A browser-based world of gangs, hustle and street life.

What Urban was

Urban was a text-based multiplayer online RPG, played in the browser, set in an extensive community of players from all over the world.

Players could come together and work on common goals, then just as quickly turn against each other for their own profit. A thriving community of all ages, in an environment built to bring out the urban side of life. Living on the streets, you had to earn your way into a cruel world full of gangs, thugs and much worse.

The only way to make a difference is to become one of them: a drug-selling, fast-trading, car-racing, ruthless killer. Make a name for yourself. Join a gang or start your own. Make billions, get stronger and more feared than the rest, and earn their respect. It may be too late to save the city, but now you have the chance to carve out an empire of your own from the urban decay.

The story behind it

Urban was the first thing I ever built.

I hand-coded it in high school as a text-based online RPG, teaching myself to program as the game grew, while all of the art and design came from Rob, my collaborator in the UK.

It found a real audience. Urban was named MPOGD Game of the Month in May 2006. In its own small way it was an early social game, a persistent world of alliances, rivalries and reputation, years before "social games" were a category. Unlike Mafia Life and the wave that came after, Urban never made the jump to Facebook. It just lived on the open web, and for nine years that was enough.