David Jaffe Announces Closure of Bartlet Jones Studio

Published: March 1, 2018 8:38 AM /

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bartlet jones supernatural detective agency

It's never fun hearing a studio is closing, and it seems like another one is now doing so. On Twitter David Jaffe has announced that his studio The Bartlet Jones Supernatural Detective Agency, often going by the much shorter name Bartlet Jones, will be shutting down.

It's a bit difficult to find information about the studio itself, as it's website is composed of little more than a single page that gives a joke description to its founding. The studio first showed up in 2014 created by former Twisted Metal and God of War director David Jaffe. The studio's first, and ultimately only, project was an online multiplayer shooter called Drawn to Death. The game, published by Sony and released exclusively on PlayStation 4 on April 4th, 2017, mostly received negative reviews and little attention.

The studio's future was put into question on January 23rd when David Jaffe announced on Twitter that a project was canceled and that the majority of the staff was laid off. About a month later Jaffe confirmed that Bartlet Jones was shutting down. While closing the studio, Jaffe will also be giving away some of the props that are in the office. Among these include things like a giant statue of God of War protagonist Kratos, Sweet Tooth's machete from 2012's Twisted Metal cutscenes, and even a 2005 Spike VGA trophy.

While we don't know what the canceled project was, Jaffe did talk quickly about one project the team was going to pitch to Marvel. The team was working on a prototype for an Iron Man PlayStation VR game. The game would be a co-op game where the player using the VR headset would control Iron Man, while another player could play as Black Widow, War Machine, or Captain America on the TV. The player controlling Iron Man could also talk to Jarvis and give instructions using PlayStation's voice recognition. The project was unfunded and still had not been pitched to Marvel by the time the studio closed.

At the current time, there is no word on what will happen to Drawn to Death, though it doesn't seem likely that the servers will stay open much longer. If you enjoyed the game, now would be the time to try and get a few more rounds in.

How do you feel about this? Sad to see the studio shut down? Let us know in the comments below.

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Samuel Guglielmo TechRaptor
| Reviews Editor

I'm Sam. I have been playing video games since my parents brought home a PlayStation whenever that came out. Started writing for TechRaptor for 2016 and,… More about Samuel