There isn’t the cash or expertise on hand to make it otherwise, and Kickstarter wasn’t an option.
Dan Pinchbeck’s thechineseroom, the team behind upcoming horror title Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, has been working on Everybody’s Gone To the Rapture – the story that begins with the end of the world – for a while now, and PC gamers had every reason to believe it’d be coming to their device of choice. After all Dear Esther, thechineseroom’s breakaway hit, had earned all its plaudits on the PC, and the team has a loyal PC gamer fanbase. But, says Pinchbeck, there was no choice. There just wasn’t the cash or programming expertise on hand to make the game he wanted to make, so he turned to Sony, and the result is that Rapture will be a PS4 exclusive.
“Long dark night of the soul mulling over implications of shifting across to console,” says Pinchbeck but, in the end, “mix of pragmatism and excitement about the possibilities win out.” Kickstarter and a public alpha were considered, but rejected on the grounds that there probably wasn’t enough money to be had that way to make the game work. It would have been heartrending to put it out on a crowdfunder and not get the funding goal. It’s not as if thechineseroom will never work on a PC title again, but Pinchbeck feels enough of us are multi platform gamers that making his Rapture a PS4 exclusive isn’t the end of the world. So to speak. “And without sounding like a bought man,” says Pinchbeck, “the PS4 is genuinely a really, really cool platform, and if people have never bought into console gaming before, now is the time.”
No word on a launch date, but the PS4 itself isn’t due until November 2013. Sometime after that thechineseroom’s latest will launch, and when it does, expect a loud bang, followed by silence. Those Loops can be finicky beasts, after all.
Source: RockPaperShotgun
