The Jurassic World Movie Was Originally Conceived as a Game

Game designer Jonathan "Seamus" Blackley, best known as a creator and designner of the original Xbox, recently took to Twitter to tell the story of the failed Jurassic Park: Trespasser sequel.

Prior to his career at Microsoft, Blackley worked at DreamWorks Interactive, where he produced, among other things, Trespasser, a Jurassic Park shooter with a focus on survival and realistic interaction with the environment. The game had poor reception and turned out to be a commercial failure, selling about 50,000 copies.

During press events for Trespasser, Blackley met Bill Gates, then the CEO of Microsoft. According to the game designer, Gates was impressed with the technical achievements of Trespasser and helped him to secure a job at Microsoft. Later Blackley left the company and co-founded Capital Entertainment Group. During this time, Blackley began collaborating with Steven Spielberg, director of Jurassic Park.

At one point, the director reached out to the developer, saying that he wanted to revive his dinosaur franchise starting with a sequel to Trespasser. So, Blackley started working on a story and gameplay of a potential project. The development team also had to create a pitch trailer that would then be shown to Spielberg. The game was to be called Jurassic World.

The trailer was leaked in 2013 with many people thinking that it was related to 2015's Jurassic World movie starring Chris Pratt, while in fact, it was created for the Trespasser sequel.

Blackley states that Spielberg "loved" the trailer and the story was approved, however, the game was eventually canceled amid the reorganization at Universal. All the art assets were sent to Frank Marshall, the producer for Jurassic World.

"There was a movie in the works, and the cancellation of the game meant they got everything," Blackley wrote. "Honestly this was the best outcome possible."

The game designer concluded with the promise to share some storyboards and art for his canceled sequel Trespasser in August.