Sketched Out Comics

SeaCowGames was first established March 5th, 2000. The name was brainstormed between myself and my father. Many names were shopped around when he started telling me about how the Kelly’s came to the New World. Our port of entry was Sea Cow Pond, Prince Edward Island.

I had previously worked at Deadly Games (making nonviolent games of death and destruction…at least the company provided tee shirts that stated such!). Plus, the trend back then was to have “Games” in your company title if you were a video game maker. A quick AltaVista search (Google wasn’t that reliable back then) showed that there was no seacowgames.com taken. In 2000, all the urls that were combinations of 3 letters were finally taken. TheFaceBook.com would still be available for another 4 years.

…and DirectX was still in its infancy. Microsoft had not yet made the XBox, and when I had contacted Microsoft about issues I was having with DirectX, and I worked directly with one of the program managers on the issue. He was interested in the sailing game I was working on. I created the sailing game because Rene Vidmer, who owned Deadly Games, was an avid sailor, and always lamented that there wasn’t a decent sailing simulator around.

I was creating a sailing game because Rene always said niche games are easier to sell to a small audience than trying to make a broader game, such as a space game or sports game.

So between my father and I, we came up with Sea Cow Games. I released the sailing game and had mild success with it. There was no such thing as crowd sourcing back then. Angel investors contacted me once I released it. They had direct contact with Larry Ellison, who was the owner of Oracle, and an avid sailor (I guess if you are involved in sailing you are either avid or you’re nothing!). The Angel investors balked when I didn’t have anyone else working at Sea Cow Games but me. They didn’t think 1 person could make a 3D sailing game. Who knows.

I tried recruiting my friends into making a game, but they wanted a million dollars in the bank. Some friends. I tried convincing them a zombie game could sell in 2002 after releasing Offshore Sailing. This was before COD World at War was released with their zombie mode, so zombies were not that big. I was going off the zombie movies from the 70s and 80s, particularly the Night of the Living Dead movies. I even had a working title for the game: The Walking Dead.

I got the title from a newspaper clipping that is blowing in the wind that read “The Dead Walk” in the movie Day of the Dead. I was unaware of the comic series that Robert Kirkman made. There was limited zombie source material back then, so who knows if he got the same idea. I do know, however, that the url for thewalkingdead.com was available at the time. When I went to register it a few weeks later, he scooped it up. Moral of that story: If the opportunity is there, take it.

And that is why I have this URL. I know there is another company now that makes board games that is also using the Sea Cow Games title. Maybe they were like me, and didn’t know anything about my little sailing game much like I didn’t know anything about Kirkman’s comic, or how someone in Europe stole my url when it accidentally lapsed. I had to wait for years before it became available again, but it eventually did, and I have no notions of letting it lapse again.

My website even predates the wayback machine. It was made March 5th, 2000. Time sure does fly!