The Jurassic World movies only exist thanks to an aborted attempt to create Jurassic Park Trespasser 2, a sequel to the cult ‘classic’ 1998 first-person survival game – at least, according to the father of Xbox.
Jurassic Park Trespasser was an ambitious free-roaming FPS game set after the events of the second movie The Lost World, and it’s one of the jankiest games ever made. Designer and executive producer Seamus Blackley went on to lead the team that made the first Xbox with Microsoft, but in 2012 he says that he was approached by Universal and Steven Spielberg to create a new Trespasser game.
“Steven was thinking of restarting the Jurassic Park franchise,” Blackley was told. He and his team put together a design and story bible and even a trailer, which leaked online later but everyone assumed it was an initial concept for the movie (watch it below). Why? Because instead of connecting it to Trespasser, the team called it ‘Jurassic World’.
“We had brought these earthlings back, sentient creatures, individuals,” explains Blackley about Jurassic World’s story, “and so we need to learn to share, even to be friends. In our game, the humans that want to eliminate the dinosaurs are the enemies. The dinosaurs become our allies. By saving them, we save ourselves.”
Unfortunately, despite Spielberg apparently loving the concept, “alas, it couldn’t save the game.” Apparently, the co-president of Universal left and the concept got shelved – but not before all the assets got sent to Universal, which had been working on a new movie since around 2001. After the game’s cancellation, the movie quickly solidified under the name Jurassic World and was released in 2015.
Fortunately, there are other great Jurassic games out, now including Jurassic World Evolution 2 – which just got a Dominion expansion to go with the new movie.