He’s been ”sitting on” them because money is ”really tight right now” among publishers, particularly around MMOs. Roper wants ”an exciting opportunity”.
The most recent projects for Bill Roper haven’t been tremendous in performance since his departure from Blizzard. He left and formed Flagship Studios which you may remember developed Hellgate: London, the singleplayer RPG with online subs?
That tanked, badly, although the IP was eventually snapped up by another studio. From the flaming wreckage of Flagship came Runic Games which created the Diablo-esque Torchlight, a rather successful dungeon crawler with a sequel in the works.
Roper didn’t team up with Runic however, as he instead chose to enlist at Cryptic Studios and helped develop Champions Online. Sadly the superhero MMO hasn’t performed to any super powered levels and recently went free-to-play.
”I’ve been talking with a lot of different companies. I’ve been doing different game designs and talking with everything from publishers to investors,” revealed Bill Roper.
”I’ve got some bigger PC console-type title pitches that I’ve just been kind of sitting on, because when I started showing those around to friends in the industry and people I know in the business side, they were all like, ‘Wow, that’s a really awesome idea. I would totally play that game.” But, he says, ”You’ll never get funding right now.”
”Because it’s not out there. You know, even for something in the $6 to $8 million range, which doesn’t sound like a lot in the scope of what you can spend in the development, it’s just really tight right now. There’s a lot of money out in the MMO space still waiting for games to launch, right? So, they’re very hesitant.”
”There is definitely money for like things on the Xbox Live side,” Roper added. ”There’s money that’s out there for starting a company in the casual space, that kind of thing.” Right now he’s willingly to travel if it gives him an ”exciting opportunity to do something.”
”And whether that is my own thing and whether that is working at a company, you know, starting something for them or working in an established organization, I think it’s really going to be about what games get done and what the idea is there on how it’s going to get done, the business model and all that kind of stuff.”
Are veterans who leave great studios cursed by their shadow?
