Today, Netease Games has announced a big partnership with industry veteran Greg Street to form Fantastic Pixel Castle, a development studio starting work on an unnamed MMO project.
In a gaming landscape filled with mass layoffs in 2023, new studio launches are few and far between and Netease Games has done just that. Today, they’ve pulled back the curtain on the new Fantastic Pixel Castle Studio spearheaded by industry veteran Greg Street. The studio has also announced its first project, a AAA MMO codenamed ‘Ghost,’ which is set in a brand new fantasy world.
Greg Street is known for his work in established studios particularly in the MMO space. A resume that includes formerly serving as lead systems designer at Blizzard Entertainment for World of Warcraft and more recently, the Executive Producer on League of Legends at Riot Games starts the new Netease Games venture with industry pedigree.
Studio Head of Fantastic Pixel Castle, Greg Street said “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,” on his vision for Fantastic Pixel Castle and Netease Games.
What’s interesting is Greg Street’s focus on allowing work to remain fully remote, whereas other big MMO platforms such as Roblox have recently announced employees will either have to return to the office or take a severance. President of Global Investments and Partnerships at NetEase Games, Simon Zhu also has Street’s optimism on the new studio, saying “Fantastic Pixel Castle is bringing some of the best MMO talent available to NetEase Games to develop this original fantasy IP, and they will have our full support to make this vision a reality.”
Fans interested in the new development studio can rest assured one of the studio’s core values is ‘partnering with players,’ moving forward, the budding Fantastic Pixel Castle founding team will host a live introduction to the studio and Ghost, and will be hosting a Q&A on November 8 live streamed from the official Fantastic Pixel Castle Twitch channel.
It’s also worth mentioning in a landscape where layoffs continuously become more commonplace, Fantastic Pixel Castle is hiring and their job listings can be found on their official website.
