Channeling Microprose: Wild Bill and Thriller New Media
“Wild” Bill Stealey, co-founder of Microprose (a company he helped build alongside legendary Sid Meier), wants you to know that he’s still going strong and has some lofty plans with a brand new company called Thriller New Media. The company, a division of Thriller Publishing (which was announced at GDC last year), will operate in the spirit of Microprose - before the Hunt Valley, Maryland company’s brand and identity as one of the best simulation and strategy game developers in the world was co-opted by the 1993 Spectrum Holobyte buy-out.
The idea for the company came about while laying the groundwork for Thriller Publishing over the last year - a company that wants to bring espionage themed action games to various platforms including PC, Mac, mobile devices and consoles; Stealey and friends found that a significant opportunity existed in the online multiplayer and MMOG space that it could capitalize on in a very short space of time – hence the need for a second company.
The Austin Texas-based company’s focus is exclusively on online, first-person, military themed espionage action games based on science fiction and military stories from best-selling authors (who those authors are we do not know, but we expect to hear more about them later in the year). The other important part of the equation is a social networking platform to tie all of Thriller New Media’s content together and to provide users with a place to talk, keep score, and share stories.
Intrigued by what Wild Bill has planned with this second company, I tracked him down with the help of David Swofford - former head of PR at NCsoft, now working for Thriller New Media full time. After a few technical issues, Wild Bill was on the line doing what he does best: talking shop and being nostalgic.
The first thing I wanted to hear about was the origin story for Thriller New Media:
“The origin story is that I read a lot of books, and I was reading a series of books from a famous author - had ten of them in a row, loved everyone of them and sometimes couldn’t get the next one fast enough (during the conversation he describes them as ‘trashy save-the-world espionage thrillers’). I said to myself “these books would make great online games” so I went out to try and do that. I called Fred Schmidt and Jim Bull, two of my good friends and former teammates at Microprose, and we put those whole thing together over the last year.”
The Microprose connection is important to Stealey, because it represent a time when a company he helped build ruled the world. It was at the Hunt Valley, Maryland developer and publisher that he began his career in the video game industry alongside co-founder Sid Meier. While Sid Meier showed his genius as a programmer working on such games as F-19, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, and Civilization, Stealey showed his acumen at marketing and business (as a side note, he was the one that decided to put Sid Meier’s name on Pirates! to let simulation fans know that Sid was involved in the project - mostly for fear that they wouldn’t want to play a game about pirates). But beyond the success of the company, Microprose was an incubator for talent (like Chris Roberts and Brian Reynolds) that went on to create some of the most popular game franchises in PC gaming history.
“At Microprose in the 80’s we probably did ten best selling military games that all sold a couple of million copies each when we just had a PC and the Commodore 64 (and very little Apple) to work with. And given that I’m an ex-military (retired) officer I liked doing those games. A couple of companies competed with us like EA with their Jane’s series and NovaLogic, but no one made a commitment to it - I’d like to go back to what we did at Microprose and that’s what we’re trying to do - that’s what we are going to do. ”
