Red Barrels co-founder talks the future of horror, 15 years of Outlast, and what’s next for the franchise

Red Barrels Games has been around for 15 years now, and Outlast is its crowning achievement. The studio made a name for itself back in 2013 with the release of the first game in the series, and it went on to put out a standalone DLC, a sequel, and a co-op spin-off that came a decade later. It's been a wild ride for this horror giant, and we had the opportunity to talk with its co-founder, Philippe Morin. Morin has been in games since the late 1990s, starting at Ubisoft and going on to found Red Barrels in 2011. It's been a long time since then, and in honor of the studio's 15th anniversary, we sat with Morin to discuss how Outlast was almost scrapped and what's next for the series. Here is the full review. Note: Some parts of this conversation were edited to better fit the written form. The Outlast Trials is Red Barrels' latest game in the series. Image via Red Barrels How did you get started in video games, and what led you to found Red Barrels and start working on Outlast? Philippe Morin (Red Barrels co-founder): I can start by saying I was hired by Ubisoft in 1998. Back then, there were not a lot of video game companies in town, maybe a couple. And really, it never crossed my mind that a career could be made in video games. I studied cinema at university. I applied at Ubisoft as a scriptwriter, and they said, "We'll give you an interview as a game designer." And I had to ask, what the hell is a game designer? I really had no clue.  Back then, because there were no school programs, everybody was hired, I guess, based on potential. And yet, because of my background in cinema, I kind of became a specialist in cameras, in-game cameras, behavior design, and all that. And that's what got me hired by Naughty Dog a few years later, because of the job I did on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I worked on the first Uncharted. I came back and made Shaun White Snowboarding, which was my own personal Vietnam. And then I worked for a few months on Forgotten Sands until I went to EA Montréal to work on a new IP with Hugo Dallaire, another one of the co-founders of the studio. And we worked on that project for a year. Eventually, David Chateauneuf joined us, another co-founder. And after a year, EA decided to put the project on ice. They wanted to move us to another project. We were not really motivated by the other projects. So we just started talking, realized we were at the same point in our lives and our careers, and decided to give it a shot. We thought it would take maybe three or four months to build a pitch and find out if we can get the money. But it took a year and a half instead. That's for building the pitch. That was fairly quick. But to find the money, it took us 18 months before we could give ourselves a salary once again. Once we got the go from the Canada Media Fund, that was in June 2012. That's when we kicked off the production of Outlast. Up until that point, we were doing mostly conception. And we shipped the game in 14 months on PC. It was a lot of long hours. Outlast certainly made a splash when it came out. How would you describe the atmosphere around horror games back then? Because up until that point, singleplayer horror was very much from the center. Co-op and multiplayer weren't as popular in the genre. If Outlast came out today, how do you think it would be received? Morin: Back then, it was a good context for us because big studios were not making horror games anymore. It was on pause. Then Frictional Games released Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which was a huge success. But because there were not a lot of other games around it, it was a good case for a business because you got a proof of concept that it can work and be profitable. At the same time, it's the only one around, so there's room for more games. So that's the pitch we were giving investors and publishers we were talking to. I think probably the biggest difference between then and now is that back then, it was really the beginning of the streamers, the wave of streamers, and YouTubers. We had a game that was almost perfect for them, not necessarily by design. I remember when we published our very first trailer a year before we shipped the game, we were reading the comments, and everybody was saying, "I cannot wait for PewDiePie to play this game." And PewDiePie apparently hates barrels, and the studio is called Red Barrels. Everybody was tripping over that, but we were like, who the hell is this guy? We had no idea. And then, of course, we found out. And when we went to PAX East, that was in the spring of 2013, that was the very first demo of Outlast. Obviously, the studio was not known at that point, and neither was the IP. So that's when we were able to get a lot of attention from media outlets. And I think what really helped was those videos. I think IGN probably made the first one, at least for us, where they had staff members playing Outlast. And that video got a lot of attention, and eventually,

Red Barrels Games has been around for 15 years now, and Outlast is its crowning achievement. The studio made a name for itself back in 2013 with the release of the first game in the series, and it went on to put out a standalone DLC, a sequel, and a co-op spin-off that came a…

Red Barrels Games has been around for 15 years now, and Outlast is its crowning achievement. The studio made a name for itself back in 2013 with the release of the first game in the series, and it went on to put out a standalone DLC, a sequel, and a co-op spin-off that came a decade later. It's been a wild ride for this horror giant, and we had the opportunity to talk with its co-founder, Philippe Morin. Morin has been in games since the…