Wings. Part 2 - Flight of Fancy’s Origins

cossposted from here
Part 2 - Flight of Fancy’s Origins 

We were no longer in new, unknown territory (which is always interesting but sometimes scary). However, we understood at once that we were going in the right direction.

After a short break (when EyeToy was released), we went back to work.

The technology itself was developed within a couple of weeks by Nikolay Savichev (who, by then, was sick and tired of struggling with the image recognition that I had really wanted to implement).

Now we approached our main issue: what kind of project we should take on.

I had no doubts whatsoever. We had to fulfill the ultimate dream of mankind: flying without any mechanical devices. Arms can turn into wings; nothing else is needed. Control your wings and fly around the Earth.

No idea other than “flying just for flying” interested me then.

By the end of the year we were standing in front of the screen, waving our arms and flying over locations from our other games. I was in love with the idea. It was true magic.

In the winter of 2003 we decided that we had to take part in KRI 2004 – the Russian Game Developers Conference - to find out whether or not people would accept and appreciate our idea.

We named our project Flight of Fancy. The name reflected the essence of the project: a small company with a staff of 12 believing that they could turn everyone’s world upside down by changing the face of gaming – from something almost useless and barely understandable, for geeks and kids – to the realization of dreams, with no limits and no game controllers. In a nutshell: a Flight of Fancy.

to be continued...