Nine Inch Nails are responsible for scaring more than their fair share of listeners. News that their guitarist has co-founded a video game studio (Eyes Out) with a cosmic horror title in the works, shouldn’t come as a major surprise.
Eyes Out is a joint venture between Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck and Cory Davis, the creative director of Spec Ops: The Line. The fledgling video game studio has just announced themselves on the scene, albeit in a rather unusual way.
The announcement of their studio comes before that of their first video game, seemingly relying on the buzz generated from the two creatives behind the project rather than the project itself.
Nonetheless, a cosmic horror game is said to be in the works, it’s just that you have to take their word for it. If you only rely on the ‘official studio trailer’ it isn’t obvious if the product being promoted is a video game, an album, a low budget arthouse film, an advertisement for a recording studio, or a satire on creatives taking themselves far too seriously.
Make no mistake though, the trailer is fairly creepy (not dissimilar to what you’d expect from a Nine Inch Nails music video circa 2000), and it is apparent that these guys are intent on doing things on their own terms.
Cory Davis has worked on various horror leaning video games including the F.E.A.R. and Condemned series, and more recently Here They Lie. Finck also has experience in the video game domain, composing music for NOCT and Observation. Nine Inch Nails also famously composed the soundtrack to 1996 id Software classic, Quake, with Finck credited for his involvement.
The duo met rather fortuitously, as Davis explains:
“When I was finishing up work on Here They Lie, Robin wandered into our studio and I felt a very strong connection to his open, creative view of existence, and the power of music“.
Whether Eyes Out manages to have such a profound impact on the gaming industry remains to be seen, but as a fan of the cosmic horror genre I’m going to keep one eye fixed on their upcoming project.
If they succeed in “pushing the boundaries of the horror genre to create a thoughtful, lasting, terrifying gameplay experience” then I’ll be the first to pay the price of admission.
