Dave “Inhibitor” Hughes
I came late to the MMORPG party. My introduction to the genre’ was a beta invite to City of Heroes from Cryptic Studios/NCSoft. I had never tried an MMO up until then.
I fell hopelessly in love.
And that’s when the whirlwind began. After meeting quite a few people in-game, I ran across a couple of folks doing what I thought was an awesome idea…an “in-game” internet radio station, “Paragon Radio”. With over 20 years’ experience in the radio broadcasting industry, I thought I would offer to produce a few pre-recorded “bits” for them to play on-air.
A month later, I was one of the four partners that founded the original MMORadio.
We set our goals; we said that, in five years’ time, our goal was to have broadcast live from the floor of E3 in Los Angeles, CA, and have achieved a simultaneous listener count of 1,000. One year later, we broadcast live from E3 from inside the NCSoft booth on the floor of the show, and hit just over 15,000 simultaneous listeners while there. (If I recall, we hit our peak during an interview with Alan Crosby from SOE…this was just a few months before the NGE was implemented, and there was just a bit of interest in his talk).
Needless to say, I got to know quite a bit about the professionals that design and market games during all of this, and have to say I’ve never met a nicer group of people (or a group that loved what they get to do for a living more, either).
After MMORadio fell apart due to the actions of one of the partners (Hi Radiowave!), myself and quite a few others from the station formed a new broadcast effort, World of Roleplayers radio. It was going quite well, and then Hurricane Katrina hit.
This took me away from WoR Radio, and I never fully re-integrated into it. I eventually walked away, but still miss the experience. That is what led to Lag-O-Rama.
I’ve done a bit of everything in my life, including writing a weekly humor column for newspaper (for which I won the “Best General Interest Column” award from the Mississippi Press Association), voiceover and sound production, and of course my daily morning show on 105.7FM in southwest Mississippi.
My lovely wife Chrischania (known as “Miss Kaosity” to MMORadio and WoR Radio fans) is one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met, and I’m lucky enough to be married to my best friend, even though she wishes we still played Winger’s “Seventeen” more often…it’s hot in the house.
(Gaming net radio fans will get that one, and think fondly of the word “woo-hoos”.)
You can reach me at inhibitor@lagorama.com, or just leave a comment somewhere around the site…I’ll find you. (Insert eerie “Big Brother” music here)
