About Me

John Pritchett has been an indie game developer since 1994. His first game, TradeWars 2002, is among the earliest online games, and has been recognized as the tenth greatest PC game of all time by PCWorld Magazine. Pritchett’s involvement with the game began in 1994 when he joined Gary Martin of Martech Software and took over development. In 1998, Pritchett began the process of porting the game to the Internet. In 2000, Martech sold all TradeWars rights to Pritchett’s company, EIS, and he has continued to develop and support the game. In that same year, Pritchett licensed the name to Realm Interactive for their MMO TradeWars: Dark Millennium. Pritchett worked with Realm between 2001 and 2002 until the project was purchased by NCSoft, renamed Exarch, and eventually released as Dungeon Runners.

In 2005, Pritchett formed Black Squirrel Studios as a side-project to develop casual games. Xenopede, under the working title of Waamu, was in development for much of that year until a Canadian developer approached EIS about creating a graphical, web-based remake of TradeWars 2002. Pritchett welcomed the opportunity to advance the TradeWars IP, and signed a development agreement in 2006. Also that year, Justin Mette of 21-6 Productions, a longtime fan of TradeWars, approached Pritchett about potential collaborations. As a result, Pritchett joined 21-6 in their development of Rocketbowl 360, the XBLA port of Large Animal’s successful indie title. Pritchett, a physics major in college, eagerly accepted the opportunity to code Rocketbowl’s physics as well as gameplay logic. Due to his focus on the 21-6 project, as well as creative differences with the Canadian developer, the TradeWars remake was cancelled.

Rocketbowl 360 was released to XBLA late summer of 2008. Since then, Pritchett has continued to work with 21-6 on unannounced projects.

In fall of 2009, a break from 21-6 allowed Pritchett to return to his side-project, Black Squirrel Studios, and Xenopede. Xenopede was completed and entered into the IGF 2010 indie game competition. It is currently on hold while Pritchett focuses on other projects, including the first new TradeWars release since 2004.