Floodgate Entertainment Nabs "Game God" Steve Meretzky
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS - (July 25, 2005) - Floodgate Entertainment, LLC (www.floodg.com) announced today that Steve Meretzky, BAFTA™ award-winning game designer, founding member of the International Game Developers Association, and organizer of the Casual Games Summit at the Game Developers Conference, will join the company as Lead Game Designer.
Steve's work has won acclaim, awards, and best-seller status since the first days of his career. Starting in 1981 at Infocom, Steve designed games that defined the creative potential of early electronic entertainment. Bestsellers Planetfall, Sorcerer, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (co-written with Douglas Adams) are still played by thousands of people today. In 2005, Steve won a BAFTA™ (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for his work on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 1999, PC Gamer magazine named Steve one of the industry's 25 "Game Gods." After Infocom, Steve consulted on game design for Blizzard Entertainment, Hasbro, and Disney while designing and directing his original titles The Space Bar and Hodj 'n' Podj. He then oversaw all aspects of game design for the GameFX division of THQ. For the last five years, Steve was the Principal Game Designer at WorldWinner.com, the leader in online game competitions with more than 14 million members. He will continue to serve an advisory role at WorldWinner.com.
"We are thrilled to welcome Steve to the Floodgate team," said Paul Neurath, Founder and Creative Director of Floodgate Entertainment. "He is a uniquely talented person with a track record of game design achievement that few can match. We've always had very high standards for our games, and Steve can help us exceed them."
"Floodgate is a great place to be," Steve said, "the level of engineering, art and design expertise at the company is impressive. The work they've done with companies like Electronic Arts and JAMDAT Mobile puts them in rare company, and their original content has a ton of potential. I'm especially looking forward to working on Swashbuckler. I just bought an eyepatch and pet parrot. And I'm working on my pirate lingo. Arrrrrr! Shiver me lumbers! Or is it timbers?"
Initially, Steve will focus on Floodgate's Swashbuckler, a multiplayer mobile pirates game, as well as several publisher-initiated projects.
About Floodgate Entertainment, LLC Floodgate Entertainment (www.floodg.com) is a leading mobile games developer, headquartered outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The company's recent titles include Madden NFL 2005(1), Neverwinter Nights: Mobile(2), and Age of Empires Gold Edition. Of Neverwinter Nights, Gamespot.com said, "This game is likely to stand as a milestone for mobile gaming." PocketPC Magazine named Age of Empires the "2004 Strategy Game of the Year." Floodgate is currently working on Swashbuckler(3), an original multiplayer mobile pirates game, and several publisher-initiated projects.
For Press Inquiries, please contact:
Matthew Bellows
GM & VP Marketing
(email) matthew [at] floodg [dot] com
(voice) +1 617 331 0240
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