You promised you’d take me there again someday... but you never did. How Konami buried two dev teams in Silent Hill
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The month of madness became a symbol of madness of Konami itself, whose plan to publish three games from a single series withing such a narrow time frame would seem like a marketing suicide. Ultimately, there's nothing left of the great ambitions. It turns out that small studios located on other continents, devoid of direct support of the Japanese publisher, are unable to bear the burden of projects complicated beyond any reasonable limits.
So, who became the scapegoat? The publisher, who took terrible decisions? Nope. The the two studios that found themselves with their backs against a wall, forced to released unfinished games in March 2012. Less than six months later, the first reports of the closure of Vatra Games surfaced. The Kuju company, which was its owner, published the following statement for Eurogamer:
The new management team at Kuju have been conducting a strategic review of all aspects of the business. As part of this process, the on-going business activities of the Vatra studio are currently under review. However, at this stage, no decisions have yet been made.
The laconic message turns out a smokescreen that's supposed to cover the inevitable facts. In September, the studio becomes history. A similar fate befell Hijinx Studios, which disappears from the industry shortly after the release of a collection that, in theory, was supposed to be a reason for pride and a significant achievement in the portfolio. Only WayForward Technologies returns from Silent Gables with the shield, as they were able to negotiate enough time and sufficient freedom to avoid being buried in the foggy town.
The two closed studios are certainly not the only victims in this story. We can also include all the fans of the brand and lovers of good horror, who in 2012 received something completely incongruous with their needs and expectations. Instead of a great return to a beloved series, they got a nail into that series' coffin; a set of games that hibernated the franchise until this very day.
Perhaps the saddest thing in all of this is the fact that Konami did not own the failures of these Silent Hill games, but rather pushed the blame on the shoulders of the players. In this context, the words of the producer Devin Shatsky, responsible for Shattered Memories and Downpour , spoken in 2011 in an interview with the VG247 portal are particularly significant:
We’re fighting a bit of an uphill battle with Silent Hill, which leans more toward psychological exploration and atmosphere to create it’s tension. It will be interesting to see how things go in the next few years, but it’s obvious the trend has been continuing toward more action, more combat.
According to the creator, horror games such as Resident Evil or Dead Space, aimed at the mainstream audience, were bringing the greater profits and fitted the market best.
The Silent Hill is apparently just too silent to be of interest to us right now. There's only the hope that one day, someone else will decide to visit this town and recall its legends. Or maybe Team Silent could return, the fathers of the series, to take us on a journey that would change the face of horror games? Unfortunately, the chances of this are rather slim, if you're to believe Devin Shatsky:
Team Silent will make a SH game when Sasquatch returns to Bluff Creek, or Plesiosaurs once again inhabits Loch Ness.
On the other hand, that doesn't sound too far off what we've seen so far in Silent Hill, no?
