“The entire industry is totally and completely clogged”: Ex Helldivers, WoW devs’ studio CEO says new MMO won’t be another live service shooter for “dudes in black T-shirts and jeans,” which makes it perfect

Had it not been for the so-called “girl games” that introduced me to gaming as a child, I likely wouldn’t have developed an interest in video games – various iterations of Barbie Armageddon revealed to me that I, as a girl and now a woman keen on platform heels, could find a creative sanctuary within video games. However, Colin Cragg, CEO of Blue Scarab, acknowledges that the industry’s current influx of fire-powered hero shooters hasn’t recognized women – specifically those from the 2000s – as a significant gaming demographic in quite some time.

With a development team featuring veterans from titles such as Helldivers 2 and World of Warcraft, Blue Scarab aims to correct that oversight by crafting something refreshingly unique – a captivating mystery-solving, horseback-riding MMORPG called Equinox: Homecoming. Indeed. While the remainder of the industry focuses on churning out more extraction shooters (like Marathon, Bungie’s latest sci-fi endeavor), Blue Scarab is throwing horseshoes.

“What if we genuinely approached a title for [women] with the same seriousness and budget that we assign to a double A kind of production for any other demographic?” Cragg, who also served as CEO for the beloved maraschino cherry-sweet online horse game Giant name Stable in 2012, shares his thought process in co-founding Blue Scarab. “Traditional, you know, teenage boys in black T-shirts and jeans.”

“It’s been an incredibly thrilling opportunity to attempt to operate within those parameters and say, ‘Okay, we’re not producing the next shooter. We’re not creating an extraction shooter. We’re not making yet another survival PvP title,'” Cragg elaborates later during our Zoom discussion.

“The entire industry is completely congested with releases boasting $300 million budgets that all concentrate on the same exact gameplay,” he observes. “It’s as if you’re disregarding 52% of the population.”

As a part of that 52%, I can hardly wait to gallop through dandelions on horseback, wielding not a gun, but simply a Lovecraftian thirst for the supernatural.

Infinity Nikki and The Sims’ comeback is merely the beginning of a retro gaming renaissance for Y2K girls.