“Don Daglow has earned much acclaim and multiple awards—including an Emmy®—for designing some of the earliest video games in a range of different genres, including arguably the world’s first role-playing game (RPG) [Dungeon, 1976], the first world-building game [Intellivision Utopia, 1981], and the first graphical  massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) [Neverwinter Nights, 1991]. Indeed, you can draw a straight line between many of his contributions and blockbuster games like “Roblox,” “Grand Theft Auto” and “Minecraft” that help fuel an industry that rakes in nearly $200 billion in annual sales.”
                                                      — Pomona College Magazine, Spring 2025, p. 30 

Don Daglow works with game publishers, developers and indie game teams across all major international platforms, focusing on production and game studio management. He also works on selected game narrative assignments. If you’d like to explore working together, he can be reached via ddaglow at gmail.

Awards & Records

  • Global record for longest active career as video game designer (1971-present)
  • Inducted into the GAMM Video Game Hall of Fame, 2024
  • Received 2008 Technical Emmy® Award for designing and producing Neverwinter Nights (AOL 1991-1997), the first MMORPG to use graphics instead of text to show gameplay, alongside the Emmy® winners for Everquest and World of Warcraft. Neverwinter Nights defined the boundary between all-text Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and modern graphical gameplay in Massively Multi-player RPGs.
  • Inaugural Gamescom Dev Conference Ambassador Award, 2025
  • CGE Achievement Award for “groundbreaking accomplishments that shaped the Video Game Industry,” 2003
  • Along with John Carmack and Mike Morhaime, one of three game makers to receive both a Technical Emmy® Award (2008, for creating Neverwinter Nights) and a DICE Award (2002, Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering by Stormfront Studios for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers).
  • The only games industry creative to win awards for game narrative writing (Technical Emmy® for Neverwinter Nights), novels (12 major indie book awards for The Fog Seller), and playwriting (National Endowment for the Arts “New Voices” Playwriting Award for Your Fine Hawk’s Blood).
  • As adjunct faculty at Claremont Graduate University, shared a classroom with legendary business leader Peter Drucker. It is almost certainly a coincidence that Don later earned Inc. 500 CEO honors three times as CEO of Stormfront Studios.

Innovations

  • Designed the first video game to use multiple camera angles: World Series Major League Baseball (1983), with Eddie Dombrower. Prior games portrayed static top-down views of playfields modeled on game boards.
  • Designed and produced Neverwinter Nights (AOL 1991-1997), the first MMORPG to use graphics instead of text to show gameplay. The game also hosted the first online RPG game guilds, which players began organizing in the Summer of 1991, and was the first MMORPG game to offer both PvE and PvP combat.
  • Original designer of the interface that places a circle on the screen at the feet of the active player in a sports game and on television sports broadcasts. First used in Tony La Russa’s Ultimate Baseball (1991), later adopted by television “match moving” technology in TV coverage of football and other sports, and by video games from EA Sports (Madden NFL), 2K Sports (NBA 2K), etc.
  • Programmed the seminal Ecala chatbot on a PDP-10 mainframe computer (1971-72), the first AI-driven chatbot to demonstrate superior functionality to the pioneering 1966 Eliza. The Ecala source code is preserved at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. Ecala also featured the first-ever game “loading screen” to occupy the user during long program load times.
  • Conceived and produced the first two years of the EA Artists Conference in 1985 and 1986 for developers and team members at EA, one of the events that laid the groundwork for the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Famous Firsts

  • Programmed BASBAL, first interactive baseball game and first use of AI in a sports game, on a PDP-10 mainframe computer (1971).
  • Programmed Star Trek game mod (1971, based on a game by William Peterson) on a PDP-10 mainframe computer; the game was one of the most successful mods of the 1970s and was widely available on university systems in North America.
  • Programmed Dungeon, first PDP-10 mainframe Role Playing Game, first electronic RPG on a non-classroom computer system (1976), and the first RPG to offer line-of-sight graphics and fog of war.
  • Served as one of the original five Intellivision console game programmers in 1980 in-house at Mattel, at the dawn of the Intellivision vs. Atari rivalry that dominated the first Console War; later named Director of Intellivision game development.
  • Designed Utopia (1981), first console sim game, first console “God game” or city-builder, and the first RTS game.
  • At start-up Electronic Arts, produced two of EA’s first three sports games: World Tour Golf (1986), with Evan Robinson, Nicky Robinson & Paul Reiche, and Earl Weaver Baseball (1987), with Eddie Dombrower, plus 10 other games.
  • Designed Earl Weaver Baseball as the first video game to use different on-screen graphics to depict People of Color, a controversial decision in 1987.
  • Earl Weaver Baseball was the first electronic baseball game to introduce sabermetric stats and analytics, 16 years before the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis popularized analytics in baseball.
  • Designed the interface that for the first time allowed players to field fly balls in a baseball video game, in Tony La Russa’s Ultimate Baseball (1991). A circle on the field displays where the fly ball will land, and moves to reflect the ball’s height and the influence of wind. This interface was then adopted by all of the major baseball franchises including Take Two’s MLB 2K games, and after 34 years is still used in Sony’s current hit MLB The Show.
  • Coined the term Console Wars, first used in 1988 in this issue of Computer Gaming World as Cartridge Wars before the term “console” came into use. The title “Console Wars” was featured in Don’s presentations at GDC and other events starting in the late 1990s, and was popularized by Blake Harris’ book in 2014.
  • Designed the first fully-automated play-by-email game, Quantum Space (1989-92) on AOL.
  • Wrote and produced the first-ever work of online serialized fiction: QuantumLink Serial, AppleLink Serial, PC-Link Serial for Quantum Computer Services, later renamed America Online (1988-90).
  • Neverwinter Nights, Quantum Space and The Serial debuted as online titles two to four years before the public opening of the Internet in April, 1993.

Key Game Franchises & Titles

  • Led Entertainment & Education game development at Broderbund Software (Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego, Sim City (distribution), Prince of Persia, Star Wars).
  • Led design on SSI Gold Box D&D games Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Treasures of the Savage Frontier (with first NPC who could fall in love with a player or reject them based on in-game actions).
  • Led design on Eagle Eye Mysteries franchise, published by EA Kids/Creative Wonders (featuring first use of computer-controlled stop-motion animation in video games).
  • Led design on Stronghold, published by SSI (1993), “Dungeons and Dragons meets Sim City in an RTS”. Stronghold was the first “3D” real time strategy game (RTS), and used multiple bit planes and parallax displacement mapping to create an illusion of 3D prior to the time when processors were fast enough to render true 3D.
  • Led team on original PC versions of Madden NFL for EA Sports; led team that created EA Sports NASCAR Racing franchise.
  • Led team on Byzantine: The Betrayal, first video-based game with 360-degree interactive movement and gameplay, won three EMMA Game of the Year Awards, including the Gold Award for Excellence as the best software product of the year. The game was also nominated as Best Adventure/RPG of the Year at the Codie Awards and at GDC.
  • Founding President (Volunteer), Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Foundation (2011-2025); elected to two terms as Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Board Member (2003-2007, 2007-2011).
  • In stealth mode on original cross-platform game with small team. (Sometimes reading all the way to the end reveals something new!)