Glen Schofield is a name that horror video game fans have known since the arrival of the first Dead Space game in 2008. He's credited as the creator of the series, and even though he spent some time away from horror during his Call of Duty days in the 2010s, it's clear he was always pulled to the genre since he tried to return to it with The Callisto Protocol in 2022. He's worked in the video game industry for over two decades, with most of that time spent in AAA games. Now, he thinks it might all be coming to an end.
In a post on LinkedIn (spotted by VGC), Schofield ponders on the fact that he might have directed his last game when The Callisto Protocol released nearly three years ago now. He talks about what he's been doing for the last eight months, and how he has tried, and been unsuccessful, in finding appropriate financial backing for a project he's been developing with his daughter, who is also a game developer and has worked as an artist in games for the last eight years.
"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," Schofield writes.
"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 2nd and 3rd meetings. But early feedback was 'get it to $10M.' Lately, that number's dropped to $2-5M."
"So last month, we decided to walk away. Some ideas are better left untouched than done cheap...I've worked on games of every size. From 2 of us to over 300 devs. Spent the last 15-20 years making big AAA titles with great teams. That's what I do. That's what I love. But with the industry on pause, AAA feels like it's a long ways away."
"So I'm back to my art. 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 also added that the members of the team he and his daughter were working with to develop this early concept horror project are all looking for work, and that his daughter was also one of the developers caught up in the layoffs suffered by Striking Distance Studios, the company that Schofield and others founded back in 2020. SDS also seems to have just cancelled a project it was working on.
The video game industry is in a tough place at the moment, no doubt about that. Schofield has been around the AAA block more than a few times now, and if this is his sign to hang it up and take early retirement, then it'll have been unfortunate for him to hang up the gloves on a final game like Callisto Protocol.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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