Artist Spotlight

Why I Built
Frozen Cherry
Hockey

Growing up in Canada in the 1980s, it was almost inevitable that I would fall in love with hockey. I remember days at the local rink in the crisp winter air, and nights gathered around the television with family to watch the great players of the era. My dad played in high school, and so did my uncle. Hockey was, without a doubt, the sport we looked forward to every autumn.

By the early 1990s, video games were growing in popularity, and the emerging craft of interactive storytelling captured my imagination. My first computer was a Christmas gift from my parents in 1994. A few months later, a friend from school introduced me to programming in QBASIC.

The internet came to my town in 1995. With a copy of Netscape Navigator 1.0, a whole world of information was accessible in a few keystrokes. It wasn't long before I learned HTML and built my first webpage. That coincided with learning C, and then JavaScript in 1997. I also spent a lot of time drawing with JASC Paint Shop Pro and 3D modeling in Caligari TrueSpace, developing the skills that I would use throughout my career.

In August of 1999, I was looking for an online hockey management game with fictional teams, fictional players, progression across multiple seasons, and a simulator to manage the game world automatically. A fictional world was important because games based on real-life teams and players give an unfair advantage to people who follow those leagues. Season-to-season progression mattered because roster decisions should play out across the natural ebbs and flows of sport. A server-based simulator was important because when a game master has to update a website manually from an offline simulator, it is a lot of work to maintain and naturally limits the size of the game world, usually to just a single league.

I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I decided to build it.

The first code I wrote was for the simulator. The game started with 16 teams and quickly grew to 36 teams in three leagues. A small community formed in our little corner of the internet. We would roleplay as team managers on the official forum, and weave creative narratives that we all enjoyed. I remember getting to know a few of the guys, chatting about hockey, computers, music, school, and life. I'll never forget those days.

And then I went to university. I could only work on the hockey game in my spare time. In the years that followed, work and life happened. I continued to hone my skills in design and programming, and eventually found myself behind the wheel of a semi truck, hauling loads across the beautiful American countryside.

When you drive for a living, you have a lot of time to think. Naturally, I thought a lot about Frozen Cherry Hockey. I wrote over 200 pages of notes, detailing everything from information hierarchy and user experience to game systems, architecture, the new simulator, and the philosophy of what Frozen Cherry is and is not. That led to the Frozen Cherry Hockey you see today.

Thank you for being a part of Frozen Cherry Hockey. Your support means a lot to me.