‘We just tried to make what we thought was cool’: the story of Monolith Productions
As the 30-year-old studio behind many innovative and beloved video games shuts down, its founders, fans and designers discuss what made it so special
Late last month, Warner Bros announced it was closing three of its game development studios in a “strategic change of direction”: WB Games San Diego, Player First Studios, and Monolith Productions. At a time when the games industry is racked with layoffs and studio closures, the barrage of dispiriting headlines can be numbing. But the shutdown of Monolith cut through the noise, sparking fresh shock and outrage at the industry’s slash and burn approach to cost cutting. There are numerous reasons for this, but among them was a pervading belief that Monolith would be around forever. “I don’t think I ever really considered the possibility that it would shut down one day,” says Garrett Price, one of Monolith’s seven founding members.
True to its name, Monolith was a singular presence. Founded in 1994, it was a prolific developer whose games displayed visual flair, mechanical inventiveness and a knack for synthesising pop-cultural themes. Most excitingly, you could never really predict what the studio would do next. While it primarily produced first-person shooters, there were forays into platformers, dungeon crawlers and open-world games. And even the core FPS titles differed wildly in theme and style, inspired by everything from 60s spy films to Japanese horror.
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