Synthetic Reality is a free multi-player game developer in the state of California. It is headed by Dan Samuel.
All of their games are only for Windows, and most likely in perpetual beta. Some of the games they have created are Well of Souls, a fantasy/science fiction role-playing game; Arcadia, which consists of a lot of smaller games - Empyrion, synSpace, synPool, Collaboration, and SynJet; Warpath, a science fiction strategy game with two versions, taking place in space; NetSpades, an online game of spades, and the MIX game server, which allows you to play most Synthetic Reality games online with other people. Rocket Club is a work in progress.
Warpath and NetSpades were written in C, using the Microsoft Quick C for Windows compiler. Dan then switched to Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2b for all his new projects, including Well of Souls and Arcadia.
At first, Dan worked as a programmer for Mpath Interactive, now HearMe Incorporated (stock symbol HEAR), but he wanted to do games instead. He met Ken Winograd, and they became pen pals. Ken encouraged Dan to create a game, and out of that came Warpath. He called for beta testers, and one of the first was Dave Wolverton, who gave Dan a lot of good ideas. Dan met a bunch of other people after this, and Synthetic Reality was born. People started sending Dan a lot of letters because of his game, and oftentimes they had checks included.
Now Dan works for There (at www.there.com), allegedly the world's first metaverse.