Glen Schofield, the mastermind behind horror classic Dead Space and its spiritual successor The Callisto Protocol, has pondered whether he’s directed his last game as funding for his next project has been a slow process.
Speaking on LinkedIn, Schofield, who departed Striking Distance Studios after the poor performance of The Callisto Protocol, revealed that he was working on an idea with his developer daughter on a project which failed to get the free light.
Over the past eight months, I’ve been quietly working with my daughter, Nicole, on a new game idea. She came to me with it, and I immediately loved the idea. Something I hadn’t seen before. We’ve been calling it a new sub-genre of horror—not just horror, but something more.
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We pulled the budget down to $17 million, built a prototype with a small, talented crew, and started taking meetings. People loved the concept. We got a lot of second and third meetings. But early feedback was ‘get it to $10 million’. Lately, that number’s dropped to $2-5 million. So last month, we decided to walk away. Some ideas are better left untouched than done cheap. We had a team of six here in the States and a full crew in the UK. Now, everyone’s looking for work. They’re all talented folks – if you’re hiring, let me know.
I miss it all – the team, the chaos, the joy of building something for fans. I’m still around, making art, writing stories and ideas and still cheering the industry on. But maybe I’ve directed my last game. Who knows? If so, thank you [for] playing my games.
Schofield headed up the original Dead Space at Visceral Games back in 2008, where he served as vice president and general manager. After departing Visceral Games, Schofield co-founded Sledgehammer Games with Michale Condrey, but announced his exit from the Call of Duty studio in December 2018. He founded Striking Distance Studios in June 2019 and served as the company’s CEO, before departing voluntarily in September 2023.
Back in February, reports emerged that Striking Distance Studios had laid off a larger number of staff; the company responded that it did indeed issue layoffs but was still operational.