Costikyan, Wilson Form Manifesto Games

Industry veterans Greg Costikyan and Johnny Wilson have announced that they are joining forces to launch Manifesto Games, a new independent gaming portal intended to help build a strong and viable independent PC game industry. According to Costikyan, the Manifesto Games website, which will launch in early 2006, will offer independently-developed games for sale via direct download, and is intended to be a single place where fans of offbeat and niche games can find "the best of the rest" - the games that the retail channel isn't able to currently support Three types of games will be offered at Manifesto's site: truly independent, original content from creators without publisher funding; the best PC games from smaller PC game publishers, including games in existing genres like wargames, flight sims, and graphic adventures; and niche MMOs. Co-founders Costikyan and Wilson are both well-known industry figures: Costikyan for designing more than 30 commercially published board, roleplaying, online, computer, and mobile games, most recently being employed at Nokia as a games researcher, and Wilson for being editorial director of Computer Gaming World from 1981 to 1999.