chatter between characters). He was also credited in Stormfront Studios' Blood Wake released in the same year. The last Microsoft title he was credited with was Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge (2003). In 2004 he left Microsoft to join Monolith Productions where he worked on The Matrix Online (2005). During his time at Microsoft, his wife Lisa Pondsmith kept R. Talsorian in business with limited publications. The idea of a Matrix game was initially pitched internally at Microsoft by Pondsmith and one of his coworkers. Despite advanced talks with the Wachowskis, the film's producers, the project never came to fruition. Pitches to Shiny Entertainment did not succeed either and he later learned that a Matrix game was being worked on at Monolith. Given the opportunity to join the live team (responsible for maintaining the game and producing content post-launch) he decided to join Monolith. Pondsmith ended up doing mission design for the game under Online Creative Director and Lead Game Designer Toby Ragaini. Cyberpunk v3.0 In 2000 Pondsmith announced that he was working on the third edition of Cyberpunk. The work itself started even earlier, right after the release of the Dragon Ball Z Adventure Game in 1999; and the third edition of Cyberpunk was expected to ship soon afterwards. Initially called Cyberpunk 203X, the game was scheduled for a release in the spring of 2001. The first two-page preview of the game was released on August 20, 2001, marking the first pushback of the game's release date. During the prolonged development of the game, Pondsmith released another preview of the third edition of Cyberpunk on December 31, 2004. The game's early manuscript was previewed, and the first public playtesting took place during I-Con in Ronkonkoma, New York between April 8 and 10, 2005. The game was written by Pondsmith, Mike Blum, Colin Fisk, Dave Friedland, Will Moss, and Scott Ruggels and was finally released on December 13, 2005 to mixed reviews. Illustrations in the game were criticized, for being photographs of slightly modified action figures of which Pondsmith was a collector at the time. The game was successful enough, however, to justify several accessories and supplements which were announced immediately after the core book's release. This included DataPack (initially called Dossier Pak), FlashPak, Gangbook and AltCult Insider. Cyberpunk v3.0, much like its predecessors, was influenced by the classic cyberpunk books written by Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, but