In a move that’s sure to surprise some fans of the battle royale genre, it appears that PUBG Corp. will be moving into narrative titles, and development will be handled by a very known narrative voice in the industry.
The company behind PUBG announced that these new narrative-focused games will be developed under a new studio called Striking Distance, which will be led by none other than industry veteran Glen Schofield. Check out the announcement video below.
Glen Schofield is best known for his work on groundbreaking titles while he was vice president and general manager at Visceral Games, including Dead Space. Later on, he founded Sledgehammer Games with another veteran and Dead Space collaborator Michael Condry. Sledgehammer was best known for working with Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as well as their solo outing for the franchise, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
In his introductory video, Schofield details that Striking Distance will be built from the ground up, and that its goal is to create an original narrative experience set in the PUBG universe. It’s a very unconventional idea, but one that can actually work, seeing as the impact Visceral Games has had on narrative-driven experiences can still be felt today. For me at least, it’s very exciting to see what this new studio can create from an existing universe like PUBG, which basically has no backstory and is just a game for the game’s sake.
Striking Distance itself will be based in San Ramon, California, and as it is a relatively new company, it appears that there are still many roles to fill. As for what projects the studio has in line, well, there’s still no mention of what kind of narrative-driven experience we can expect from Striking Distance.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Visceral Games as a whole was squandered under Electronic Arts’ questionable management. It’s come to bite them in the behind now, so to speak, as the giant publisher is now looking to appeal once again to the massive market of single-player experiences with the impending release of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. As for Schofield and team, here’s hoping that they can create titles which will amaze fans across two player bases – the battle royale crowd, and the single-player narrative-driven one.
