Ever wondered what happened to the TimeSplitters franchise? Ex-Free Radical devs Karl Hilton (now Crytek managing director) and Steve Ellis (co-creator of TS) recently discussed the reasons why another game hasn’t been made.
”TimeSplitters 4 was in the very early stages of development when Free Radical went into administration,” Ellis said. ”A small playable demo was shown to several publishers, but it didn’t attract any publishing deals.”
”We pitched it to a lot of publishers, and from each of them we got the same two responses,” Hilton explained.
”Firstly, they would ask what happened with Haze. We were the company that made a series of high-rated shooters and then we had released Haze, which wasn’t as well received. This worried them.”
”Secondly, their marketing person would say something along the lines of, ‘I don’t know how to sell this.’ The unanimous opinion among all publishers that we pitched TimeSplitters 4 to is that you can’t market a game that is based around a diverse set of characters and environments - you need a clear and easily communicated marketing message, and TimeSplitters doesn’t have one.”
”Perhaps they are all right. Perhaps this is why the previous games in the series achieved much more critical success than commercial success. For these reasons, one by one they all declined to sign the project.”
Such comments will sadden series fans. With titles like TimeSplitters 4 failing to pick up momentum, is creativity dying in the games industry?
