The Demonware podcast | Sean Blanchfield

Dylan Collins and I recorded a podcast on the early days of Demonware, a video games middleware company we co-founded in 2003. Demonware developed multiplayer technology for video games studios on Xbox and Playstation, just as online gaming was going mainstream. Demonware’s splashscreen will be familiar to many gamers from the countless titles that have incorporated its technology, including major online franchises like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero.

Demonware was acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2007, where it continues to operate as the central online technology platform for Activision games.

Dylan:  Hi, I’m Dylan Collins, and you’re about to hear a conversation with Sean Blanchfield about the history of Demonware, one of the original video game middleware pioneers that he and I founded in the early 2000s.

This episode was originally inspired by Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins’ GameCraft podcast on gaming, which, by the way, you should check out, and specifically by our view that they skipped an important episode on the role of middleware companies in the growth of the sector. So if you’re curious about the origins of online gaming or just want to hear some unvarnished startup war stories about what building companies in a pre cloud era was like, I think you might enjoy this.

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