Former Striking Distance CEO shares details of cut material, disagreements with Krafton and Covid losses
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.”
“And I was like, it’s not going to get done and it’s going to cost you more money. It’s not like it costs you less money because you’re getting it out three months sooner, no. Because if I just kept it on the way it was going, I wouldn’t have to add anybody. But if you want it done, I got to accelerate everything by three and a half months, which means I need to jam people on here - if I need 20 people, I actually need to get 30 or 40, because that learning curve will not adjust.”
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.”
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.”
Some of these cuts were brought about not by Krafton’s release schedule but staff sickness during the on-going Covid pandemic. “America lost 1.2 million people, right?” Schofield said. “This 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 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.
Schofield’s abandoned plans for the sequel include a story concept featuring side character Dani Nakamura as lead. Another scenario would have brought back the original game’s Jacob, who was voice-acted by Josh Duhamel. “I wanted to bring back Josh and but I actually wanted to to act like he was dead, and start off with a different character and then halfway through this character dies, and then they’re like ‘well, we know one guy’ and then you surprisingly bring him back,” Schofield said.
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.
