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The former general manager at Dead Space studio Visceral says that Activision’s bid to prise him from EA came through an offer he “couldn’t turn down.”
Decorated industry veteran Glen Schofield told Joystiq he found it difficult to be dropped of creative control of the Dead Space franchise – an IP he helped build from the ground up – as EA looked elsewhere for an executive producer on Dead Space 2.
“I was the general manger on Extraction and one of the people responsible for the concept,” he said. “Although my name was reduced to ‘Special Thanks’ after I left Visceral, I worked closely with the EP and team until the game was at Beta.”
In November last year it was announced that Schofield and Michael Condrey had both left EA to join a new Activision-owned startup called Sledgehammer.
The new studio, based in Foster City near San Francisco, is working on an unannounced project.
And it was the opportunity of building a studio culture from the ground-up that Schofield found so hard to resist:
“Activision offered us the opportunity to start a studio from scratch, create the culture, hire the team and build a state of the art game making facility,” he said.
“Instead of inheriting an existing studio like I did with Visceral, we were now able to create a brand new space, and more importantly, a new culture. It is definitely exciting to walk into a new studio, with brand new gear, that we designed and outfitted to be an environment that allows people to do their best work.”
Schofield added he was “extremely excited” to take up a more hands-on role in game development.
Go here to read the full interview.
