Former WoW & Riot Developer Greg Street Forms New Game Studio Fantastic Pixel Castle

Industry veteran Greg Street has announced the formation of a new game development studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle.

Hello! 👋

We are Fantastic Pixel Castle, a new games studio making an epic AAA MMORPG codenamed Ghost.

To learn more about our studio and vision for Ghost, visit our website at https://t.co/34jbooP5JE.

1/3 pic.twitter.com/ZdGYJABs23

— Fantastic Pixel Castle (@FPCStudio) November 2, 2023

After many years working as a member of prestigious development studios, Greg Street has decided to start his own development studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle. 

Fantastic Pixel Castle is a studio under NetEase Games, which announced the studio’s formation in a corporate press release concurrently with Greg’s announcement. Greg will be serving as Studio Head. 

Greg introduced the studio to the world in a 1-minute video on Fantastic Pixel Castle’s Twitter/X page, and he revealed that the studio’s first title would be a Triple AAA Fantasy MMO codenamed Ghost (Ghost is just a placeholder name and no doubt a nod to Greg’s own nickname). 

Formerly Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft, Head of Creative Development and VP and EP, MMO R&D project at Riot Games, and Game Designer at Ensemble Studios for the Age of Empires series, Greg knows what it takes to make a great gaming experience; MMO or otherwise. And he isn’t alone. 

Fantastic Pixel Castle is Full of Gaming Industry Veterans

Fantastic Pixel Castle still has three roles to fill, but the studio’s team is already pretty stacked. 

Many team members are fellow Blizzard or Riot Games alumni, including former Technical Director for League of Legends and ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2, Brian Holinka, former Combat Designer at Blizzard, and Candace Thomas and Ed Altorfer, both of whom have worked on Riot’s undisclosed MMO. 

Fantastic Pixel Castle’s website describes the studio as fully remote to allow it to recruit the best gaming professionals from all over the world and allow its employees to live comfortably. 

What Do We Know About MMORPG Ghost?

Fantastic Pixel Castle’s website gives us a little bit of what to expect from Ghost. 

Ghost’s game world has countless world shards floating in the sky, remnants of broken worlds. The player is a survivor of an apocalypse that presumably wreaked havoc on these worlds and is looking to rebuild civilization.

Players must travel to these broken world shards and collect resources. Then, they will bring them back home to start rebuilding civilization. As your city grows, various factions will also rise. Your actions and choices will help shape the world you’re rebuilding, for better or worse. 

While still a fantasy game, Fantastic Pixel Castle confirms that they will shy away from the usual suspects of fantasy games, like elves and orcs, and will be doing something fun but different. 

Blue Shards and Red Shards

The development team confirmed Ghost’s World Shards will come in two varieties: Blue and Red Shards. 

Blue Shards will be akin to private servers/games you can play with your friends and will have more survival elements. They state that Blue Shards will be ‘extremely variable’ and it will be unlikely for players to encounter the same Blue Shard more than once. 

Red Shards will be more like traditional MMO servers, providing players with that classic MMORPG experience, filled with guilds, boss raids, and everything else an MMO fan could want. 

Dozens of Character Classes

Apparently, Ghost will have dozens of character classes for players to enjoy. That’s a whole lot of alt accounts to make and experimentation to undertake to find out which class works best for you. 

First Fantastic Pixel Castle Developer Livestream Next Week

While we know many players will want to tune back in when we can share gameplay footage and hype trailers, for those of you interested in learning more about our starting point, we invite you to join us at https://t.co/HFD5UJiYoK on Wednesday, November 8 at 2 pm ET. 3/3

— Fantastic Pixel Castle (@FPCStudio) November 2, 2023

Fantastic Pixel Castle will host its first Developer Livestream on November 8 at 2 PM EST. One of Fantastic Pixel Castle’s core values is partnering with the players and establishing a rapport with the player community early on. 

Since Ghost is in the very early development stages, we can’t expect much new info, but gamers can tune in to learn more about Fantastic Pixel Castle’s plans moving forward. 

Is NetEase Making a Play in the MMO Space?

Fantastic Pixel Castle isn’t the first new development studio under NetEase full of industry veterans making new MMOs. In August, NetEase announced the formation of T-Minus Zero Entertainment, headed by esteemed MMO developer Rich Vogel. T-Minus Zero Entertainment is currently working on an MMO action Sci-Fi title. 

The MMO scene could definitely use some fresh blood. We may have two very high-quality MMOs coming in the near future, courtesy of NetEase. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on.