South Park is one of the longest-running shows on television. The crude Comedy Central program is famous for its references to pop culture and lack of fear in who it will make fun of. Don’t expect it to go away anytime soon, either, because recently Viacom CBS and South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker reached a new agreement that includes making 14 movies for Paramount+. That’s a lot of movies, and doing so is going to bring in a whole lot of money, but tucked into those reports about the new Paramount+ deal was a little detail about a new 3D video game.
South Park has an interesting history when it comes to video games. Most of it is not good, but they recently found some success through South Park: The Stick of Truth and South Park: The Fractured but Whole. This success came via developers taking a hint from the show and emulating the successful formulas of other games such as Paper Mario. Throw in some traditional South Park writing and they had a nice video game stew.
However, those games were developed by Ubisoft. According to an email Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw received from Stone, this game is going to be developed internally.
Little scoop in today's newsletter: the new South Park video game is being developed by their own internal studio, co-creator Matt Stone told my colleague @Lucas_Shaw. Ubisoft didn't respond to a request for comment https://t.co/DdsecgF7B0
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) August 6, 2021
One nugget of news from our colleagues on the Hollywood beat: South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are making a new video game (in addition to a whopping 14 new movies). The game is under development by an in-house studio, Stone told Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw in an email. The previous two games, both well-received role-playing games, were published by Ubisoft Entertainment SA, which did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s a little odd to hear that the creators of South Park plan to internally develop this game. They certainly have the resources to do so, and they’ve always taken an interest in how games using their IP are being developed, but does this just mean that they plan to make the video game in the same offices they make the show in? The statement says that they will be utilizing an internal studio, but what does that mean exactly? Are they going to spin off and start a South Park video game studio, or is this going to be an entirely autonomous game studio started by Parker and Stone?
Whatever it ends up being, if this new game is successful, then that could mean more South Park games in the future that will come directly from the source. That’s a rarity for licensed games.