Flying Buffalo

Flying Buffalo Incorporated (FBI) is a Scottsdale, Arizona game company that publishes role playing games, card games, gaming materials, and runs Play-by-mail games.

History

In 1970 Rick Loomis invented a game called Nuclear Destruction, a play-by-mail game, for which he moderated multiplayer games. He soon had more than 200 players in multiple games, and asked fellow soldier Steve MacGregor to write a computer program to moderate the games; they began renting time on a computer near Fort Shafter, using the name Flying Buffalo devised by Loomis. After leaving the military in 1972, Loomis and MacGregor incorporated their PBM company as Flying Buffalo, Inc., or FBI. Loomis and MacGregor pooled their savings to purchase a Raytheon 704 minicomputer to run PBM turns. Loomis acquired Nuclear War and began publishing it in 1972, soon becoming one of Flying Buffalo's best sellers.Nuclear Destruction is widely considered to be the first commercial play-by-mail (PBM) game. In 1976 the company started running a space exploration/conquest PBM game titled Starweb.