The follow-up on that mysterious Ghostbusters game footage has come, and I remain a lone voice in the wilderness, decrying how un-Ghostbusters this looks. But the good news is that this game will never, ever be made.
Why do I say that? This statement showed up on the site of game developers ZootFly:
"We are very glad to see the overwhelming response to the Ghostbusters prototype movies.
What you’ve seen is indeed in-game footage of early prototypes on the Xbox 360, running on ZootFly’s proprietary engine.
Due to licensing issues, further development of the Ghostbusters game hit a bump on the road, but everybody here at ZootFly is working actively on resolving the challenges with the owners of the Ghostbusters IP."
What would those bumps be? Most likely the fact that ZootFly has no license to produce any such game, which is why they did stuff like change the Ghostbusters logo. The truth would seem to be that this footage was produced on spec, possibly to interest the Ghostbusters licensers, but I would doubt that ZootFly was ever involved in any legitimate way with anyone who holds a single right to Ghostbusters.
I say that would “seem” to be the truth because I actually believe this is a cynical attempt to get attention for a game that ZootFly IS making – it’s called TimeO. Here’s what they say:
“Not to lose the momentum, a part of the ZootFly team is currently working on an original game called TimeO, which is closely related to Ghostbusters. The game follows the adventures of two die-hard New Yorkers. They get trapped deep in the shadow world of a parallel New York. The city itself is a war machine threatening to wipe out our world and they have three days to stop it.”
I imagine that what you see in that footage will be quite close to what you see in TimeO. And I wonder if this will be enough to get ZootFly sued for infringing on Ghostbusters – after all, they admit that TimeO is “closely related” to that property.