COLLECTED BY
Collection:Save Page Now
TIMESTAMPS
As of March 22, 2024, Prytania Media studio Crop Circle Games has ceased operations and the game underway at the studio has been officially cancelled.
After more than two years, development to a playable prototype, and dozens of pitches and reveals to publishers and investors, the Crop Circle Games game concept and execution did not find financial support for further development. Player tastes and market conditions have changed rapidly since the pandemic-era start of the studio and the game simply was not commercially viable.
We want to thank the talented Crop Circle Games developers who did their best to produce a great game.
We also want to thank our financial partner in Crop Circle Games for their warm support and innovative thinking in volatile market conditions and look forward to our continued partnership.
I got a text this afternoon that Ethan Gach of Kotaku is writing an article about the closure ofCrop Circle Games, one of the four studios under my care as the former CEO and owner ofPrytania Media. Mr. Gach has not contacted me about his article nor confirmed details in hisarticle with me, which is surprising considering the fact that I was CEO of this company for twoyears and retain majority ownership.
I stepped down as CEO this winter on a medical leave and while I don’t know the content ofMr. Gach’s article, I have no assurances that my personal health struggles as a rare femalegame industry CEO will not be covered in his article.
The thought of a random man I have never met talking about my personal health — my body —in a public forum without my consent is so ghastly to me that I’m now choosing to share beforehe does that I have multiple sclerosis. While I have been actively preparing myself and mychildren for the grueling times to come for several years, I considered it private information. Itwas not until late last fall following an intense three-months on the road pitching for our studiosthat I started to experience noticeable muscle weakness on the left side of my face andpronounced slurring with my speech. As my MS advanced, I was unable to hide it any longerand I could no longer represent the company in a public way. The last few months have been aprocess for me and I’m grateful for the support of many friends reading this right now whohave reached out with love since I started to quietly disclose my illness. Thank you.
One of the things no one ever tells us about serious illness is the clarity it provides. I have thatnow and this message is an opportunity for me to personally talk about the difficult butabsolutely necessary changes we have made at Prytania Media, including the closure of CropCircle Games, a significant reduction in Prytania Media’s non-developer employees, and thesuccessful realignment of the games and staffing at our three other studios.
Prytania Media and each of these studios were my lifelong dream — a place for gamedevelopers to work in carefully curated positive environments that allowed them experience thejoy of their craft. In particular, I carried the stories of dozens of industry women whoexperienced things too awful to write here and it has been my dream to create a forwardthinking and profitable place safe for them and for me. I believed in each of these studios, theteams that assembled around the game concepts, and the game ideas themselves. I believedenough to invest significant amounts of my personal money and to devote the last three yearsof my life — and I now know — my health, to the success of every person and gameassociated with us.
Long before the dark clouds of these current industrywide layoffs began to gather, I knew thatthe game industry was headed towards a downturn. It would have been the third economicdownturn that my business-partner/husband and I have owned and run independent gamestudios through, and I initially felt we were uniquely prepared to address the challenges and toprotect everyone associated with us. Over the last 23 years, we’d built two profitable studiosfrom the earliest stages to acquisition by major publishers and weathered all kinds of businessand economic challenges along the way, all without a single layoff.
What I did not understand was that the current economic downturn in the industry is not justanother economic cycle —it is a permanent and sustained alteration and contraction ofthe industry we all know and love.
In light of the increasing impact of AI and consolidation in the industry, I fought hard for CropCircle and did everything I could to leverage the reputation of the games and teams at all ourstudios to give Crop Circle’s project a boost to find the right partner to take the game to ship.The Crop Circle team was incredibly likable, their chemistry and enthusiasm for each otherabsolutely delightful, and the game had a whimsy and playfulness that was hard not to root for.I loved this team and the game beyond measure. In the end, despite the kind words ofeveryone we pitched to for two solid years, the game did not have core features that haveemerged as requirements to be competitive in today’s hyper aggressive market. I know it’spainful for all us who love the game and this extraordinary team to acknowledge, but the gamewas just fundamentally out of touch with emerging player tastes and not aligned with theportfolio strategies of any publishers or investors. As a result, in contrast to our other studios,there was not a single organization of any kind willing to invest in continued gamedevelopment.
As the world destabilizes in the most brutalizing ways, the game industry is experiencing inparallel a once-in-a-multiple-generation kind of change. We don’t know exactly where it willland. It is awful on all sides. For now, like many other companies all over the world, we didincredibly painful and difficult things, including layoffs, to rapidly adapt to these newconditions, save every job we could, and fight to bring innovative new game experiences to amarket that favors the mega-companies. For independent developers of all sizes, there are noeasy paths forward. I stand by these decisions.
As for Mr. Gach and his article for Kotaku, I have enormous compassion and sympathy for him.Kotaku is owned by G/O Media, which is in turn owned by a private equity firm in Boston.Asother G/O brands are sold and their teams fired, Mr. Gach must be under incredible pressure togenerate clicks and satisfy advertisers. Watching the meltdown in games media has been justas awful and searing as experiencing the meltdown with development jobs and I empathizewith Mr. Gach’s situation.
In these extraordinarily stressful and ugly times throughout every facet of the game industry, Ihope for the best for him and for all of us in the industry as we grapple with the new realities ofthe next phase in game development.
Annie Delisi Strain
April 4, 2024