I'm Michael Dawson, Software Engineer and the founder of Galahad Creative. I'm not a big fan of writing about myself so I'll try to stick to just the essentials.
My journey started in 2008 after obsessively playing PBBG's (Persistant browser-based games) - namely the ol' classics such as Torn, GangsterRPG, Boredest and SoulRaider.
I decided to dive into game development and soon stumbled upon a PHP game engine called 'MCCodes,' popular for powering numerous games at that time. I ended up making a game and selling it for 50 quid worth of Microsoft Points. Not too shabby, eh?
Following that experience, I ventured into a diverse array of software projects. My journey took me through everything from game development to fitness tracking apps, and even cryptocurrency faucets. While at university, I dedicated my dissertation to developing a search engine, complete with a unique algorithm I designed myself.
Back in 2017, I dove into creating SimpleMMO, a game that filled a void in the mobile PBBG (Persistent Browser-Based Game) scene. It started as a fun project to get to grips with the Laravel framework and, honestly, the initial code was extremely rough (some of it's still in there). After a casual launch on the Google Play Store, the game unexpectedly took off, getting 50 downloads in a few days. Over time, I kept adding to it in my spare time, purely as a hobby.
Then 2020 hit, and COVID-19 changed everything. Gaming boomed during the lockdowns, and SimpleMMO was no exception, with downloads jumping from 60 to 6,000 a day. This sudden surge pushed me to upscale the game’s server resources massively. The growth was so immense that I left my regular job to focus on my company, Galahad Creative Limited. SimpleMMO has since hit over a million players, a huge achievement despite the game's shaky codebase. There have been a lot of challenges, for sure, but I'll dive more into that in an upcoming blog post.
Galahad Creative was founded with one guiding principle: simplicity. This philosophy is the heartbeat of our operation. Whenever we develop something, our top priority is ensuring it's straightforward, stylish, and a breeze to use.
Since Galahad Creative's inception, we've evolved from a solo venture to a dynamic team. We diversified into various software sectors beyond just gaming. In early 2023, we unveiled 'Smashr,' a cutting-edge issue tracking tool. It's designed for businesses to share their issue trackers with the public. Wrapping up the year, we launched 'IdleMMO.' The game has already surpassed our initial projections and gaining impressive momentum.
Besides my software development work, I've got a real interest in Machine Learning. It's not just about the AI stuff I learned at uni - I've gone deeper into it on my own time. I've been tinkering with neural networks, mostly using Python, and I've also been playing around with various AI models to see what they can do.
When I'm not knee-deep in code, I like to keep active in the gym and occasionally torture myself by following my local football club, Sunderland AFC.
While setting up my username on a gaming platform, I found that 'Galahad I' all the way up to 'Galahad VI' were already claimed. In a moment of laziness, I chose not to follow the sequence and jumped ahead to 'Galahad XVI'. Since then, 'Galahad XVI' has been used as all of my pseudonyms.