Guerrilla Cambridge

~ the obit ~

On 15 July 1997 Sony Computer Entertainment announced that its London division would buy the game development side of CyberLife Technology, a company in Cambridge, together with the rights to an unfinished game named MediEvil. CyberLife had made games for years as Millennium Interactive, including Diggers and Creatures. It had renamed itself in 1996 once artificial life software became its main interest. It kept that business and sold the people who made games. Under the later name Creature Labs it lasted until 2003.

MediEvil came out for the first PlayStation in 1998. It was a gothic comedy whose hero, Sir Daniel Fortesque, is a dead knight brought back by accident and given a second try at the heroism his tomb already credits him with. A sequel followed in 2000. On the PlayStation 2 the studio made Primal and Ghosthunter, both released in 2003.

After that the original work thinned out. There was a PSP remake of its own MediEvil in 2005 and a licensed 24: The Game in 2006. Wikipedia's table also lists the studio in a supporting role on other teams' projects such as Heavenly Sword and Killzone 2. In 2009 it built the PSP version of LittleBigPlanet.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ four names on one door ~

The infobox on Wikipedia needs four lines for the name: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe until 2002, SCEE Cambridge Studio from 2003, Cambridge Studio from 2010, Guerrilla Cambridge at the end. The last change came out of a January 2012 restructuring of Sony's British studios. It made Cambridge a sister studio to Guerrilla Games of Amsterdam, with the job of bringing the Killzone series to the PlayStation Vita.

Killzone: Mercenary arrived in 2013 on a handheld that was already selling poorly. In March 2014 Sony let go an undisclosed number of people at Cambridge and at its other studios in the United Kingdom. My own gaming in all those years ran on a PC whose parts I listed in a forum signature, and a studio that only ever shipped on Sony hardware never crossed it.

~ a regular process of review ~

RIGS: Mechanized Combat League was a launch title for PlayStation VR in October 2016, a first-person team sport played in mech suits. Three months later, on 12 January 2017, Sony announced the closure. Its statement described "a regular process of review" inside Worldwide Studios and concluded that "Guerrilla Cambridge Studio will close". It added: "It is regrettable that this decision will lead to compulsory redundancies."

Evolution Studios, the Driveclub team in Cheshire, had been closed by the same owner on 22 March 2016. The servers for RIGS and Killzone: Mercenary were switched off together on 12 August 2022.

~ sir daniel without them ~

Sony remade MediEvil for the PlayStation 4 in 2019. The work went to Other Ocean Emeryville, a studio in California. The team that had made the original had been gone for two years.

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