During a stream of Marvel Heroes led by his wife last night, former Gazillion CEO David Brevik announced that his new company is called Graybeard Games. He didn’t elaborate on his first project except to say it will be a PC game, probably “RPG-oriented” and will begin with just himself; he says he can’t imagine more than three people on his future team.
Brevik announced yesterday that he was parting ways with Gazillion, amicably, because he wanted to return to developing games and programming specifically. “I got into this industry to make games,” he told Marvel Heroes players, “and I miss the day-to-day creation process.” He repeated those feelings on the stream starting at roughly the 9:00 mark.
“The fact of the matter is that being CEO doesn’t allow me to be a game developer. […] I still could contribute; I still was able to give feedback and come up with ideas and direct some stuff […] from afar – but not really be involved with the actual creation of the game and not doing any programming and things like that. In fact, Marvel Heroes is the very first game that I’ve ever worked on that I didn’t do any programming. […] Being CEO for a while is just… I didn’t get into the video game industry to be a CEO, right? I didn’t grow up when I was a kid and say, ‘I can’t wait to be CEO of a company.'”
“It’s a little soul-sucking,” his wife chimes in.
“I want to make games,” he says.
“I don’t want to play politics 24-7, constantly be raising money, and doing dog-and-pony shows. […] It’s just not very fun. It’s not what I want to do. It’s not creating something; it’s just sustaining something. And though I love Marvel Heroes — I mean, I REALLY love Marvel Heroes, […] the fact is that I want to MAKE a game again. I want to program again. I want to be deeply involved with something and make it [a] personal effort, and that’s what I’m going to get back to. […] I’ve got to do something for myself here; I’ve got to start creating again. I just wasn’t happy at the end. Playing boss all the time is not as fun as making games.”
Later in the stream (16:57), he confirms that Gazillion’s Marvel Heroes team is still large at 60 people strong and that Marvel Heroes Raid Night will continue.
