Ex-BioShock developers shelve The Black Glove

It still stings to think about the shuttering of Irrational Games and the displacement of some many developers that made the magic of BioShock happen. Not too long after the exodus, a new studio comprising of ex-Irrational developers launch a Kickstarter for The Black Glove – a brand new narrative focused adventure game that looked like it shared a lot of DNA with its BioShock Big Brother. That too, sadly, is now on ice.

The Black Glove began as a part-time project between a small group of developers ejected from 2K and Irrational. Eventually the project needed solid funding to move out of the realm of side-project, and into more permanent, serious development. Despite their pedigree, Day for Night Games struggled to get any traction on Kickstarter – with the campaign eventually failing and not seeing an additional cent.

Day for Night then attempted for traditional funding routes, by showing off the game behind closed doors at GDC to interested publishers. Although they garnered some interest, no one was willing to throw money down on the idea – which was really the last straw for those already struggling with financials.

In the months that followed GDC, The Black Glove lost key members to full-time work on other projects, which has led to the game eventually being shelved for now. Writing in a blog post on the studio’s official website, Joe Fielder expressed his sadness with the decision – but reiterated that their idea wasn’t dead in the water just yet.

We’ve invested thousands of hours and considerable thought and emotion into the project, so it’s hard to step away, but it’s not forever.

Design legend Paul Neurath said to us recently, “In my experience, good ideas don’t have expiration dates.”

I’m not all that surprised The Black Glove struggled to gain any important interest. The Kickstarter trailer was extremely vague, and rested on the notion of the studio’s past achievements. I have no doubt that there were some excellent ideas – and I’m especially interested to see what was shown off at GDC. But at least, for now, we’ll have to wait a little longer.

Last Updated: May 12, 2015