John de Margheriti - Micro Forte Pty Limited

Micro Forte Pty Limited

Between 1985 and 1988, De Margheriti turned his focus towards business negotiations and contract development. He co-founded a games development company called Micro Forté Pty Limited and wrote games for a new company called Electronic Arts.

In 1995 De Margheriti came up with the concept of developing a software solution that would somehow group bulletin board services (BBS) together so that many people could play games together. He called this concept Game Net. Game Net was a precursor to what would later become known as BigWorld Technology. De Margheriti’s idea was to allow large scale Multi User Dungeons to be developed where hundreds of people could be playing together in a multiplayer game. He was greatly influenced by an EA friend Danielle/ Dan Bunten who had designed M.U.L.E, Modem Wars as well as a game called Command HQ which he often played with Stephen Lewis.

Those seminal games influenced De Margheriti in terms of coming up with the concept of building what is now commonly known as Massively Multiplayer Online Games . While developing the idea of Game Net, De Margheriti became increasingly more aware of the advent of the internet particularly after playing Ultima Online and Meridian 59, two of the first Massively Multiplayer Online Games .

He realised that these two games were an extension of the multiplayer games he loved and that in the future many developers would want to create massively multiplayer games. De Margheriti decided to switch his focus away from BBS, and made the decision to build a middleware engine that would help developers deal with the complexities of creating these online games. In 1996 Stephen Lewis and John lodged patents for a Communication System and Method and in 1999 he lodged an application for funding through AusIndustry’s R&D Start program and received a multimillion dollar grant. This was subsequently matched by venture capital from Allen & Buckeridge, an Australian Venture capital firm. The name of “Large Scale Multi Player Universe” (LSMPU) was originally used to describe the server, client and tools middleware system that De Margheriti had in mind. In 2011 the Micro Forte company acquired all the shares from the venture capital company.