Irreverent Labs was created in 1996 in support of text-based games that were social-oriented. Online games back then are different than today because instead of selecting an appearance, outfit, hair style, and many other features it had to be written out in text form. Many people had a difficulty not only coming up with an appearance, but also on certain games they needed a background description that could be anywhere from a paragraph to the equivalent of a chapter in a novel. While being a player himself, Greg Brown used his artistic and unique approach in creating several of his character's descriptions and was asked by several players to create them a similar detailed character. Since he was playing on several games at the same time, he created an online bulletin board to where players could post requests and read his work.
After quite a few characters, and many references from people playing other games as well, Irreverent Lab's boards became a brainstorm and artistic/writer drop for character creation. After enlisting several other helping hands out of the pool, Irreverent Labs was approached by a mud service to create a game for them. Thus Irreverent Lab's first game creation was born, VegasDreams MUX. It was a game focused on White-Wolf's World of Darkness series and set in the 1970's of Las Vegas. VegasDreams was unique because it was one of the beta-testers for the telnet client Pueblo and helped get normally text-based games that were black and white to be of ANSI color and .GIF embedded. So the end result was one of the first realms that was coated in magentas and cyan, but also supported by .GIFs with their respective text description. VegasDreams eventually faded after games like Ultima Online, Meridian 59, and Diablo started to take the very few online personalities to their games.
Irreverent Labs resurfaced in 2004 when it approached White-Wolf with an online MMORPG version of the popular game series, Vampire: The Masquerade. The world that was created was a social-based game that was similar to the MUSHes of old. Unfortunately at that time, they were too wrapped up in other contracts with Wizards of the Coast. In 2005, Irreverent Labs also presented a solution to Sony Online Entertainment that would enable their popular and aging game, Everquest, to be a solo and stand-alone product so players of old could relive their first love from start to finish. However, again SOE had already initiated plans to create an original server online and let people play the same way, but online only.
Currently Irreverent Labs is working on finalizing another online RPG solution that is mainly social-based, but includes the popular online mechanics such as crafting, combat, and guilds. Irreverent Labs as approached the authorities of the popular science fiction novel, Dune. Irreverent Labs is offering their MMO RPG design, as well as have adapted it to meet the Dune Universe. The RPG deal has not been completed and Irreverent Labs is working with them to try to be an integral part of the design and roll out of a unique and epic game design.
