That Time Horror Legend Stan Winston Created Some Really Messed Up Monsters For A Video Game
Do you remember a horror game called The Suffering? A lot of you won't, which is weird when you consider it sold 1.5 million copies after it launched on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2004. It was a different world at the turn of the millennium. So many games were being released at such a head-spinning rate—especially on the world-conquering PS2—that million sellers would come and go like city buses. The Suffering feels like a cult game, a lost gem from yesteryear, but it was a certified smash hit for publisher Midway in its day.
It was developed by Washington-based Surreal Software, a studio that only made a handful of games before it was permanently shuttered in 2010. One of these was open world GTA-alike This Is Vegas, which famously had a huge marketing push behind it (I once interviewed the lead designer in a stretch limo) before it was unceremoniously cancelled. A sad way to go out, but Surreal did at least get to enjoy a whirlwind period of unit-shifting success when it unleashed The Suffering on the world—with a little help from a bonafide horror legend.
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In the early 2000s, celebrities and respected creatives from other mediums being involved in video games was still very much a novelty. These days Hollywood actors will show up in indie games, but in 2004 it was a colossal deal that Stan Winston—the Oscar-winning special effects wizard behind The Thing, Predator, Aliens, and countless other classic horror movies—was lending his considerable talents to The Suffering. Winston and his studio were involved in the design of the game's monsters, which were as gross as you'd expect.
The Suffering is set in a maximum security prison, where
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