MMO Veteran Forms Heatwave Interactive

Veteran massively multiplayer online (MMO) designer and producer Anthony Castoro has announced the formation of new company Heatwave Interactive, with entrepreneur and business partner Donn Clendenon. Castoro is best known for his work as game designer and producer at Electronic Arts, primarily on Ultima Online. He also contributed to Star Wars Galaxies at Sony Online and relocated to Warwick, England in 2005 to run the newly formed MMOG division at Codemasters, overseeing titles such as RF Online and ArchLord. Clendenon is the founder of World Gaming Corporation, which in eight months was generating more than $500,000 in monthly revenue. Sold to Women.com in 1999, WGC’s revenues represented 80% of all revenue generated by Women.com in its first year as a publicly traded company. He has since been working largely in commercial real estate. Few details are available of the company’s forthcoming titles, although a “library of original intellectual properties” are claimed to be in pre-production, with the company planning to discuss its future with investors at the forthcoming Game Developers Conference. “This is not ‘just another MMO’ company,” commented Castoro of the announcement. “The current crop of ‘massively multiplayer’ games only provides a glimpse into the power of connected gaming. Heatwave Interactive’s mission is to create original games that unite the power of online gaming with the excitement of traditional single-player video games.”