sports NASCAR Racing franchise.
  
  
• Led team on Byzantine: The Betrayal, first video-based game with 360-degree interactive movement and gameplay, won three EMMA Game of the Year Awards, including the Grand Prize.
  
  
• Founding President (Volunteer), Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Foundation (2011-Present); elected to two terms as Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Board Member (2003-2007, 2007-2011).
  
  
• Advisor to indie game developers and publishers (Wargaming, Bandai-Namco et al), 2008-Present.
  
  
• Advisor, The Strong National Museum of Play, 2009-Present.
  
  
• Award-winning, best-selling novelist: indie literary mystery The Fog Seller.
  
  
• Award-winning, best-selling non-fiction author: Indie Games: From Dream to Delivery.
  
  
• In stealth mode on current unique original game with small team. (Sometimes reading all the way to the end reveals something new!)

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The Secret History of Video Game Console Prices, Adjusted for Inflation
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