The CEO of Striking Distance Studios (who previously created Dead Space at Visceral Games) and director of The Callisto Protocol tries to explain his comments about crunch in the past.

Schofield tried to explain his comments in an interview with the EDGE magazine, which he made on Twitter and then quickly deleted. He wrote that Striking Distance had been working on the game 6-7 days a week, highlighting three crucial words: ‘exhaustion’, ‘tired’ and ‘COVID’. It sounds hollow, so it’s no wonder he explained to the publication his real motives:

“I may be old, but I’m not old school. I’ve been through a crunch time that I never want to put anybody through. I was on Return Of The King – arguably the worst ever [he meant The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, for which Schofield was one of the producers – the ed]. Look, I’ll be honest – we’ve been really good for the last three years. We talk about it all the time. We have 120-something people that work from home, we’re in 17 states, and we pay California wages. We try to be fair.

I do not believe in the crunch, man. I had three kids during it, and I took two days off for each one, right? And nowadays, I’m so happy we can give you six weeks off. And it’s mandatory. You. Take. This. Time. Off. I was just thanking ’em…You know, when people know that there was passion [invested], and you’re just trying to tell them that this was out of passion and just trying to get things done. They’re artists and engineers, and sometimes it’s hard to put the pencil down, you know?” Schofield said.

In any case, his comment was pretty hair-raising at the time, which continues to point to the scandalous state of the games industry (but unfortunately, there’s no rest when there’s no inspiration, which we all have to face). The Callisto Protocol, which will take around 12-14 hours to play through, will be released on December 2 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC (Steam), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Source: PSU