John Smedley Returns to Gaming With a new Company and a Kickstarter Campaign

The outspoken and sometimes controversial figure of John Smedley has been a prominenet figure in the world of electronic entertainment for a long time now. Cutting his teeth in the nineties with Knight Technologies, a white label developer creating contracted games for 16-bit systems. He then moved on to found Verant Systems, creator of EverQuest and later to become Sony Online Entertainment Inc.

Smedley was CEO of SOE for around 15 years, overseeing many successful projects as the company went from strength to strength. That tenure was cut short though after an explosive and somewhat public spat with hacker group/professional morons, Lizard Squad. He stepped down from his position in July 2015 after this incident and hasn't been in the limelight since. It was widely assumed at the time that he would move to another division of Sony. We now know however that this is not the case.

Instead, the developer has returned with a third studio of his own founding. Welcome to the stage Pixelmage Games. The company is headed up by Smedley and he has brought some of his former colleagues from the days of Everquest with him such as Andy Zaffron and Bill Trost, as well as New York Times Best-Selling author Patrick Rothfuss.

The company has been in "stealth mode", according to their website, since October 2015 and in that time they've been working on some concepts for their first project. That project is a retro-styled RPG called Hero's Song. The developer is billing it as a "hardcore action RPG" and it's seemingly designed to be a tough nut to crack, featuring permadeath, friendly fire and a smart AI to fend off. They are funding the project through a Kickstarter campaign, in which they hope to raise at least $800 000 to complete the game by the 18th February.