Recently, Jim Reilly at Game Informer did an interview with Crytek’s CEO and president Cevat Yerli on their future projects, their new focus on free-to-play, and how they feel about the current status of the video game industry. One of the questions Jim asked which led to many of these certain fans up arms in excitement was this –
I’m sure you get this question a lot, but is Timesplitters a franchise still very beloved at Crytek? A lot of people hope you’ll eventually return to it. Can you speak to that at all?
To which Yerli responded with:
There is actually a petition running online trying to bring the fan base together. But unfortunately the petition doesn’t look that convincing. If the petition picks up it will be an even better argument for us. At a personal level, I’m a big fan of Timesplitters 2. For me, I would love to see the game out there, as a newborn HD version or what not. I definitely would love to see it. But the case of turning this into a business decision is still difficult, despite the fact that there was a Twitter request feed to test the waters. And now the petition, it just seems to be as we expected, as it was when it was Free Radical.
There’s a very hardcore market that is very verbal about it. I would love to see this, and if the fan base approves a further petition. They’re trying to call 300,000 voices, I think it’s at two or three thousand right now. If they could get the petition together I would be very happy to put in front of decision makers in the company, the key stakeholders, and say “Look here. This is how it is, let’s make it now.”
As you may or may not have remembered, Crytek made a Facebook group back in June named the 100,000 Strong for Timesplitters 4 to see if fan initiative was as high and strong as it was years ago to see if a 4th game after so long was in the realm of possiblity. Sadly the group’s goal has yet to be met, and with the idea of an HD Collection petition needing 300,000 to make the idea viable, this will surely be an even greater uphill battle. So while it’s not fool-proof, and we don’t know if the goal can be met, it’s worth a shot right? At the time of writing the signature count had risen to over 45K in only a few days; so that’s something.
You’re a fan of the series? You want a sequel and an HD Collection for the first three games? Like that page, sign that petition, and spread the word!
