Early Career
Before he became a pen and paper game designer, Pondsmith worked in the video games industry as a graphic designer. His first job out of college involved designing packaging and advertising materials for the California Pacific Computer Company. At the time his line of duty involved repackaging of the Japanese games for the western market which was the main focus of California Pacific in its early days. He later moved on to creating designs for the original titles produced by Bill Budge and for the early Ultima games designed by Richard Garriott, all of which were published by the late California Pacific.
According to Pondsmith there wasn't much to do in the area of video game design back then mostly due to the constrains of technology available (most games released by California Pacific were targeting Apple II machines). He was however familiar with pen and paper games which he played at the time and got interested in the paper game design. Thanks to the side-job in typesetting, he had an access to very modern (for the time) computers with advanced software used in laying books and magazines out. Taking advantage of this access he wrote a game called Mekton, a mecha game based on Japanese manga books he stumbled upon in the past. Due to the interest his work on paper games generated, game design consumed his graphic design career (although he continued designing and laying out most of the R. Talsorian Games' books).
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