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[1/?] In celebration of 9 years of @RunicGames - a bunch of Runic trivia....
[2/?] Runic Games was first registered as 'Surprise Truck' and I got many calls asking if 'Surprise Trucking' could do a cross-country move.
[3/?] Runic Games ALMOST became part of PopCap and then the economy cratered.
[4/?] Torchlight's original codename was 'Delvers'
[5/?] EA said the ink would be dry on the contract 'next week' to publish Torchlight. Needless to say...
[6/?] We had potato guns at a Christmas party and that was the worst idea in history after we returned from break to rotting potato pellets.
[7/?] The first Torchlight prototype involved a test model that looked remarkably like Jesus, dual wielding swords.
[8/?] Runic Games had a negative account balance the first Christmas and then finally a wire came in and I was sooooo drunk.
[9/?] Talking to VCs about funding your company feels like eating pudding with chopsticks.
[10/?] Runic was founded with 16(!) people all moving directly from Flagship Seattle. Starting up with 16 people is HARD y'all.
[11/?] Torchlight 1 was made in 11 months, if we're generous. There was a lot of OMGSTARTINGACOMPANY in there.
[12/?] Torchlight 2 was originally supposed to be an MMO, but when the time came I just felt like it would kill us, so we didn't.
[13/?] We also pitched publishing Torchlight to Big Fish Games. I was so sick and on so much cold medicine.
[14/?] In our meetings with PopCap talking about partnership, we got an early look at Plants vs Zombies.
[15/?] The Destroyer owes a lot to Laurence Fishburne.
[16/?] The first technical prototype of what became Hob was built using Wind Waker models on Outset Island from isometric view.
[17/?] Rebel Galaxy was originally a Runic project & you were Nikola Tesla in space with big electric-powered spaceships, before it died.
[18/?] (Also considered - space vikings)
[19/?] The best hate letter we ever got included the phrase "Ruin-Dick Games"
[20/?] co-founding and running Runic for 6-odd years was the most taxing thing I've ever done, but the people there were worth it. <3
[21/?] Pitched to Zynga after they saw Mythos at Flagship. Will never forget Bing Gordon's face when he said he would 'part the kimono.'
[22/?] When we started Torchlight we considered using Unity - but back then it was a Mac-only dev environment!
[23/?] We also talked to Wildtangent about licensing my old FATE code to get moving faster, but they wanted a chunk of the company so, no.
