RufausShinra

Known in Second Life as Rufus Lykin.

A GM and founder of FFVII:CE, along with Valerick Goodliffe. A long-time GM, Rufaus was the Executive Officer (XO) of the Midgar Guild Alliance (MGA) on AOL from 1997-2005 and also held other positions on the council over time. His main role was to serve as backup to the Speaker of the forum, manage dice audits, settle disputes, create and alter rules and guidelines as needed, assemble and disseminate the monthly newsletter via e-mail to all members of the forum and participate in Council meetings. He played dual roles as Rufus Shinra and Cid Highwind. He also ran several guilds over the years, including The New Highwind Crew, Makoro Empire Zenith and The Shinra Company.

When MGA was liquidated, he moved over to it's successor, Return to the Planet (RTP), where he continued his duties from MGA.

In 2007, Rufus made the move to Second Life and became a GM at SLMidgar, a position he held until September of 2014. In this role, he helped manage the sim's story progression, ran events, assisted with Materia fusions, managed the GM Team as it became smaller, had a hand in sim finances for a brief time and retooled the Council by adding a tiered system of progression, rather than just having every new member be a full GM. He oversaw the rebuilding of the sim four times by multiple different builders and ran multiple factions over the years, including the Shinra MP's, Turks and Executive/Citizen groups.

After leaving SLMidgar, Rufus was joined by a team of other former GM's to create Lifestream, a full-size, privately funded sim that opened in 2016 and closed within a year due to lack of dedicated players and unsustainable funding.

The decision to try opening another FFVII sim was spurred by the excitement surrounding the FFVII:Remake in early 2020.

Rufus enjoys RP, nerd conventions, pizza, PUBG, Stardew Valley and FFVII, of course.