J.W. ‚Wild Bill‘ Stealey, zusammen mit Sid Meier Gründer von MicroProse, startet mit einem neuen Unternehmen in die MMO Zukunft. Thriller New Media soll sich militärischen und Spionage MMOs annehmen, erklärt der ehemalige Kampfjet Pilot, der sich vor allem mit Flugsimulatoren wie F-19 Stealth Fighter frühen Ruhm unter den Spielern erarbeitet hatte.
Now „Wild Bill“ and his fellow MicroProse veterans form Thriller New Media, a subsidiary of Thriller Publishing, taking decades of experience in the military and games industry and putting them towards developing new online experiences in the military action/spy game genre.
„The whole purpose of Thriller New Media was to say, „Hey guys, we were the military sim company in the 80’s.“ Electronic Arts didn’t have any. Novalogic didn’t have any. Activision was doing Little Computer People. The military stuff worked well for us, and I had enough friends in the military that we could put some realism into it, and that’s what we’re going to do with Thriller New Media.“
The game plan, as it stands, is to create massively multiplayer online games that are serialized…episodic, in a way. Players run through one gameplay scenario and then transfer their character to the next upon release.
„One of the things we’re going to do with Thriller, is every game is going to be Call of Duty 1 through Call of Duty 5. Every game is a series.“
Stealey’s idea is to take great stories and make them into great games. Several of the gaming projects that Thriller is currently working on involve the kind of serialized novels you find in the book sections of your local grocery store. Pulp spy stories and science fiction series, made into games that draw the player in, telling a different story each time with familiar faces carried throughout. „They’re all trash, but they’re all fun – sort of like a video game.“