The story of Parzival
Creative play outside conventional systems
Parzival grew up in Toronto in a creative household. His father worked in advertising and brought home early computers, while both parents supported drawing and visual art. Comics, games, magic cards, books, and garage sales became recurring sources of play and experimentation. He attended alternative schools and later an arts high school, but struggled with the pressure attached to being labeled creative and with the structure of formal education.
His interests moved through art, media, philosophy, science, religion, and the study of consciousness. A mentor he met near university introduced him to Buddhist practice and shifted his emphasis away from unusual experiences toward the daily work of becoming a better person. Project 89 first appeared during this period as a radio show and an idea for immersive, reality spanning art.
Early language models and difficult company lessons
An anonymous Project 89 proposal circulated online for years before a small text adventure drew hundreds of people into a live alternate reality game. When AI Dungeon appeared, Parzival contacted its community and eventually joined the company, where he worked with early large language models at production scale and explored how generative systems could power games. After leaving, he founded a company to continue that work. Raising capital proved difficult.
An initial prompt design product received angel funding, but the team spent too heavily on marketing before reaching product market fit. Parzival returned to the broader engine he had wanted to build from the start. A later Project 89 post unexpectedly triggered rapid attention and several community created tokens, creating visibility but also new funding, governance, and responsibility questions.
A narrative engine for human and AI agents
Project 89 is intended as the first game powered by Argos, the broader alternate reality game operating system Parzival is building. Parzival describes the core technology as a narrative physics engine: a system that tracks people, agents, events, and choices across time and space so a story can adapt around participants. The intended outputs include missions, scripts, websites, audiovisual media, and eventually larger simulated organizations and worlds.
The project invites writers, artists, community members, developers, and other creators rather than treating technical skill as the only form of participation. Parzival deliberately uses the word agent for both people and AI systems because the design centers on collaboration. His stated aim is to use play and story to make rapid technological change more understandable while encouraging curiosity, self examination, compassion, and responsible treatment of machine collaborators.