Rockstar Games subsidiary Rockstar Dundee (formerly Ruffian Games) nearly made a game based on John Carpenter’s beloved horror film The Thing. There have been a lot of great “what ifs” in gaming. We have unfortunately seen and heard of a lot of canceled games that seemed to be really promising. Sometimes studios shut down, projects get canceled because they’re not working out, or there’s a variety of other reasons for why they get scrapped. Some notable examples include Star Wars 1313, Scalebound, Bully 2, and many, many more. However, a lot of games get canceled without people really knowing because they get thrown in the trash before they’re even announced.
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One example is an adaptation of The Thing from Ruffian Games aka Rockstar Dundee. Before being acquired by Rockstar Games, Ruffian Games made Crackdown 2 and did support work on various Microsoft titles. They weren’t really that notable on their own, but seem to have made a fine addition to Rockstar’s line-up. However, they almost made a game based on one of the greatest horror films of all-time. In a recent article from SyFy, Cumron “Ron” Ashitanti, one of the lead artists on the original 2002 The Thing game, revealed that he had been working with Ruffian Games on the project in the early 2010s, but it fell apart due to rights issues with the IP.
“With The Thing being quite an old movie now, I think that the IP has moved around in ownership between a few different companies,” Ashitanti said. “Who owns the rights to the films and the games and all this stuff has got quite muddled over the years. So I think that’s been a bit of a challenge to get the IP rights to do another game.”
Thankfully, there are some concept videos and art that give us a good idea of how disgusting and cool the game would’ve been.
Whether or not we ever see another game based on The Thing is a mystery, rights issues are a common conundrum with horror franchises. However, games like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Friday the 13th have proven there’s an appetite for these types of projects. A game based on The Thing could be really interesting if it combined elements from those aforementioned titles with other games like Among Us. However, it may be quite a while before such a thing ever happens.
