Taldren, Inc.

From official website:

Erik Bethke, Zachary Drummond and Sean Dumas unofficially founded Taldren back in 1996. The three of us met at a neat game development company named the Dreamer’s Guild in 1995. The Dreamer’s Guild was a fantastic opportunity to learn our craft and meet some really terrific people. Sadly the Dreamer’s Guild is no longer in business. While at the Dreamer’s Guild we worked on “I Have No Mouth and Must Scream”, an adventure game based on Harlan Ellison’s short story. No Mouth was critically acclaimed by the press and achieved Adventure Game of the Year from Computer Gaming World, later winning the Computer Game Developers' Association's award for the year's "Best Conversion from Linear Media". We also worked on several client/server games to be published on MPGNet. These included a baseball league simulation, a cyberpunk FPS/strategy game and a user extensible fantasy RPG based on the Mud Object-Oriented (MOO) technology of Pavel Curtis.

The three of us left the Dreamer’s Guild in search of an opportunity to learn more software engineering skills, AI techniques and someplace to develop our own distributed, user-extensible RPG. We chose to work with Interna, LTD. who impressed us with the quality of their software engineers, background in AI and their publisher relationships. While at Interna we worked on several unreleased titles and developed Caesars Palace W95 for Interplay. Delivering Caesars Palace right on time opened up a door at Interplay for us.

In late 1997 we left Interna and performed contract work for about a half year while developing a 3D engine and a fleshing out a distributed server design.

In the summer of 1998 we joined the 14 Degrees East division of Interplay to run the Starfleet Command project. Starfleet Command has been and continues to be the most wonderful game project we have had the privilege to work on. We really poured our heart and soul into nailing the game mechanics and user interface in the port from Star Fleet Battles to Starfleet Command. We loved all the races, all the missions and all the detailed tactical combat of our naval starship simulator. We then started working with the fans through the message boards and with the beta testers. We really learned so much from working with real people that I feel we really have a competitive advantage in all aspects of working with the fans. We really do appreciate you!

After the release of Starfleet Command we began a discussion with Interplay that resulted in Taldren receiving a multi-game contract with Interplay's Fourteen Degrees East division, and the whole Starfleet Command team became the foundation of Taldren.

The future looks bright. All we can say at the moment is that Starfleet Command team is intact and has actually grown a bit and that we are very much hard at work on... well, have a look at the News page for more information.

Unfortunately the above statement was shortsighted, since Taldren closed its doors in 2004.