Glen Schofield says The Callisto Protocol cost 4x more than Dead Space, needed 3 more months of work, and wasn't meant to be one-and-done: "The discussion we had was ... look at The Witcher"

Dead Space creator and longtime Call of Duty lead Glen Schofield has shared a lengthy post-mortem of The Callisto Protocol, the distinctly Dead Space-esque survival horror shooter he led after founding developer Striking Distance, which didn't meet sales expectations and saw middling reviews in 2022. (Currently: 69 critic score and 6.9 user score on Metacritic. Nice?) 

Schofield, who's since left Striking Distance, says the game was unfairly rushed out by the project's overseers, still deserves a sequel, cost four times more than Dead Space to develop, and was initially discussed as the starting point of a series rather than a project that would recoup its full investment in one release. 

Speaking with YouTuber Dan Allen Gaming, Schofield, who's lamented the economics of modern game development in multiple interviews, says "Callisto was about four times what Dead Space cost, but yet the cost of the game is I think $10 more. Four times, man. And we're talking about hundreds of people, you know?"

The Callisto Protocol review: "An impressive game derailed by unforgiving combat"

What Schofield really wanted was more time. "I wanted about three and a half more months" of development on The Callisto Protocol, he says. "And I was led to believe, for about three months, that that's the way it was gonna be. In October or September of 2021, I was told, 'You're gonna get the time.' No regrets, that was the term that kept getting used. No regrets, put whatever you want into the game."

Schofield says he spent the 2021 holiday thinking up more ideas, but then "January comes around and some of the folks come over and they said, 'No, no, it's December of 2022.' And I was like, it's not gonna get done. 

"It's gonna cost you more money. It's not like it costs you less money because you're getting it out three months sooner," he says. "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've got to accelerate everything by