Gabriel Marcum (executive producer / creative director):

The seeds for The Theater have a variety of sources, with the original idea for the world stretching back to my time in middle school. There was this world I wanted to build, a world of oppressive weight and the human spirits reaction to it. This dystopian fantasy is not an original setting, my love for the work of George Orwell and the history of World War 2 are direct sources of inspiration. 

I'll admit, I am not the most adamant reader. I spent way too much time watching movies and playing video games. What bothered me the most though about this medium was, well a weightlessness. There was a lot of spectacle in those FPS games and action beat em' ups, but they spent very little time on substance. In the end, there was still a sense of detachment. I wanted an experience that had grit to it, that I the player could control and be apart of. I wanted something new, a bold something.

By fifteen, I began writing ideas for a RTS/FPS combo, The Theater.

building dreams

Dylan Panazzi (lead game developer/lead game designer):

When Gabriel first introduced his idea for a wildly ambitious, MMO first person shooter / real time strategy  game that highlights the horrors of war, I thought he was crazy. I thought that there was no way that a couple college kids could create something of this scope. 

But the idea was amazing. I was never someone who played first person shooters growing up, so I never really understood the appeal to these sort of games, but I found with The Theater that these games can tell stories. Stories that pull on peoples heart strings. Stories that show just how evil and cruel war can be. 

So I told him "let's do it!" I used my years of experience in game design and development to start working on  a prototype for The Theater. I am learning more about what I can do for this game, and I realized something. With help and time, it may not be as ambitious as I thought.

Only up from here