Romero working on MMO
But that's all he'll say.
Doom co-creator John Romero has confirmed that he's currently hard at work on a massively multiplayer online game - though he won't say what it's called, when it's out or even which company he's working for.
Romero left Midway's San Diego studio, where he'd been working on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, last June. In an interview with PC Zone magazine, excerpts of which have been published online by CVG, he said that following his departure, "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.
"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."
So who is this guy, and what's the company? Romero's keeping shtum: "I can't really say too much... This is [a] complete secret, stealth company."
He added: "This is not a typical games company and we're not making typical games... [This MMO is] very different form any other MMO for special reasons."
Romero declined to comment further on those special reasons, yawn, but did say that loads of cash is being thrown at the project.
"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."
As for a release date - you must be joking. Romero said he won't be offering anyone so much as a peek at the game until next year.
Writing on his blog, Romero said he reckons "Many people already knew I was making an MMO for about the past 4-5 months... And the torrent of diarrhea [sic] from people's posts on the net about it confirms just how out-of-date most people's knowledge of my history is after the id or Ion era. Bunch of L4/\/\3R5!!11one".
You tell 'em, John.