If you’ve been around in MMOs a while, you surely know Bill Roper and his pedigree. He’s a former Blizzard developer who went on to helm Flagship’s Hellgate: London and Cryptic’s Champions Online before heading off to Disney Interactive. In 2017, he joined up with SpatialOS company Improbable, about which he gave us two really detailed interviews at E3 and GDC last year.
But now, Roper’s departing his role as chief creative officer of Improbable too. As VentureBeat reports, it’s not about bad blood – it’s that Roper wants to go back to actually making games instead of being “two steps removed from making something.”
“I’m always happiest when I am actually designing. The moments of greatest joy recently are when I am actively advising studios,” he told VB. “The opportunity to actually make a great game is something I have been missing and craving.”
He’ll now be heading to AuthorDigital to team up with Jason and Serena Robar building RPGs, and if those names sound familiar to our MMO-centric audience, it might be because they were the power couple behind the The Amazing Society and the positively adorable Marvel Super Hero Squad Online (incidentally the first big story I ever landed).
Worth a note here is that Roper says the recent Improbable spat with Unity had nothing to do with his move.
