I was already having a rough day. And this is really sad.
Working on Love Island the Game wasn't always easy in a variety of ways, especially at the end, but even after most of us were laid off amid dramatic circumstances, more than two years ago now, it was nice knowing that some people enjoyed our work that was still out there.
The Season 3 episodes and scenes, and the ones I edited, were my first experiences in a game studio team (shoutout the scenes with Tai, Rafi, and Lily that were the first pieces of writing I did on the game!). I learned so much from that, from The Wedding, Chelsea's Murder Mystery and The Boat Party, from all the prototypes and ideation that never went anywhere (that wonderful Regency-era Noah art... sigh...), from how the characters and storylines came together for Season 4 aka Bombshell (I loved coming up with the original concepts for Bruno, and Oliver, and Juliet, and Lexi, and Tiffany, and Valentina, and Kobi, and Hazeem: absolute joys to write and to see other writers bringing them extra sparks of life, and to do the same with helping bring other writers' concepts to life, and to start doing all sorts of exciting senior role stuff). It was very sad and stressful when it turned out that we couldn't be there to complete Season 4 in as polished a way as all of us wanted.
I'm still friends with many of the people I worked with on Love Island the Game and our other projects, and the things that didn't end up going out there, and I've worked with some of them since which was an absolute pleasure. I saw a lot of them earlier this month, and chatted with one on a video call just this morning. The way it ended for us was very painful, but a lot of it up to that point was so much fun.
There will still be some of the work I did for Love Island the Game out there in Season 4/Bombshell. But what a shame that a huge chunk of the work we all did, and the work before my time that got the studio its audience in the first place, turns out to be so ephemeral.
Thank you to all the people who played and enjoyed the work we made.