Schilling had long been a hard-core gamer when he led the Red Sox past New York with his bloody sock. In the early 1980s, his best friend’s father — who was also Schilling’s youth baseball coach — brought home an Apple II from his job as an engineer. Young Curt was soon hooked on “Wizardry,’’ an early role-playing video game. The graphics felt cutting-edge at the time; Schilling was stunned the other day when he looked up some old screen shots and realized how primitive they look now.
Always a fan of books like “The Lord of the Rings’’ series, Schilling kept inhabiting the world of role-playing video games throughout a 20-year major league career in which he won three World Series championships. Fascinated by technology, he owned a laptop in the early 1990s “before they were truly portable.’’
“I wasn’t really a big car or jewelry guy,’’ Schilling said. “I always had the best laptop you can have.’’
By the late 1990s, he was toying with the idea of launching a production company.
Schilling got serious about it several years later. He recalled feeling disappointed by “EverQuest II,’’ the sequel released in late 2004 to the popular multiplayer online game. Irked by certain elements, he’d wonder: “What were they thinking?’’
While playing online with several developers from Sony, which produced the game, Schilling would muse about hatching his own startup.
“You do that, I’ll definitely join your company,’’ they’d tell him.
They didn’t quite believe him when he later actually offered them jobs. In October 2006, the business launched with 11 employees. Today, 38 Studios — as in his uniform number — has nearly 400.
