Disobey: Behind the Wordflay

Disobey didn't spring from nothing... its been around for many, many years, whether in our head, our previous ventures, or whispers of electronic paper sifting through the POTS into a musty iniquity BBS. Herein, we'll wax poetic about the past. Dry your eyes, dearest reader: there be no sadness or regrets.

Early History

In 1989, we were called Evil Ey Games. The "Ey" was an error made during typing, and was found later during an edit. For some reason, the spelling stuck (hey, we were young - we thought it was hip and cool to spell things all uber-like). At the time, we created role playing games... from a world of oversexed creations (Crossbreed and Crossbreed 15k), to a world so realistic that we wanted the characters to be mirror images of the player... their death meant actual player death (called Tabernacle, it was around this time there was that big D&D sewer scare - probably the chief "ha!" contributor to this idea).

After working out some ideas, we published "Se Mag". Intended to be the ultimate resource on gaming (thus the name - though some didn't realize it was "games" backwards), the first issue was 32 pages, had a limited run of about a hundred, and probably sold only one copy. We still have some of those left (along with about 200 of the black and white freebies we had made to build interest)... they are artifacts of what we tried to create long ago. One of these days, we'll scan 'em in so you can chuckle with us.

The second issue of Se Mag was never released. Evil Ey Games turned into Evil Ey Productions, game lines were scrapped, and we focused on... nothing. These were the times where we talked about what we could do, and how we had all these great ideas running circles in our heads. They just never made their way out... we don't know why.

The First Rebirth

Years passed. Nothing happened. We retooled a number of times, but still nothing. And then, Devil's Tale appeared. It was the newest reincarnation of a vehicle to drive our ideas. The new name and mission spurred us on, and we worked nonstop for numerous weeks, getting fine tuned and voting on the projects we thought were most going to benefit us.

Devil's Tale was divided into four main sections, the names and purposes of which we have largely forgotten (one "obscurity", one "deviance"). Each had a project that would demonstrate its purpose and be enjoyed by a totally different group of people. That was very important to us... to alienate no one.

We had wrong directions and we did stupid things. But hey, everyone has their skeleton. The major problem with what we had established was, simply, no immediate gratification. All our beloved projects would take months, perhaps years, to complete. We knew we would have ideas during the interim, and we needed something to let them out. Back then, being consumed seemed like a bad idea; nowadays we relish it, and we're quite unable to realize when chew is more than bite.

The Earliest Creation

Thus was born Devil Shat, a name derived from the idea that even the Devil had things he wanted to get rid of (Devil Shat, Devil's Tale, come on, you can make the leap). This was our "release": something to put anything, no matter how trivial, into. Fun fact: it was actually first called "Devil Shit", but getting kicked off AOL, our only provider at the time, for vulgarity was not in our game plan.

Regardless, we got kicked off AOL. You can read the full story here. That was a blow. We had never needed a website (it was always "in the works") because we had plenty of options getting the word out on AOL (email lists, chat rooms, forums, etc.). But, with the loss of our distribution medium, we needed more retooling.

We took another hard look at who we were, what we were doing, and where we wanted to go. We had been unhappy about the name Devil's Tale for awhile (it had originally been a comic book subsidiary under Evil Ey Productions). We knew it had to change. Only we couldn't think of anything decent.

Solidification

Then, "no". It was handy, described what we did (in a way), and was simple. It wouldn't work as a company name though, so we backed up: to say "no" to someone was to... disobey. Suddenly, the fetus of what you see here was born, and the only DNA transferred was Devil Shat. We already had thousands of subscribers who seemed happy with what we saying... what better way to announce the change? Of course, as we reread those old screeds nowaday, our sides quiver with mirth at our bravado.

In what we hoped would be a monumental day, Disobey.com became operational on August 3rd, 1997. Since then, we've broken a kazillion hits, had numerous kudos from major players (see our quite outdated press pit), developed popular software and oodles of content, written real books, and too much more. We've accomplished more than we've imagined, but everything we expected.