Development
Zack Johnson, the game's creator, developed several games before Kingdom of Loathing but did not feel that they were good enough to release online. Deciding that he was taking the games he created too seriously, Johnson then set himself the challenge of creating one within a week and publishing the result online. The result was more of a joke than a game, and the initial content including classes and even the name of the game were stream of consciousness. The game was released in early 2003, and Johnson soon invited his childhood friend Josh Nite to contribute content as a writer and designer. Within a year, 300,000 player accounts had been created, far exceeding Johnson and Nite's expectations; Johnson has referred to the game's success as "a never ending series of astonishments." In 2008, the game had between 100,000 and 150,000 regular players.
In the game's early days, Johnson would work on the game during breaks while at work, but eighteen months or so after launch, the game was bringing in enough money for Johnson to quit his day job as a programmer and develop the game full-time. He then began to pay Nite for his work and after approximately two years hired two more developers. There are currently eight full-time employees working on Kingdom of Loathing, as well as three other employees who are working on a separate game.
The game's creative process is fluid and loosely structured. According to Johnson, "At this point, I provide the overall direction. I do about a quarter of the writing, a quarter of the coding, and almost all of the artwork." The bulk of the writing is done by Nite, who also contributes design ideas, while two other developers, known in the game as Riff and HotStuff, work on writing, design, and coding.
According to Nite, the game's writing style owes itself to a humorous email exchange between himself and Johnson that began when the two separated after high school. These emails "helped us develop the shared comedic voice that KoL's written in." The game's developers cite text-based games such as Zork and Legend of the Red Dragon as creative influences, and Nite has compared the game to the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children's books.
The game has been in open beta since its initial release, and is continuously being worked on. New content is released weekly or monthly, and there is also unique holiday-themed content every Christmas, known as Crimbo. Occasionally, the developers stage world events such as the Gray Plague, which was similar to the Corrupted Blood incident in World of Warcraft.
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