I've been with BYOND for coming up on six years. The longest I've stuck with any project in my life.

When I came to the system I was playing EverQuest obsessively. It was fun and absorbing in the way only your first MMOG can be...that special time that takes over your brain and makes you feel like you'll be playing this game for the rest of your life. Also, I was playing as a way to avoid the fact that areas of my life weren't progressing in the way I wanted. I was, in the tradition of many MMOG players everywhere, playing a game that let me simulate progress since real progress was hard to come by.

But I'm someone who can't do something for long before wanting to create that thing. In particular I felt like exploring ways to do much more interesting and involved quests than EQ provided. So I went hunting on the web for a game creation system, and stumbled onto DUNG. My life hasn't been the same since.

DUNG, in case you don't know, is the system that eventually became BYOND. It was pretty amazing...with just a few lines of code I could create a multi-player game...perfect for what I had in mind. So, like so many do, I set out on an overly-ambitious project to create the MMOG of my dreams.

And like so many, I didn't quite get to that. But along the way I did get something surprising and more valuable: Long-term friends and collaborators. People I've now known for years, and hope to know and work with for many years to come. Amazingly talented people who put my meager abilities to shame.

And, thanks especially to the help of those friends, we managed to finish a couple of games that I'm proud of. They aren't the most popular on BYOND by any means (at least yet!) but they are unique and, I think, quite fun little games to play.

This is the typical BYOND story...come here for one thing, end up with much more than you bargained for. But fair warning...once you've been bitten by the BYOND bug, you may never be able to get it out of your blood. You may try to leave, but most likely you'll be back. We've all been through that, and we see it over and over.

Over time I became part of the BYOND Staff and got a chance to contribute to BYOND itself. Which brings us to BYOND Membership.

After almost a decade in existance, BYOND is moving to the next stage...we're introducing the Membership concept to help keep the system alive and to finance its development. We're trying to provide some perks for Members, such as these Member pages, but the real reason to become a Member is simply to help this system that has helped so many thousands of people.

The founders, Dan and Tom, have devoted a big chunk of their lives and much of their money to make this whole thing happen. We've all benefited from it, many of us for year after year.

Perhaps you've made good friends here? Learned how to program? Found a game that has sucked up your time and let you explore new worlds? If so, here's your chance to give a little back to the system that has given you so much. You'll get a good feeling from it, and those of us on the BYOND Staff will work to give you extra little benefits from time to time.

Add your bit to the Dream. It's worth it.