World Exclusive: Industry veteran John Romero to venture forth into the MMO world with latest project
In summer 2005, John Romero’s stint at Midway came to an end. The ex-id Software and ex-Ion Storm staffer had joined the company in 2003 as Creative Director and was involved with Gauntlet project Seven Sorrows. Shortly after his departure, he stated he was “looking at lots of exciting developments” but added that it’d be a few months before he announced his next destination.
Well, the sand’s finally stopped falling through the hourglass and we can now exclusively reveal that the industry legend is at a new company and working on a massively multiplayer online project.
“I started looking at what I was going to do next, so I looked around on the net and I saw there was an opportunity for an MMO, there was a person starting an MMO so I contacted him,” Romero told us recently, explaining where his involvement with the project began. “We talked for hours on the phone, we had a lot of common interests and ideas about this title and so basically this guy was really excited, brought me on as a co-founder of the company and I’ve been here for almost four months now.”
Strangely, Romero isn’t willing to divulge the name of the company, nor is he slapping a name on the MMO title. “I can’t really say too much… this is [a] complete secret, stealth company”, he said, adding cryptically that “This is not a typical games company and we’re not making typical games”.
According to Romero (who says he loves MMOs), the game he’s working on is “very different from any other MMO for some special reasons.” Precisely what those special reasons are, he wouldn’t elaborate. He did, however, admit that funding for the project is lurking in the many millions of dollars bracket. “It’s a lot of money, this is the most money I’ve ever spent on a game – in Gauntlet it was like $10 million, but this is much more,” Romero revealed.
As for when we’ll first get to see Romero’s MMO title, he said nothing will be shown until next year.
Oh well.
I guess people already started taking bet on when this will get get cancelled.
I checked his site but he doesn’t say much beside “everyone can feel that something extremely rocking is happening.” And that he seems to have good taste for (underage) women.
Btw, while reading his blog I found links to some of the best flash games ever. Like this one.