I always try to maintain an upbeat tone when I write these posts, but the writing biz isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, and it’s important to talk about the failures as well as the successes; and so in that spirit, I have to report the The Division Heartland, a free-to-play videogame I worked on set in the Tom Clancy games franchise, was cancelled yesterday after several years of development.
It’s a bitter pill for me, because not only am I a long-time reader of Clancy’s fiction and a dedicated player of the games released under the TC banner, I did a little writing on Heartland back in 2023, scripting dialogue for the Vultures, one of the key enemy factions in the game; now sadly, that won’t see the light of day.
If you check out my games credits, you’ll see a list of 20+ titles I’ve written for since the early 2000’s; but what you won’t see are the other projects I worked on that were cancelled – like the Disney Infinity playsets that were spiked, the Green Arrow game, the Split/Second sequel or the science fantasy epic I spent months worldbuilding. Truth be told, pretty much anyone who has worked in the games industry for a few years has a similar tale, and it’s a sad reality that many great and could-be-great projects never get their chance to shine. But games are big business and cost big money, and sometimes that means hard choices are made that impact creators and gamers alike.
I’m fortunate I got to work with some amazing people at Red Storm and Ubisoft during the development of The Division Heartland – much love especially to Rich Dansky and Lauren Stone – and I’m pleased to have been able to contribute something to the ongoing “Clancyverse” alongside my previous work on The Division 2, Ghost Recon: Wildlands and my Splinter Cell novels. The future for TC games is still strong – The Division 3, a new Ghost Recon and a Splinter Cell reboot are all in the works – and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.
