By JACOB TERRY
When Claire Mustard told her then 9-year-old son Donald she liked trees, she didn?t expect him to make her one. But on her birthday she received exactly that ? a 10-foot tree constructed entirely out of paper.
?I don?t even know how he made it,? Claire said. ?To him, nothing was ever impossible.?
Nineteen years later, Donald still constructs trees, landscapes and worlds ? only digitally.
Today, Donald, 28, and his younger brother Geremy, 26, fulfill their childhood dreams with the release nationwide of ?Advent Rising,? ? an Xbox sci-fi action video game they worked on for five years but dreamed of for much longer.
Meeting at a Japanese restaurant in mid-April to discuss the game, the brothers did not fit the stereotype of a successful entrepreneur. Donald?s spiked hair, jeans and T-shirt reflected his animated mannerisms. Geremy?s casual dress, neatly combed hair and soft-spoken demeanor did not suggest a computer programmer.
With 800 bugs still to work through, the brothers should be stressed. Instead, they reflect on the childhood beginnings of their game.
Donald, an artist and animator, first imagined the concept of ?Advent Rising? at age 15 while drawing comics in his spare time. The plot, involving humans discovering their god-like potential and conquering other alien species, came to him while he pondered Latter-day Saint doctrine.
?I?d be staring at the ceiling thinking,? Donald said. ?That was the gestation of it. It was something I thought about for many, many years.?
While Donald imagined aliens on other worlds, Jeremy explored the world of computers. Donald and Geremy would be up all hours of the night ? Donald with his drawings and Geremy with his programming.
?They were just doing that constantly,? Claire said. ?But we?ve never been the kind of parents that say, ?No, you can?t.??
Though the Mustards did not have a computer, Geremy taught himself to program. By the end of high school he had won several national programming competitions.
?He?d get these old computer manuals from ward members,? Claire said. ?I?d say, ?What do you want for Christmas?? to this 15 year old, and he?d say ?A computer manual.??
The brothers always wanted to work together, but they originally planned to start a special effects company. The plan changed in 1997, when two groundbreaking video games, Final Fantasy VII and Riven, were released showing video games? narrative potential.
During his senior year at BYU, Donald worked on a short animation film titled ?Gestures? as he laid the groundwork for ?Advent Rising.? Working under BYU Professor Brent Adams, Donald learned to lead a team and organize a project.
?He didn?t need any handholding,? Adams said. ?Donald is a doer.?
Soon after graduating, Donald took a job in Orem at Glyphx, a small graphic arts company. Glyphx?s President, Todd Sheridan, had received his first contract to do a short animated film when Donald came and convinced him to make video games instead.
?A lot of people warned us when we started that this is too ambitious — ?It?s impossible; you?ll fail; you?ll kill yourself,?? Geremy said. ?We just said, ?No, you?re wrong. We can do this; this is no different than anything else in our lives. We?ve always been kind of crazy.??
Sheridan was the first person Donald and Geremy persuaded to invest in their game and their abilities, but certainly not the last.
In order to flesh out the story of ?Advent Rising,? the brothers wanted sci-fi author Orson Scott Card to write the script. Card agreed to meet with the brothers for a half an hour. Three hours later, Card signed on.
With the same enthusiasm that persuaded Card, the brothers pitched their game to publishers, who were reluctant to invest in a first time developer. Ten months later, they had convinced publisher Majesco to back them with $4.5 million.
?I would just sit there and show them here?s our awesome idea,? Donald said. ?Stick with us and we?ll make you rich.?
With an idea, a writer and funding, the only thing left to invest was time. In the five years they have worked on ?Advent Rising,? thousands of hours have been put into it, many of them in overtime.
?A year ago, I?d been working at Glyphx for four years,? Geremy said. ?I figured out my time and I?d worked seven man-years at the company. So basically almost double time. And we won?t do it again.?
They may try to cut back the hours, but the dreams are still there.
?We will move quickly onto the next project,? Geremy said ?We have other ideas. We have ideas set for the next ten years.?
