TORN Previously Known as TornCity

Chedburn’s is the well known British online gaming entrepreneur, well known for his online RPG TORN (Previously known as TORN CITY), which was launched in 2004 and has now become one of the largest online games.

TORN has become one of the largest RPG Games on the web, with over 40,000 users online daily. With no fear of a reset and updates made regularly. TORN is known for is originality and game play. Many members of the CE Community were introduced through TORN, Many have played this game, many have seen this game rise to the top, many have their opinions about the game, and we had questions for Chedburn’s and he had the answers…

Q. TORN has become one of the biggest online games, how does it feel becoming one of the biggest names in the online gaming community?

Of course it feels great, but it’s a big burden. It’s taken a lot of work, money and sleepless nights to get the site to where it is now. Treating the game economy much like a real one, worrying if players will find exploits, if the site will go down e.t.c. When you get to the stage Torn City is at, it’s pretty much constant worry and making sure you’re on top of everything. Luckily we have around 50 volunteer staff workers which takes a lot of the load off, they pretty much keep the game up and running. Over 4-5 years, we’ve built a fantastic and trustworthy team.

Q. How old where you when you decided upon launching TORN?

I suppose I was around 16, actual construction didn’t start until a few years later though. Design is always much harder than actually coding, I’ve always spent much more time on it, looking at every possible angle. You aren’t so much creating a game, as a system.

Q. When did you come across PHP and why did you decide to learn it?

I decided learning PHP because I had played other text based games in the past and loved the way they worked, and how they can be so much more addicting and fun than any graphical game could ever be. The very first bit of PHP I wrote was, as far as I can remember, a gym system for Torn City. I bought a PHP & MySQL book and within a few days was hard at work. It was never meant to be any kind of success, just for my own personal enjoyment. If you do this kind of thing for money, you’re really bound to fail. By the time I started coding, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

Q. TORN was originally created by you and Quacks, where is Quacks?

Quacks joined shortly after construction started, and left recently. There was no silly fall out or anything, it was just a change of opinion, it was all settled professionally.

Q. When creating TORN what was your inspiration?

I wanted to code the perfect game for me; it’s basically exactly how I would want my text based game to be, if I was playing it.

Q. What were your goals and why did you create TORN?

I think I answered this further up. I had no goals; I created it for a hobby, never for money.

Q. What was the single most memorable point whilst running TORN?

There’s not really any single massive point, there’s always things big and small things that go wrong. There are far too many memories, good and bad to pick one. I suppose the better ones would be spending a hell of a long time designing and constructing large add-ons and updates, and finally releasing them.

Q. In your mind what was the biggest thing to happen to TORN?

There’s no single big thing I can think of, there have been many many things, big and small. Big crashes have maybe been the most memorable because they take a lot of work to sort out and can leave irreversible damage. I feel we’ve learnt from previous problems though, and built up to protect ourselves from them.

Q. What do you think puts TORN ahead of its competitors?

I suppose because we’re the first of our type, we’ve never backed down from opportunities and we’ve work very hard.

Q. Would you like to thank anyone that has helped you become who you are?

All of the staff team who work tirelessly to keep everything in order and of course the other admins.

Q. What are your future goals with TORN?

Well we’re hoping to do some serious advancements and improvements this year. We’ve brought on more programmers; marketer’s e.t.c. should be very exciting.

Q. What advice can you give to aspiring game owners/developers?

The only advice I can give, is do something different. Why would someone play a game, which is the same as another? Simply buying an engine, no matter how much you change it, will still be someone else’s engine. If you’re really enthusiastic about owning a successful game, you need to design it from start to finish, and code it from scratch. If it’s good, the players will come by word of mouth and fill the game up. If your game isn’t constantly bringing in new users, certainly replacing the ones who are leaving, you’re doing something wrong. Your game must be original, and must be coded from scratch. Of course having knowledge of how people think, knowing what makes a good game, and enthusiasm helps a lot. I suggest getting a book about human emotions, and how people use systems such as games, what turns them in to games e.t.c. Design is always more important than the programming side.

I have so much advice I could easily fill a book, but I’m far too greedy to share :)

Special thanks to CE Member Rainbow for setting up the interview.