I looked through the thread and amazed at the lack of reading comprehension among the posters. It wasn’t supposed to be comprehensive or definitive or whatever I got accused of, it was a visual outline for a post I was writing. The further away it got from the main thread, the less I gave a shit. As for Stephen’s chart, he’s doing it to pass the time. He would love you to debate individual things with him as it is still a work in progress.

But honestly, I don’t see any valuable discussion in that thread, but I will answer the few of the valid points brought up.

Might and Magic – I made multiple copies because they got super crowded, would smudge and I’d have to reorgnize them. I can only assume I made a mistake with the line. I have no idea why it’s pointing from DnD and not Wizardry.

Panescape: Torment – It was developed at the same time as Baldur’s Gate II, which spent it’s early development time in upgrading the engine to a new standard. Panescape used this new engine and managed to release first because it didn’t have to spend the man hours on it.

Arena – Comes from Wizardry because lead developer said so in an interview among other games.

Finally, since when did “know a bit about” mean “full and comprehensive knowledge and understanding on a topic?” To answer your question, I ran out of fucking space on the page if you didn’t notice. I said it was down and dirty, about 10-15 minutes of time, also I blatantly admitted that I knew only really knew Sierra and LucasArts. Not really a big gocha.