However, its development's seeds were planted in an unlikely place -- a high school library. At ExileCon 2019, Grinding Gear Games founders Chris Wilson, Jonathan Rogers, Erik Olofsson and author Nick Kolan sat down to discuss the heritage and continuing success of POE Currency from its beginnings.
When discussing the inspiration for the game, Managing Director Chris Wilson remembered a time where he learned coding via Microsoft QuickBASIC on the library computers. Since Wilson describes it, this led to a fateful meeting with now-Technical Manager Jonathan Rogers, who shared his passion for coding.The love eventually transformed into a desire to launch a match after university, and in 2006, work began on what was soon to become Path of Exile. The foundation principle, Wilson explained, was that the notion that,"everyone was terrible at action RPGs, and [they] could earn a good one." Regardless of this, Wilson acknowledged pervasive feelings of being knowledgeable and experienced when compared to giants of the business.
This is at a industry landscape, and the way Jonathan considers that they lived the tougher instances of development. "We were at the perfect time, the ideal location and with the ideal product," he explained. While their original timeframe and budgets were blown out in development, and Jonathan explained the growth period as"demanding" and"very bad", the team continued to work, motivated by their love for its ARPG genre, and also their desire to see it increase.
In 2019, in case a programmer with no experience or knowledge were to come to Wilson and tell him they were creating an internet game designed to compete with big companies like Blizzard,"he would tell them to get a real job," he said.Eventually, the pair teamed up with artist and Creative Director Erik Olofsson, who had met Wilson on an online forum, to make Cheap POE orbs vision and direction. From 2006 to its release in 2013, the team struggled, but they were motivated by a desire to fill a gap in the industry.
