Spec Ops: The Line creator and Nine Inch Nails guitarist form Eyes Out

Recently, a few renowned game developers have partnered up with creators outside the gaming industry to add extra spice to gaming projects. For example, the upcoming Elden Ring resulted from a collaboration between Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin, and film director Guillermo del Toro worked with former Metal Gear director Hideo Kojima on the canceled Silent Hills project. This trend continues with today’s announcement of Eyes Out, an arthouse gaming studio formed by a peculiar partnership between Spec Ops: The Line creative director Cory Davis and Robin Finck, a guitarist of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails.

According to a press release, Eyes Out “taps into a shared love of games and building atmosphere through the imaginative use of audio and visuals.” The studio consists “of passionate world-builders and storytellers who believe in the powerful synesthesia that emerges from music, narrative, and interactive experiences.”

How did this partnership come about?

Both Davis and Finck became motivated to form Eyes Out when they began developing a few of Davis’s prototypes and “launched straight toward something unexpected.” In general, the two seem extremely passionate about their partnership, to the point where their appraisals of each other come off as somewhat bizarre. Davis, for instance, said that he “felt a very strong connection to [Finck’s] open, creative view of existence, and the power of music” and that “it’s such an exhilarating trip to venture into the darkness together.” Finck, on the other hand, explained that Davis is “open to forces unspeakable” and that the two “see each other soul to soul.”

Currently, Eyes Out has “a single-player immersive cosmic horror game with strong environmental storytelling elements” in development. Many may look at the headline and wonder what Spec Ops: The Line and Nine Inch Nails have to do with cosmic horror, but both Davis and Finck have experience with horror, so Eyes Out could very well put out something worth playing.