Game on as company nears debut
Causeway Studios first offering is expected out this year
A Northwest Arkansas-based computer game company has completed its debut game and it’s expected to be available on the Steam platform later this year.
Causeway Studios’ The Haunting of Joni Evers takes place in the fictional town of Harvest, Okla. The players explore the Cunningham House while connecting the dots between Joni and her family — all the while dealing with a mysterious entity that seems determined to stop and trap Joni.
Co-founders Greg Rogers, the creative director at Causeway Studios and Kjartan Kennedy, the studio director, have kept their operation intentionally lean, self-funding the company so far and operating with a small staff. In addition to its games, Causeway Studios provides a variety of services to clients, including consulting on everything from educational games to virtual reality training.
Plans are for The Haunting of Joni Evers to become available on digital video game distribution platform Steam by the second half of 2024. It will be available for download for both Windows and Mac and currently can be added to wish lists on Steam.
In 2022, Steam sold an estimated 409 million games, not counting free downloads, according to Statista.
“It’s a good first step,” Rogers said. “We would love to (eventually) bring everything we make to multiple platforms.”
The gaming industry sales corrected in 2023 after declines in 2022, according to gaming industry statistics company, Newzoo. Revenue for the global gaming market for 2023 stood at $184 billion, up 0.6% from 2022. In 2022, revenue dropped 5.1%. The United States and China market made up more than half of 2023’s revenue, according to Newzoo.
Causeway Studios began about four years ago. Rogers and Kennedy have extensive experience in the industry and both have strong ties to the Tesseract Center for Immersive Environments and Game Design at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
“Games are hard and they take time,” Kennedy said. “There’s an industry saying that ‘any game is a miracle.’”
The Haunting of Joni Evers is just the beginning for Causeway Studios — plans are for an interlocking series of games where each story stands alone but is part of a wider and compelling narrative. The designers point to the books of Stephen King as an example, with tales having unique narratives and sometimes even in different genres, but all part of a larger and complex universe. The designers had dubbed Causeway Studio’s narrative network The Worlds Across the Causeway.
“It’s an anthology universe of interconnected stories,” Kennedy said.
That means, Rogers explained, Causeway Studio has a lot of freedom to offer a wide array of gaming experiences.
He described how The Haunting of Joni Evers plays as a “stroll-player” to avoid the industry term “walking simulator” which has been used as a derogatory term. He said Causeway Studio’s first game is immersive and contemplative but the Worlds Across the Causeway concept leaves them free to explore many narratives as the studio grows and expands.
“We can make a game that’s a survival horror game or we can make a game that’s an open world adventure,” he said. “You can go in any direction.”