Dead Space developer and Striking Distance co-founder Glen Schofield left the latter studio last September after lower-than-expected sales and mixed reviews. Now, he’s back to share a bit about the horror game’s torturous development process, detailing cut material, a complicated relationship with parent company Krafton, the impact of Covid, and abandoned plans for a sequel.
The interview in question is with Youtuber Dan Allen. It's a long and candid conversation that's more appreciative than critical, but worth watching in full if you're interested in the game. I've compiled some of the highlights.
Striking Distance was founded in 2019 as part of Krafton’s efforts to build revenue streams beyond its iconic battle royale game Plunkbat, aka PUBG: Battlegrounds. Callisto Protocol began life as a game in the PUBG universe, but eventually evolved into its own thing, heavily inspired by Dead Space . It was a difficult project from the start. “We started with a new studio, a new company, a new IP, everything,” Schofield recalled to Allen. “And then six months went by and in the meantime, they said there were new consoles. They were actually thinking, let’s go to PS5, and I said that’s a lot harder. We’re talking about millions of dollars more.”
However, Schofield said the relationship between Striking Distance and Krafton was initially positive. “I really loved working with them for the first couple of years. It was really the last year or so that was more so. [before I left] – we went public and that put a lot of pressure on the company, the board and everyone else, and then they put pressure on us.”
Among other things, Schofield feels like Striking Distance was cheated on how much time it had to finish the game, which led to the impractical project scope. “I was asking for about three and a half more months, and for about three months, four months I was led to believe that was going to be the case,” he said. “Essentially in October or September of '21, I was told, you know, you're going to make time — just, 'no regrets.' That was the term that was used all the time, 'no regrets.' Just put whatever you want in the game.”
Emboldened by this encouragement, Schofield and other Striking Distance developers spent the 2021 Christmas holiday working on the game — “just designing it, throwing around some other ideas with some guys. And then January came and some [Krafton] People were coming in and saying 'no, no, no, no – it's December 2022.'
“And I thought, this is not going to get done and it's going to cost you more money. It doesn't cost you less money because you got it out three months earlier, no. Because if I had kept everything going the way it was, I wouldn't have to add anybody. But if you want it done, I have to speed things up by three and a half months, which means I have to cram people in here — if I need 20 people, I actually need 30 or 40 people, because that learning curve doesn't adjust.”
In hindsight, Schofield says he “should have put my foot down not to release this” and challenged Krafton to take control of the company. “If you want the game to be released, come in and take over the studio and release it. Sometimes you don't know who you are, and four or five years ago, who was I to tell these guys I'm not releasing this. I definitely should have done it.”
Schofield isn’t without fault in the midst of all this. In October 2022, he bragged on Xitter that Striking Distance staff were working “6-7 days a week.” Schofield later apologized for pushing his employees into the game in an interview with Inverse , and promised to implement healthier working hours on future projects. I’m interested in getting some perspective on management tactics from other former or current members of Striking Distance.
The Callisto Protocol was met with uncertain resolutions at launch due to technical issues on PC. Schofield says that following its launch, Striking Distance and Krafton stopped talking to each other. “When I was doing DLC, I'm not joking, they started ignoring me. The game came out on December 2. When I was doing DLC, I tell the team to start patching – I'm going to go 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 kept patching. And Krafton wouldn't talk to us – they were just like, where's the DLC? We've done 86 patches and that's what we needed in three and a half months. And it's done wonders on the PlayStation Network. The reviews have been really good.”
Krafton, Schofield says, wasn't a company with the experience to nurture an original video game property beyond PUBG. “What they needed around new IPs was stable guys, but the reality was they were so new at the time — they didn't have any new, evergreen type games.” He thinks it's ridiculous that Krafton hasn't (to our knowledge) greenlit a sequel, considering the amount that had to be cut from The Callisto Protocol during development. “It's ridiculous that they didn't do it, because we had to take out two and a half bosses from Callisto. So, I had to take out three or four enemies.”
Some of those cuts were not due to Krafton’s publishing schedule, but rather to staff falling ill amid the ongoing Covid pandemic. “America lost 1.2 million people, right?” Schofield said. “It wasn’t like, ‘oh, they’re getting sick.’ One of my best friends, my college roommate, died. We all lost people.
“On top of that, when someone gets sick, and inevitably you have a studio of 200-250 people, 10 to 20 people a month would get sick and they would stay sick for weeks, right? We were devastated. Sometimes our entire VFX department, our animation department, would be out.” Differences between how the U.S. and South Korean governments have handled the pandemic have further exacerbated the communication challenges for Krafton. “When I called Korea, they weren’t having this problem, were they? You know, maybe we’re not following the rules [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 in '21 we had the 'big resignation' on top of that. 49 people resigned on top of that. Because everybody's going through the roof, and so people are going for $10,000 more and they don't have to leave their house – all they have to do is turn in their equipment and in most cases we tell them they can keep it. 2021 was the worst year of my life in terms of development because we had Covid, we had the big resignation. I didn't even think we were going to finish the game. And we cut some things to get it out. We ended up adding some things back. We saved some time – not time, we saved some people. But you're right, there should be a sequel.”
Schofield's abandoned plans for the sequel include a story concept featuring a supporting character named Dani Nakamura. Another scenario would have brought back Jacob from the original game, voiced by Josh Duhamel. “I wanted to bring Josh back, but I wanted to pretend that he was actually dead and start with a different character and then have that character die halfway through and then be like 'we know this guy' and then surprise him and bring him back,” Schofield said.
I wasn't a huge fan of The Callisto Protocol, but I'm automatically drawn to anything Dead Space-like, and I'm sorry to hear that the game's development was such a pain. Still, I'd like to get some perspective on the game's making beyond Schofield.