Michael McCarthy is Gala Games' co-founder. He is the founder of Applied Cinematics LLC and was a creative director at Zynga. ^[1][2]

Education

Michael McCarthy attended Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, United States, from 1993–97, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) in Computer Animation. ^[3][4]

Career

Michael McCarthy is an experienced director who has worked in the gaming industry for 20 years. He is known for his role-playing games (RPGs), including Arcanum, Fable 2, and Fallout 2. Arcanum won the Editors' Choice Award from both IGN and GameZone. McCarthy spent six years (2009–2015) as Zynga’s Director of Creative, co-founded by Eric Schiermeyer. Eric Schiermeyer, alongside Wright Thurston, later teamed up with him to create the Gala Games. The team’s most prominent release is Mirandus, with Michael McCarthy serving as lead developer. Speaking about Mirandus, McCarthy said: ^[3][5][6][7]

"In planning Mirandus, we have looked back at all the games that presented us with so much wonder when we were younger. He continued by saying, "Technology is now reaching a point where it is possible to give players immutable ownership of shards of a world. In Mirandus, you can be anyone you would like to be, venturing out into a rich world to create your own stories and adventures. Land ownership in Mirandus will be truly powerful, especially for the top-tier players. Land deeds will come with titles and the right to rule the land as the holder sees fit."

Eric Schiermeyer commented on the creation of Mirandus, saying: ^[7]

"Our goal in establishing this broad-based ecosystem is to create a limitless sandbox of creativity and adventure for our players. We want a player to be able to purchase a piece of land, build a farm or keep on that land, and be able to earn rewards through their interaction with the game world. We want to decentralize the billions spent in-game to share the rewards amongst all participants in the ecosystem."

One of the options in Mirandus is that players can set out into the wilderness to try their fortunes against the monsters of the deep woods and dungeons. McCarthy has indicated that he hopes to continue to excite, inspire, and generate a sense of wonder for game players. ^[3][7]

Gala Games

Gala Games creates a network (the Gala network) of player-owned game assets to enable real ownership of in-game assets, which facilitates participation and creates a fluid economy. It uses Ethereum's ERC-1155 standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to allow players to fully own their game assets. ^[7]