Mobile game developer Floodgate Entertainment has announced that Steve Meretzky, seminal interactive fiction developer and a founding member of the International Game Developers Association, will join the company as Lead Game Designer.
Meretzky was most recently Principal Game Designer at WorldWinner.com, but is particularly known for his work at Infocom, which he joined in 1981, and where he created games such as
Planetfall, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (co-written with Douglas Adams). His work on the latter title was honored with a BAFTA for Online Entertainment, and more recently, Meretzky was organizer of the Casual Games Summit at the Game Developers Conference
Floodgate itself is headquartered outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and has worked on games such as
Madden NFL 2005,
Neverwinter Nights: Mobile, and
Age of Empires Gold Edition for both Pocket PC and mobile platforms. According to the company, initially, Steve will focus on Floodgate's
Swashbuckler, a multiplayer mobile pirates game, as well as several publisher-initiated projects.