Blizzard has an open world FPS in development

Blizzard has a lot of big franchises that it uses well, but one that has been used relatively little lately is StarCraft. It's kind of understandable, given that the RTS genre – whether we like it or not – doesn't have much mass appeal these days. A new StarCraft probably wouldn't make the big bucks Blizzard is asking for these days, but one way the series could make a comeback is through a genre change.

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier suggested this happened earlier this year, claiming he heard a StarCraft shooter was in development at Blizzard while he was writing his book. He was pretty confident that the project wasn't abandoned between then and now, and in fact, there's new evidence to suggest that might be the case.

Blizzard has an open world FPS in development

Take a trip to Blizzard's official website and you'll be able to find a job opening for an Associate Design Director who will focus on innovation for a currently unannounced title that's in development. While the job description is pretty vague about what title any potential hire will be working on, it does reveal that this unannounced title is an open-world, first-person shooter.

Blizzard doesn't really have much first-person shooter experience, with the Overwatch series being the closest thing it has, so it makes sense for the company to look for someone to come up with innovative ideas. It also makes sense if this mystery title is indeed StarCraft, as Blizzard will need to flex its creative muscles if it wants to successfully switch genres so radically.

Unfortunately, the job listing in no way suggests that this title is StarCraft, but if what Schreier claims is true, then it would be very strange for Blizzard to have two different first-person shooters in development at the same time. Interestingly, this is also the first sign we've had that this title might be open world, which isn't all that surprising in today's industry, but is unusual for a first-person shooter.

In any case, we can't glean too much from this job description, as the rest is typical industry jargon. We'll have to wait for Blizzard to find out exactly what this first-person shooter is, though if the company is still hiring for positions as important as design directors, we may be waiting quite a while for the curtain to fall.