Glen Schofield is an American video game artist, designer, director, and producer. He was formerly the vice president and general manager at Visceral Games, co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, founder and former CEO of Striking Distance Studios,[1] and the creator and executive producer of the third-person survival horror video game Dead Space.
Schofield's reputation grew with the 2008 title Dead Space, which the magazine Edge called "a work of passionate sci-fi horror that became one of most commercially successful new properties of the year."[4] Schofield has said that the film Event Horizon inspired him to create a game that fused the genres of science fiction and horror. The game's theme of humans in space losing perspective to their place in the universe is influenced by the works of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, after whom the game character Isaac Clarke was named.[5][6]
Schofield, executive producer on the project, worked with Michael Condrey, senior development director. The game launched a franchise of sequels, comics, novels and films, and went on to win more than 80 industry awards, including the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Action Game of the Year and two awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. During his time at EA Redwood Studios, the studio was ranked 17th in the top 50 Game Developers List of 2009 by Game Developer Research.[7]Edge named him one of the Hot 100 Game Developers of 2009.[8][4]
Schofield (left) and Michael Condrey at the Sledgehammer headquarters, 2009
In 2009, Schofield and Condrey created Sledgehammer Games, with Schofield as general manager and Condrey as chief operating officer. They retained those roles when, that November, Activision acquired the company as a wholly owned development studio operating on an independent model.[9] In December 2018, he announced his departure from Sledgehammer Games to seek new opportunities.[10]
In June 2019, Schofield announced that he was joining Krafton as the CEO of a new development team called Striking Distance Studios. Under Schofield, the studio will be developing a game with a narrative experience set in the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds's universe.[11][12] The game would later drop this connection in May of 2022, no longer being attached to the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds universe.[13]The Callisto Protocol was revealed at The Game Awards 2020 and planned for release in 2022.[14]
The Callisto Protocol failed to reach its anticipated sales goals, resulting in Schofield voluntarily leaving Striking Distance Studios in September 2023.[15]
Personal life
Schofield is married and has three children. In his spare time, he enjoys painting and exercising; he has said that he enjoys both cardio and weight training so much that he will exercise once a day when working on a project with a deadline and twice a day when not.[3][16]
