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Former Elder Scrolls Online game director and ZeniMax Online Studios founder Matt Firor says Crimson Desert is "awesome," and that "being able to make a single-player MMO is almost like cheating to me."
Speaking in a new interview with MinnMax (below), Firor – who left ZeniMax Online Studios after more than 18 years in 2025 following the cancellation of his dream MMO, Project Blackbird – is asked for his thoughts on Pearl Abyss's massive new open-world game. After all, before Crimson Desert, the devs made the MMORPG Black Desert. In fact, as marketing and PR lead Will Powers previously explained to PlayDay.One, "Crimson Desert was originally announced as not only a prequel to Black Desert, but also an MMO," but this was changed during development to "let it blossom into its own thing."
So, what does Firor think about a studio with such MMO expertise putting its efforts towards a single-player game, instead? "It's fantastic," he begins. "For those game developers listening – or people who want to be game developers – the online tech side of MMOs is never discussed, and it should be, because it's usually the hardest part of the project. And so being able to make a single-player MMO is almost like cheating to me. Like, why didn't anyone think of this before?"
Firor adds that Crimson Desert itself is "awesome," even if "I don't know what the hell I'm doing" in it. "It doesn't hand-hold you at all. And I played it for, I don't know, dozens of hours at this point. And I'm still like, 'Oh, I can do that. Oh, I can do that.' It's very Breath of the Wild in that sense."
That decision to let players figure things out for themselves is something that Firor is a huge fan of. "It reminds me a lot of the old days of gaming when there's not a lot of hand-holding, and not a lot of written material, and no one knows what's going on, and you just learn for yourself," he continues. "And I'm really trying to do that with Crimson Desert, and not watch tutorials... And I still don't know what I'm doing, but I'm having so much fun."
Going forward, Firor thinks "more teams will do it." In fact, he reckons "Horizon Zero Dawn was not unlike this also, which is one of my favorite games of all time."
It'll be interesting to see what Pearl Abyss itself does going forward – after Crimson Desert's launch, it was reported that the team is now focusing on the open-world creature-collecting game DokeV. It should be noted that Black Desert hasn't been abandoned in favor of the shiny new offline adventure, though – in the aforementioned interview with Powers from earlier this year, he points out that " in-house there are two dev teams," which are divided "into live service development, which is continued operations on Black Desert and then new IP development." So, as far as the Crimson Desert dev is concerned, it seems likely that it's going to continue to aim for the best of both worlds with its MMO and other games.
Be sure to read our Crimson Desert review to see why it's one of the biggest new games for 2026.
