Three Big Devs Quit Maxis To Make New Game ‘Tethys’

Ocean Quigley has announced that he has now left EA and Maxis, joining forces with two other former Maxis employess and that he has formed a brand new indie studio called Jellygrade.

Quigley was the SimCity creative director for Maxis, having worked on titles in the Sim City series such as 3k, 4 and the newest one, but him and his fellow team members Andrew Willmott (SimCity’s cimulation architect) and Dan Moskowits (SimCity’s lead gameplay engineer) think it’s time for something new and between them they’ve got the knowledge to create something truely impressive.

“After 17 years (SimCity 3k, SimCity 4, SimCity, also a little work on the Saturn version of 2K) it was time for something new,” said Quigley via Twitter.

The new title fro the new studio is called “Tethys” and Quigley says it’s “still pretty early – the simulation engine is under active development”, “We’re starting off on the iPad with a fundamentally new simulation engine – I can’t wait to start showing it off.” He continued, “There’s a bunch of cool stuff that you can do with touch & fluid simulations.”

That last bit gives us a HUGE hint of what this game is about, especially if your clued up on your Greek mythology, don’t worry if you’re not, there is always the Wiki page for it. Effectively Tethys was a water god and it sounds like we could have a very specific god sim on our hands.

Quigley hints that we can expect more information in a month or two.

Thank you CVG for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of Jellygrade.