Dead Space Took a Year and a Half to Greenlight

Glen Schofield shared some interesting details about his previous game series that he worked hard to develop, Dead Space.

Schofield was discussing about the original Dead Space details with media outlet Eurogamer and one of them was the history of getting the game greenlit. Greenlight meant the game would finally start development and the ones that were going to give them the resources was EA. He revealed that it took a year and a half to make that happen, which was quite shocking as the game was very successful after a while.

“At first I had them over a bit of a barrel,” Schofield says of the trials of getting the original off the ground. “When I said I wanted to make science fiction horror they were like, okay… And then when I said it’s like System Shock they say ‘oh, yeah System Shock, we did that!’ It took forever to get the greenlight going, though, because they don’t usually have to greenlight shit. They’re EA and it’s like Bond or Lord of the Rings – so everything was already greenlit.”

It seems at that time, EA was not interested in Schofield’s idea of a sci-fi horror game. The publisher was more onto the big hitters at that time which was Lord of the Rings and James Bond. Schofield fought hard to make it happen and he actually got some people to notice, two of them in fact.

“It was really hard. In many ways, they were betting on Mirror’s Edge – they got so much good publicity out of having Dead Space. It was like, wow, edgy new EA, right? They got a lot of good publicity at that time. But [former EA president] Paul Lee was a fan and then [John] Ricitello came over and he was a fan. It was pretty smooth sailing after that.”

And the rest was history. Dead Space became a cult classic and his team at that time Visceral Games won awards for it. They released two more sequels, some spin-offs, and more. Now more sci-fi horror games are being developed like Fort Solis and even a remake of the original Dead Space game.