14 DAY TRIAL // Thriller Publishing was founded last year by three veterans of PC gaming company MicroProse, which was renowned for the quality of the real time strategy it launched. The stated aim of the entity was to co opt authors that created best selling military and espionage thrillers in order to collaborate with them on new game franchises. The progress of that undertaking has not been reported on.
Now, the same people are offering information on the short term prospects. Bill Stealey, Fred Schmidt and Jum Bull aim to create a mix between a Massive Multiplayer Online game and a first person shooter.
Bill Stealey has said that the focus on long term projects based on well-known popular media would continue to be developed but that “while laying this groundwork for Thriller, we also have identified significant opportunity with some other exciting related game experiences in the online multiplayer and MMOG space that we can capitalize on right away and bring to our network even sooner.”
The idea is to take two very important segments of gaming, the first person shooter that hardcore gamers are always interested in and the MMO, which is growing incredibly quickly, and merge them into a new and exciting experience. Thriller is especially interested in creating videogames that are capable of supporting social networking additions, which generate a strong sense of community. Thriller has not detailed the projects the company is working on, but it said that all of them would be heavily militarily-themed, drawing on the experience the three founders acquired while working at MicroProse.
So, with simulations like Operation Flashpoint 2 and Armed Assault 2 coming out this year and with games from Thriller arriving sometime in 2010, could we be on the verge of seeing an exponential increase in the popularity of military shooters?