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There should be a Callisto Protocol 2, says Dead Space creator Glen Schofield: “we had to cut two and a half bosses"Former Striking Distance CEO shares details of cut material, disagreements with Krafton and Covid losses
Former Striking Distance CEO shares details of cut material, disagreements with Krafton and Covid losses
Image credit:Krafton
Image credit:Krafton
Dead Spacedeveloper and Striking Distance co-founder Glen Schofield left Striking Distance last September, following lower-than-hoped sales and mixed reviews for the studio’s debut projectThe Callisto Protocol. Now, he’s back to share a little about thehorrorgame’s difficult development, offering details of cut materials, a complicated relationship with parent company Krafton, the impact of Covid, and abandoned plans for a sequel.
The interview in question is withYoutuber Dan Allen. While more appreciative than critical, it’s a long, candid chat that’s worth watching in full if you’re interested in the game. I’ve put together some highlights.
Nonetheless, Schofield said the relationship between Striking Distance and Krafton was positive at first. “I really liked working with them for the first couple of years. It was really the last year or so [before I left] - we went public and it put an awful strain on the company, the board of directors and everybody else, and then they put the strain on us.”
Amongst other things, Schofield feels he was deceived about how much time Striking Distance had to finish the game, which led to impractical project scoping. “I wanted about three and a half more months, and I was led to believe for about three months, four months that that’s the way it was going to be,” he said. “Actually in October or September of ‘21, I was told that, you know, you’re going to get the time - just, ‘no regrets’. That was the term that kept being used, ‘no regrets’. Just put whatever you want into the game.”
In hindsight, Schofield says he should have “put my foot down on not shipping it”, to the point of challenging Krafton to take away control of the company. “If you want the game to ship, come take over the studio and ship it. Sometimes you don’t know who you are, and four or five years ago I was like, who am I, telling these guys I’m not going to ship it. I should have, absolutely.”
Schofield certainly isn’t without fault amid all this. In October 2022, heboastedon Xitter about Striking Distance staff working “6-7 days a week”. Schofield subsequently apologised in an interview withInversefor making his employees crunch on the game, and promised to keep healthier working hours in future. I’d be interested to get some perspective on his management tactics from other members of Striking Distance, former or current.
The Callisto Protocol met withiffy verdicts at launch, not least thanks to technical problems on PC. In the wake of its release, Schofield says that Striking Distance and Krafton essentially stopped talking to each other. “As we’re making DLC, I kid you not, they started ignoring me. The game came out December 2nd. As we’re making DLC, I’m telling the team to startpatching- I’m going to go out to the community, I’m going to ask them for help. We know what we want to put in the game, and we’re just going to patch it. And so we just kept patching. And Krafton weren’t talking to us - they were just like, where’s the DLC? We did 86 patches, and in three and a half months, that’s what we needed. And on PlayStation Network it kicked ass. The reviews were really good.”
According to Schofield, Krafton lacked the experience as a company to nurture an original videogame property beyond PUBG. “What new IPs need around them is some steady guys, but the truth is they were so new at the time - they didn’t have any new evergreen-type games”. He feels it’s absurd that Krafton haven’t (that we know of) greenlit a sequel, given the amount that had to be chopped from The Callisto Protocol during development. “The fact they’re not making it is ridiculous, because Callisto, we had to cut two and a half bosses out of it. I mean, I had to cut like three or four enemies out of it.”
“On top of that, when someone got sick, and inevitably you have a studio of 200-250 people, 10 to 20 people a month were getting sick, and they were getting sick for weeks, right? We were devastated. It was sometimes our whole department of VFX would be out, our animation department.” Differences between how the US and South Korean governments handled the pandemic exacerbated communication difficulties with Krafton. “When I would call in Korea they’re not having that problem, right? You know, we don’t follow rules as well maybe [in the USA]? I don’t know what it is, but we have a bigger country, you know, it doesn’t matter.
“We lost a lot of people. We went through hell, and then on top of that in ‘21, we had the ‘great resignation’. We had 49 people quit on top of that. Because everybody’s paying through the roof, and so people are leaving for $10,000 more, and they don’t have to leave their house - all they got to do is turn in their equipment, and in most cases, we tell them you can keep the equipment. 2021 was the worst year in development of my life, because you had Covid going on, you had the great resignation going on. I did not even think we’d get the game done. And we’re cutting stuff to get it out. We added some stuff back in in the end. Freed up some time - not time, freed up some people. But you’re right, there should be a sequel.”
I wasn’t a huge fan of The Callisto Protocol myself, but I am automatically enthused for anything that whiffs of Dead Space, and I’m sorry to hear that development of the game was such an ordeal. Again, though, I’d like to get some perspective beyond Schofield’s on the making of the game.
