Epic Spoon

Paul Zero

Sony Online Entertainment has announced this week that it purchased PoxNora from Octopi, LLC.  This news is all over gaming blogs and gaming news, but I wanted to write a little about it because I’m a former employee.  I worked on the original PoxNora server team.

I always liked the idea of PoxNora, which made it fun to work on.  And writing game logic is always a blast.  During my time there, I also wrote a lot of in-game text because, as a former Magic: the Gathering player, I liked clarity in the rules.  Interesting note: another Octopi developer, Art Griffiths, once told me that the name PoxNora came from the words pox (“curse”) and nora (“honor”), which he interpreted to mean Cursed Honor.  In-game, we used the word “pox” to refer to the set of runes (cards) and “nora” is mana.

Sony Online Entertainment buying Octopi is certainly a big step for the employees there.  It’s not the first time Octopi has been sold to a larger company, but this puts a serious name on it.  Hopefully this also means PoxNora will be around for a long time.  I mean, even though I don’t play the game, and even though they took most of the names out of the credits, it still feels good to have something I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code for, still going.

So rock on, Octopi.  Or SOE Tucson.  Or whatever you call it.