About

Hello universe! I’m Michael Patrick Boisson; I was born on January 29, 1988 at 3:12AM in Tampa, Florida, USA. My online alias since ~2004 has been Shaostoul which is short for shady lost soul. As an angsty teen I went to play an online video game (I don’t recall what) back then and the full name exceeded the character limit for the username, so I had to shorten the name. I decided to google the shortened name and zero results came up, so I chose Shaostoul as my go-to username for the digital world. Today two decades later when we google Shaostoul mostly only stuff related to me comes up! You’ll find I’m weird, thoroughly enjoy playing/developing/modifying, and teaching/helping others dev/mod video games.

One of my favorite moments of my life is when I guest spoke at Emerald City Comic Con. Matt Finch, Daniel Osborne, Brant Martin, and myself spoke about The Benefits of Video Game Modding on the Individual, Communities, and Developers. Marek Rosa the CEO of Keen Software House the developers of Space Engineers gave us $1,000 so we could all go! I started modding and teaching/helping others mod Space Engineers in 2014. The others had voluntarily invested a similar amount of their time in developing Space Engineers and aiding the community. In late 2017 I got a message asking if I’d be interested in guest speaking at ECCC. On my 30th birthday I got confirmation I was going and had my guest speaker pass! The whole experience gave me tangible in person proof beyond my computer and the internet that video games impact humanity. The room was so packed with people that when someone left they weren’t allowed back in for fire safety reasons!

Throughout my life I’ve seen video games go from very simple graphics on CRT monitors to near full body VR with life-like graphics. I’ve witnessed countless times how video games help people of all ages live better healthier lives. Video games are capable of teaching anyone anything anywhere on/off Earth; obviously it’s not a perfect copy of real-life, but through game-play we can learn anything limited only by our imagination and technology. As far as I know our imaginations are limitless and the technology we have is unbelievably powerful already.

Considering how life across Earth is currently I dedicate every day of my life to humanity’s betterment. My dreams are to permanently end poverty, unite humanity, and leave Earth’s orbit at least once while alive. While I can’t directly give people money to help end their poverty I can develop a video game which helps many. Through a video game we can teach how to farm, build a sturdy home, purify water, generate electricity, and everything else while simultaneously considering the location and resources available to the individual in real-life. I personally want to become 100% off-grid self-sustaining via homesteading, because I believe it is the best way to improve our quality of life/health and help heal the planet.

In May 2016 autoimmune health issues rendered me bedridden via intestinal bleeding. A week before Christmas a complication became life-threatening forcing me to the ER with sepsis; upon returning home from the ICU on December 24, 2017 I dedicated my life to humanity’s betterment. Since then I’ve been doing everything I can think of to ensure the video game I create helps humanity. With the voluntary assistance of my freely open global community that video game is being developed faster than I ever dreamed possible!

Project Universe is a combination of all the video games I’ve encountered since I started playing video games in 1992 perpetually refined by my community (you). The game is set in humanity’s future following our first ever fleet of interstellar generation colony spacecraft on a mission to colonize/explore the galaxy. Players are crew in charge of providing for their own survival in a 0.25 acre biodome-like spaceship. Farm your own food and resources, mine asteroids, craft everything you need, share your surplus with the fleet, encounter cosmic horrors coming to consume your flesh, and generally survive our unbelievably weird universe. The story for the game will begin the day the game officially releases.

The 0.25 acre area is to my understanding the minimum amount of land required to be self-sufficient without electricity. This way we can teach players how to homestead anywhere on Earth. Distributing the land to everyone in real-life is another story entirely, but I digress. The game being fully functional offline ensures those with unreliable internet (like me) can still benefit. The game can additionally help with running our own homesteads in real-life, such as tracking information pertaining to crops being grown, inventory, water/nutrient needs, recipes, etc. The game is like the software you’d install on a Star Trek tricorder; we can plug more input/output devices into the game and get more readings.

Obviously not everyone wants to spend all day every day farming, so other game modes are included such as PvP arenas, exploring alien spacecraft, fighting off hoards of hungry xenos, and infinitely more cosmic horrors. Farming is simply a good starting point for development to help people in real-life who don’t want to play a video game, but want help to run their own farm in real-life. Fortunately making life-like farming game-play is surprisingly easy once we understand what plants/animals need, which isn’t terribly much.

Everyone is freely welcome to contribute to development however they want; a proper list of developers we’re looking for will be made available soon. 3D artists, level designers, sound designers, equipment designers, concept artists are all needed! We can only accept volunteers at this time as there’s only $165/month in funding currently.

Sincerely, thank you everyone for your support. Life’s been absurd, but y’all make it infinitely more bearable! I love y’all!