Three Fields Entertainment, developers of Dangerous Golf, Danger Zone, and most recently the Burnout-meets-Trackmania mashup Wreckreation, has announced that it has put its entire staff on notice of redundancy, as the studio explained it “will not see revenue from game sales for the foreseeable future.”
In a statement posted to X, Three Fields’ CEO Fiona Sperry explained that the studio has “had to self-fund most of this year and all of the post launch content” after Wreckreation’s publisher, the Embracer Group-owned THQ Nordic, apparently lost interest in the title. “Without the enthusiasm or financial support from our publisher to continue development, we simply cannot sustain the studio in its current form.”
Three Fields Entertainment was founded by Sperry in 2014. Previously Studio Director of Criterion Games, Sperry was at the studio throughout its golden era. Three Fields was very much a spiritual successor to Criterion in its Burnout years, developing games with an emphasis on racing and destruction.
However, the studio never quite translated that spirit into hits. Dangerous Golf was panned by Tyler Wilde in his review, and performed poorly enough that Three Fields ruled out any expansions or sequels. Personally, I quite liked the original Danger Zone, though it was limited in scope. Neither it or its sequel fared particularly well on Steam, however, with both launching to “mixed” reviews.
Wreckreation was a much more ambitious affair, blending the sparky spectacle of Burnout with the wild circuit creation of Trackmania. While it seems to have gained slightly more traction than Three Fields’ previous games, reviews are similarly mixed, with some playing praising its cocktail of racing inspirations, while others criticise it for poor car handling and lacklustre AI.
It seems that Three Fields never quite had the resources to properly realise its ideas, which were big and bold and exciting and had every chance of being brilliant. Indeed, Sperry says that Three Fields had big plans for Wreckreation: “We have so many things in the pipeline—multiple features, updates, and creative ideas that we were excited to bring to the game.” Sperry posted a video with her statement to demonstrate precisely what Three Fields has been working on.
While things don’t look good for Three Fields, Sperry hopes that her statement and the video might attract potential investors who could help rescue the studio from its fate: “My hope is that by showing this work publicly, someone out there might also see that potential and perhaps an opportunity could still emerge.” If that doesn’t happen, then Sperry wants the video to “stand as a testament to our vision and to the strength, passion and skill of our tiny team.”
Whatever happens to Three Fields, Sperry says that, at the studio’s own cost, it will ensure that "the next update that includes a crossplay feature does get published before Christmas and we hope you and your friends can enjo
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It’s too bad. They tried multiple times to recapture the original spirit of Burnout, but each one seemed to struggle to make the adaptation into modern game engines.
One of the things that I think worked in the original series’ favor was the tech of the time. PS2-era games were significantly less complicated compared to the generation after.
Something about the relatively low poly count mixed with high-saturation, high-contrast assets all blurring together at high speed made the game feel a bit more like driving with toys than driving with big heavy cars.
All of their more modern attempts, including Burnout Paradise all feel very heavy and slow and I think the extra detail is partly to blame. They should have been targeting a stylized aesthetic in each of the games, but they all kind of landed on this unfinished Unreal Engine look that immediately gives asset flip vibes, even though it’s not.
I wonder who from the original team didn’t make it into the Three Fields team because I bet they were a key part in giving the original games their feel.