Rodney Hodge:  

g around '88 I had started messing with computers as a hobby and by 1993 computers, software, and in particular, online combat flight-sims were my biggest hobby. Went to a Houston flight-sim convention in late '93, met and became close friends with three individuals with a lot of savvy who ended up creating in 1995, the first commercial massivily multiplayer Internet flight-sim called CK/WarBirds. I worked with them beta testing on this new stuff called Internet Technology, and helped them with flight data and other historical research in my off time up until Nov 96. Thats when I decided to change careers and started working for their new company, Interactive Creations Inc., full time in Dallas. In '97 we merged with a CD-ROM company, Interactive Magic, out of North Carolina in order to have more bang for an IPO. While it did help with ensuring a healthy IPO, the management we merged with soon changed for the worse. After blowing 28 million dollars in IPO money while at the same time running what a short 12 months earlier was an estimated 80 million dollar CD-ROM business into the ground and dumping it off for paltry 3.5 mil, they decided to go "online only" and relocate the only profitable office in the company (ours), to NC so the same folks that "managed" (read killed) the CD-ROM part of the business could now manage our online division. After a lot of resistance and a few employees quitting for available local jobs, the 13 of us that were left of the original ICI crew decided we were better off on our own and quit to become founders in a new game company, Playnet Inc., in May 1999. Been working our tails off to grow this company ever since. When we opened the doors I was working in a Marketing/PR/Community Management role. Now I have dropped the Marketing and PR roles to focus more on research and production while still managing the online community. You can see what that was all about by doing a search for WWIIOL. Left that in 2006 and am now just your average Renaissance Man.