Striking Distance Studios seems to be on the comeback trail, with recent news of new openings.
As reported by PSU, the company has a new opening for a lead gameplay animator. The job listing is as follows:
“Striking Distance Studios is looking for a Lead Gameplay Animator to help us create the most dynamic and engaging player and enemy experiences for a brand new, unannounced UE5 title. The Lead Gameplay Animator’s main responsibilities are to plan, organize, supervise and inspire the work of his/her team.”
Striking Distance Studios was originally formed at the behest of Krafton to give Glen Schofield, one of the co-creators of the Dead Space franchise a capable team to make his own original game. While The Callisto Protocol definitely had a lot of promise in the project pitch and initial trailers, Striking Distance fumbled on execution, as its launch issues, which stemmed from one mistaken patch release, botched the studio’s and title’s introduction to the public.
Now some fans like to run with the narrative that The Callisto Protocol simply had no way of matching the quality and performance of Dead Space Remake, which released very close to it. But if you were watching this story closely at this time, the two titles were closer than those fans think.
In any case, The Callisto Protocol’s mistakes clearly led to its failure to meet financial expectations. In the fallout, Glen Schofield himself joined layoffs at Striking Distance Studios, but there was a flip side to this bad news.
Steve Papoutsis, who worked with Glen at EA, has taken over as CEO of Striking Distance Studios. For those who were unaware, Steve was general manager at EA, and was in charge of Glen and the rest of the team who worked on Dead Space.
What this all means is, in spite of appearances, Striking Distance Studios was actually in a good position after Glen Schofield’s exit. The studio had simply been biding their time to work on their next project.
Now, we know that the studio is moving on to a new Unreal Engine 5 based title. That definitely means this game will be made for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Windows, and possibly, Nintendo’s next platform.
Although Striking Distance Studios is based in California, it is actually a subsidiary of Korean game publisher Krafton, who is already a global success thanks to PUBG. Krafton’s intention to expand their games to the greater global market has not changed after The Callisto Protocol, and they are definitely hoping to make their own Lies of P.
If there’s a light in the tunnel for Striking Distance Studios, maybe the same can be true of all these other companies that have seen layoffs in the video game industry. In the rebuilding, new opportunities and projects are bound to arise.
