David Ladyman



David Ladyman is an editor at Incan Monkey God Studios.

Work at CIG
He was present at GDC Online 2012 when the game announcement was made. He didn't pay much attention at the time but a month or two later he checked the stretch goal promises for the crowdfunding which included a subscriber magazine. On Wednesday night December 20th he received an email from Chris Roberts asking if he could make this happen by the end of Friday, which he did, and kept doing from then on out.

He is responsible for putting together the monthly Jump Point for subscribers, plus the brochures for each new ship premiere. He is also responsible for finding and managing freelance authors of the stories that appear in Spectrum Dispatch and Jump Point. And he edits whatever other text that arrives on his desk. He retired as editor of Jump Point with Ben Lesnick as his replacement since issue 06.06.

He also designed a board game for the economy to test it out in broad strokes before putting in all the hours of programming each individual element.

Other Works
He has a degree in mathematics and linguistics. He was asked to playtest a Metagaming boardgame at a local game center. That turned into more playtesting, especially for games that Steve Jackson was designing for Metagaming.

In the early 1980's, he had started helping run game conventions.

Within about five years, he was on staff with Steve Jackson Games, culminating in being system guru for both GURPS and Car Wars, where he edited the first few issues of Autoduel Quarterly, a Car Wars magazine set in the fictional future of that game world. While with SJG, he worked with Warren Spector, Steve Beeman, Jeff George, Denis Loubet and others — all people who worked at Origin as well.

After leaving SJG, he spent a couple of years freelance editing and developing for FASA (Battletech basic games and scenarios, Renegade Legion, a little Shadowrun) and TSR (AD&D scenarios).

He was hired by Origin Systems in 1991, just after Ultima VI and Wing Commander I were released. He was Publications Manager, his team created the manuals and guide books for every product Origin made, including all the remaining Wing Commanders, over the next six years. Other folks would write it while he made sure it got edited, layed out, would go in the game box by the time the box is ready to ship. That includes Ultima VII – IX (some of this after he left Origin, as a contractor), all of the Speech Packs, Secret Missions and other add-ons, all the various console titles, Strike Commander, WC Armada, and so forth. He left Origin in 1997.

He worked on the Wing Commander movie at Digital Anvil for the official authorized wing commander confederation handbook.

In 1997, Origin Systems which had been acquired by Electronic Arts was trying to trim the headcount and was moving the documentation to California. The team decided to leave Origin together rather than get split up, which is how the Incan Monkey God Studios was formed, which is now a partner of Cloud Imperium Games.

Trivia

 * He is not very good at combat sims, so he is most interested in the social interaction and storyline development as the game develops.