Highlights
- The developers of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre game made sure to avoid the legal issues that plagued Friday the 13th: The Game.
- Unlike Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre only has one sole owner of the IP, making the legal situation simpler and more manageable.
- The creative director of the game emphasized the collaboration with the IP owner and the freedom to include original content, while also acknowledging the complexity of film rights.
The developers behind the upcoming The Texas Chainsaw Massacre have stated that they wished to not see the game go down the same route as Friday the 13th: The Game. Much like Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an asymmetrical horror game based on the successful 1974 film, with the game acting as a pseudo-prequel while featuring iconic locations. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has the same developer that worked on the 2017 Friday the 13th game, Gun Interactive, with a lot of the same staff and developers. Considering the circumstances that ended up axing Friday the 13th, Gun Interactive made sure that wouldn't happen with Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Back when Friday the 13th was hitting its stride with a year of post-launch support, the horror franchise ended up being caught in an ugly and lengthy legal battle, which affected the development of the game itself. Illfonic and Gun Interactive were told that they couldn't develop any more content for the game, which also resulted in the multiplayer servers being shut off in 2020. Gun then announced that Friday the 13th: The Game would then be delisted from digital stores at the end of 2023 due to Gun's license expiring, with online play shutting down a year later. The studio's creative director went into detail about how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will avoid the same fate that Jason Vorhees and his franchise did.
In a PCGamesN interview with creative director Ronnie Hobbs, he states that the legal situation surrounding Friday the 13th was incredibly complicated, due to the franchise having multiple rights holders. With Texas Chainsaw Massacre, however, there is only one sole owner of the IP, Kim Henkel, and the developers had been working closely with him from not only a creative, but legal perspective. Hobbs stated that they were extremely thorough in making sure the game's launch was smooth and wouldn't be beset by any legal trouble.
Hobbs also went into how Kim Henkel was involved in creating the game with Gun Interactive, along with the wiggle room that the team was provided when adapting the IP to a game. With The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's prequel premise, it allows for more original content not directly lifted from the franchise to be included in the game. Hobbs also hints that possible expansions could be made as things move forward, but notes that film rights are a complicated web to untangle.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shares a lot of gameplay aspects with Friday the 13th, where it provides plenty of escape options, searching for items, and finding ways to open each exit. Gun Interactive has been doing a lot to polish the experience of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, stating that its goal was to "push the asymmetrical horror genre as much as possible," which meant learning from the troubles that cropped up when working on Friday the 13th.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will release on August 18 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: PCGamesN
