What Happened to Playdead?
What Happened to Playdead?
The year is 2004, Arnt Jensen has also just left IO Interactive as an graphic designer with some experience programming and some sketches that sparked a dream. In just two short years, a danish government grant and a meeting with Dino Patti, PlayDead was founded.
With the help of a few permanent employees, some freelancers and Microsoft Game Studios, Playdead’s vision had become a reality and in 2010, Limbo was released as an Xbox 360 exclusive. Six years later, Playdead followed up on their video games as an art form promise with Inside. Both games were commercial and critically successes. Unfortunately, after the release of Inside, Dino Patti left the studio, but that was in 2016, which is now six years ago, so what happened to Playdead and the people that left?
Play-spread
The good news is that the Playdead DNA has now been spread across the gaming industry. Dino Patti co founded a new studio, Jumpship with their upcoming title Somerville is due to release in 2022, exclusively on Xbox again including Gamepass.
Jeppe Carlsen, the lead gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside, also left the company to co found Geometric Interactive, where the company recently revealed Cocoon, a unique puzzle adventure game that looks to be releasing everywhere except PlayStation.
As for Jensen, in 2017, Playdead revealed minimal details about the studios next project that will be a sci fi game that looks to feature the same feelings of isolation and despair we have come to know of the studio. In a 2018 interview, Jensen said that “ it will be a little bigger than the other two, a third person game with a much larger area that you can move around. Ive been tired of the limitations in 2D games”
The bad news is that there is still minimal information that we have regarding Playdead’s next game outside of the small teasers we have seen on their social media. Sadly, both of their first games took six years as they said “game 3 is even more ambitious” in a job posting in December 2021, so we are likely still a long way off.
The good news is that instead of one Playdead game we are now getting three games from the people that created those two amazing experiences.