As Crytek continues to attempt to drum up support for TimeSplitters 4, two ex-Free Radical employees have revealed why publishers turned the project down in 2008.

TimeSplitters co-creator Steve Ellis says that a working demo prototype of the game was made following the release of the PS3-exclusive flop Haze. But publishers simply weren’t interested.

“TimeSplitters 4 was in the very early stages of development when Free Radical went into administration,” said Ellis. “A small playable demo was shown to several publishers, but it didn’t attract any publishing deals.”

According to Crytek UK’s managing director Karl Hilton publishers were worried that Free Radical couldn’t deliver, thanks to the poor reception of Haze.

“We pitched it to a lot of publishers,” he said. “And from each of them we got the same two responses. Firstly, they would ask what happened with Haze. We were the company that made a series of high-rated shooters and then we had released Haze, which wasn’t as well received. This worried them.

“Secondly, their marketing person would say something alone the lines of, ‘I don’t know how to sell this.’ The unanimous opinion among all publishers that we pitched TimeSplitters 4 to is that you can’t market a game that is based around a diverse set of characters and environments – you need a clear and easily communicated marketing message, and TimeSplitters doesn’t have one.

“Perhaps they are all right. Perhaps this is why the previous games in the series achieved much more critical success than commercial success. For these reasons, one by one they all declined to sign the project.”

Earlier this month Crytek boss Cevat Yerli said that if TimeSplitters 4 was to have any chance of getting made - even the slimmest chance - an online petition would have to reach 300,000 signatures.

At the time of writing, despite a couple of high-profile media pushes, that number lies at 67,246.

As much as we’d like to see TimeSplitters 4, perhaps the lack of support for the series suggests that *whisper it* the publishers were right.

[GamesTM via Nintendo Everything]