Greg Street's next adventure is finally more fully revealed. His new studio, Fantastic Pixel Castle, is a first-party independent studio part of NetEase Games, embracing a remote-first setup to build the next triple-A MMO.
The veteran MMO developer made no secret he was working on a new MMO with his new studio, which he started shortly after leaving Riot Games earlier this year. Previously, Street helmed Riot's upcoming Runeterra-based MMORPG, and he is well known to MMO players for his work as lead systems designer on World of Warcraft.
Fantastic Pixel Castle, Steet's new studio, is working on its first game, a AAA MMO, which has aptly codenamed Ghost. According to this morning's announcement, the new studio is founded with a team with extensive experience building well-known and successful games, with developers who have worked on games such as Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Overwatch, Valorant, and others.
According to the announcement this morning, Ghost is set in a fantasy universe, though not much else was revealed other than the general setting. However, the concept art released alongside today's announcement shows floating islands shrouded in clouds and mists, with cities built upon them, and an overall dark tone compared to some of the lighter fantasy out there.
"With Fantastic Pixel Castle and Ghost, we want to demonstrate our commitment to open communication and development in front of players," Greg Street, studio head of Fantastic Pixel Castle, stated via a press release. "MMOs are arguably one of the most challenging genres of games to make, but we have some big advantages. We are a fully remote studio, allowing us to hire the best game developers, and we plan to stay small, so that we can iterate on our design quickly. We also want to show the game early and often to the community and make sure we are on the right track to incorporate constant feedback. This is possible because NetEase Games is a strategic partner that understands our vision, and gives us the creative autonomy, resources and support to be successful."
Fantastic Pixel Castle is set up as a fully remote studio and is currently hiring developers to work on the upcoming MMORPG. On Twitter Tuesday night, Street also acknowledged that while the FPC team is excited about what's to come, they acknowledged that the announcement comes at a hard time in the industry, especially with the current climate of game dev layoffs occurring all over the place.
I want to acknowledge that we are going to be announcing our studio and game during a period of a lot of rough news in the industry. Yes we are excited, but this is a tough business, and there is no guarantee we will succeed at it either. I feel for all of my friends and others…
— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 31, 2023
Street's studio will be hosting an AMA on Twitch next week, with the founding team of Fantastic Pixel Castle introducing themselves and answering questions from the community. The AMA will be hosted on the official Twitch channel at 2 pm ET/11 am PT on November 8th.
