In 2008, the Visceral Games title Dead Space introduced us to Isaac Clarke, a lowly engineer
forced to fight his way off a zombie-infested spaceship.
It was an instant hit.
Dead Space racked up over two million sales, nabbed a handful of awards, and spawned sequels
in 2011 and 2013.
And then…nothing.
Here's why we never got to play Dead Space 4.
Dead Space 3 didn't sell
In an interview with CVG, former Electronic Arts president Frank Gibeau said,
"Ultimately you need to get to audience sizes of around five million to really continue
to invest in an IP like Dead Space."
Sadly, Dead Space 3 didn't sell anywhere close to five million copies.
In its first week of release, Dead Space 2 shipped nearly two million copies.
By contrast, Dead Space 3 moved only 605,000 units.
That was well below EA's initial estimates, and game's failure contributed to EA's year-on-year
revenue loss of over $150 million in 2013, likely making it difficult to justify a sequel.
Critics were critical
According to the review aggregator Metacritic, the first two Dead Space games received average
review scores of 89% and 90% respectively for the Xbox 360 versions.
Dead Space 3, on the other hand, only scored a 78%.
While this is still slightly above average for video games, it was a disappointment for
the franchise, with critics knocking the title's move away from survival horror towards more
generic action.
Mediocre reviews and tepid word of mouth from players may help explain why sales died an
unspeakably brutal death.
Survival horror is changing
Despite some innovative features, the first two Dead Space games are very much traditional
survival horror titles.
Most of Dead Space's tension comes from navigating the game's harsh and violent environments
with limited resources, while some strategically placed gore and a smattering of haunted-house
style jump scares round everything out.
(Monster screams)
But a lot has changed since the first Dead Space came out.
In 2014, a "playable trailer" called P.T. took the gaming world by storm with its haunting,
surreal imagery and shifting geography.
The game P.T. promoted, a Silent Hill reboot by Hideo Kojima and acclaimed film director
Guillermo del Toro, never materialized, but the trailer was enough to galvanize the survival
horror genre.
With games moving towards psychological horror, Dead Space's action formula was beginning
to look, well, dated.
The stars have moved on
Glen Schofield, who created Dead Space, left Visceral and Electronic Arts in 2009 to form
his own company, Sledgehammer Games.
Wright Bagwell, lead gameplay designer on Dead Space and creative director on Dead Space
2, joined Zynga in 2011, where he led the design team on FarmVille 2.
And Steve Papoutsis, Visceral's vice president and general manager and the lead executive
on all of the Dead Space games, departed the company in 2015.
In other words, the people who made the franchise great in the first place have left.
Star Wars
Inspired by Dead Space's popularity, Electronic Arts and DICE handed Visceral the reigns for
the shoot-em-up Battlefield Hardline.
And from there, Visceral's main office went straight to work on an ambitious and mysterious
Star Wars title, overseen by Uncharted's Amy Hennig.
That's exciting news for fans of both Star Wars and Visceral, but it doesn't leave much
time for Dead Space.
Visceral is booked for the next few years, and if there's going to be more Dead Space,
it'll have to wait until Visceral returns from its trip to a galaxy far, far way.
Or, farther away than their usual one.
"And I hate to break it to you losers, but Han Solo's a bitch."
It lost its way
The first two Dead Space games are conscious throwbacks to movies like Alien, with the
schlubby Isaac forced to fight his way alone through infested, confined spaces..
But Dead Space 3 is different.
In a conscious attempt to reach a wider audience, Electronic Arts added co-op multiplayer to
the main campaign - and a stereotypically grizzled soldier buddy named John Carver.
The tight, claustrophobic levels are replaced by snow fields and wide-open space, allowing
a suddenly more nimble Isaac to simply dodge out of the way of danger, and duck effortlessly
behind protective cover.
In other words, the series lost what made it special.
Getting it back will be no easy feat.
A reboot makes more sense
Visceral's Star Wars game is still a number of years away—and that doesn't count extra
time that the studio will spend on post-launch downloadable content and a potential sequel.
By that point, it will have been well over a half decade since the last Dead Space game
hit consoles.
Even with the tacked on cliffhanger ending from the DLC, it might make more sense for
the company to reboot the franchise with a new direction and new characters rather than
continue with something that was no longer working.
It could be that Dead Space is officially dead, but if the series is anything like its
necromorph monsters, it’ll come back to life before long.
(more monster screams!)
On second thought… maybe it shouldn’t.
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