My name is Ted Peterson, CEO of OnceLost Games and Creative Director for the game we’ve been working on, The Wayward Realms. I first met Julian LeFay in 1992 when I came in, barely out of college, to interview for a junior writer position at Bethesda Softworks. I had never been in a game development company before, and when I left Julian said, “If you get the job, you have to lose the suit.”
Julian himself struck an eccentric figure. Very tall and slender, scruffily handsome with a default scowl, and the most magnificent pompadour mullet in history. He was born in Europe and retained an accent which many people thought made him sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger, a comparison that always irked him, as Austria and Denmark where Julian is from are nowhere near each other.
Julian had been at Bethesda for several years before we met. He was a hotshot hacker style programmer with no formal education when he was recruited and brought over to work on PC and Amiga games, mostly of the genres of sports, action, and adventure. But he loved pen and paper roleplaying games and the game that eventually became the Elder Scrolls 1: Arena was his dream project. Thirty years after its release, the two of us spoke on its anniversary at the Game Developers Conference.
We worked together for years and released at least a dozen games together. You were usually working on two to three games of wildly different genres at a time. Even when we weren’t in the office, we weren’t apparently sick of each other. We would go to his place, playing role-playing games all night long. We were beta testing the game we became best known for, The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall, when I became burned out enough that I took a job offer that sent me to the West Coast.
Julian visited me fairly frequently in California. I obviously never understood anything about programming, but he was also well-versed in history, literature, and movies. I still have his paperback of Herodotus, which I told him to sign as if he were the ancient historian gifting it to me as a prized pupil. When I moved back to the east coast, we saw each other more frequently since he was only eight hours away.
The seed that began Wayward Realms was an interview Julian did several years ago, where he was reflecting on the first Elder Scrolls games and given decades of experience since he made them and the tools available to developers nowadays, how he would tackle the challenges, whilst still keeping the same philosophy of creating a huge, immersive world. Afterwards, we talked about what I would do with design and narrative given my own years of experience on other games and other media like TV, and we decided to give it a shot together.
I could talk stories about our friendship and how we’ve worked together recently with our team on Wayward Realms as creative and technical directors, but I need to come to the point of this. Julian has been courageously battling cancer. His doctors have informed us that his time with us is limited, and we are preparing to say goodbye to a true legend of the industry.
Even in the face of this challenge, Julian’s dedication to The Wayward Realms and to all of you, our community, has never wavered. He has worked tirelessly to ensure that his vision for “The Grand RPG” will live on, but now Julian must step away from OnceLost Games for his health and to live his final moments surrounded by his loved ones.
Julian has complete faith in the ability of the team to bring the game he has envisioned to life for this incredible community. Anticipating this possibility, Julian has documented his vision and concepts well, ensuring the team is left with the resources needed to complete the game. The full game, beyond the Early Access build.
During this difficult time, we invite you to share your thoughts, prayers, well wishes, memories, or the impact Julian’s life and work have had on you. Your words of support mean more than you know, not just to Julian, but to all of us who have been privileged to work alongside him.
Obviously, the team has already had a chance to say goodbye and give their individual messages, and I sat by his hospital bed, reading them to him. In that case, I was reading them out loud and Julian was giving me dictation to reply back, which is rather hard to do through my tears.
To me, this is deeply personal, and I regret every second I didn’t spend with one of the most charming, smart, funny, and interesting people I’ve ever met. It’s also a spur to action for me: I will not let down his legacy.
That said, a final quote from the eminently quotable Julian LeFay. He said this at our last team meeting, and I believe it represents him and his beliefs well.
“It is personal. And if it’s not personal, then you’re just doing work for hire and you’ll never have the motivation to accomplish a significant goal.”
