
“By the time I graduated, my best paintings were all sci-fi,” he says. Whether it was an assignment to do Mona Lisa in his own style (he chose to paint her as an alien) or to create a Western piece (he painted a space cowboy), science fiction has permeated his creative processes for decades. He remembers sci-fi concepts spilling into his work, even dating back to his time at art college. While he was initially concerned about his new IP pulling from so many of the same inspirations as Dead Space, Schofield embraced these concepts as an unalienable part of who he is.
#The callisto protocol multiplayer series#
While Schofield left Visceral Games and EA to cofound Sledgehammer Games shortly after the first Dead Space launched in 2008, the series continued through 2013 and remains perhaps Schofield’s most well-known work. In that title, players control Isaac Clarke as he navigates a derelict space station called Ishimura, battling reanimated, mutated human corpses called Necromorphs. The early concept had promise, but he was initially resistant to it due to the similarities between the ideas presented in Meteor Down and those in the popular series he helped create for Electronic Arts, Dead Space. One of those ideas was called “Meteor Down,” a science-fiction survival game. In these moments of quiet reflection, Schofield came up with several ideas for new games. Schofield, who got his start in the video game industry in the early ’90s as an artist on titles like The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man and The Ren & Stimpy Show: Space Cadet Adventures, started sketching, using the fauna of the sandy wilds as inspiration. He spent a couple of weeks at a health resort, but in his alone time, he wandered out into the desert to get away. He left his California home for Tucson, Arizona. “I’m not getting any younger, and I was like, ‘I’d like to do another new IP.’” “We made three games which I’m really proud of my time at Sledgehammer was something pretty special,” he says. He decided to take some time off and plot his next move.Īfter 10 years of working on the Call of Duty franchise, Schofield was ready for something new. Schofield eventually transitioned to an executive role within Activision before leaving the company less than a year later. While there, he helped lead a studio he cofounded, Sledgehammer Games, as it worked on three mainline Call of Duty titles: Modern Warfare 3, Advanced Warfare, and WWII. Just months prior, he had left Activision, a publisher with whom he had worked for nearly a decade. In 2019, Schofield took a trip out to the desert to get away from the hustle and bustle of the game industry. We witnessed never-before-seen gameplay and spent hours picking the brains of Striking Distance Studios’ veteran developers to learn how this team is creating one of the scariest, most intense games of 2022.īack To The Drawing Board Back to the Drawing Board The Callisto Protocol challenges players to face their fears as they descend into the depths of a lunar prison overrun by monstrous, infected humans and uncover what happened to one of our great hopes for life beyond Earth. Set 300 years in the future, The Callisto Protocol unmistakably carries Schofield’s creative DNA, but through innovative technology, an uncompromised vision, and lessons learned from decades of development experience, Striking Distance Studios feels it has something more than a spiritual successor on its hands. It’s here that the creator of the Dead Space series, Glen Schofield, stages perhaps his most horrifying project yet. Our solar system’s largest planet may play host to a seemingly eternal storm, but something far fiercer is brewing on Callisto.

Jupiter looms large, serving as an imposing backdrop as cargo ship pilot Jacob Lee crashes on the Gas Giant’s second-biggest moon.
