Paramount, the multimedia giant behind huge IP like Avatar: The Last Airbender, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Star Trek, has felt the wind shift. The company announced during Summer Game Fest that it would be venturing headfirst into the vast world of video games with its new games division, Paramount Games Studio. That means, you guessed it, a Yellowstone video game could be in the studio’s future.
Alongside the announcement of the studio’s debut, Paramount Game Studios also revealed its collaboration with action-game developer PlatinumGames, the studio behind Bayonetta. The developer will be working on an adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, whose trailer revealed little beyond a sneak peek at a grim-looking, futuristic New York.
However, The Last Ronin is just the first step for Paramount Games Studio’s projects. In June, Polygon spoke with Shawn Kittelsen, head of creative and production at Paramount Games Studio, who revealed more about what to expect from the studio.
Paramount Games is focusing on ‘core’ properties
While Kittelsen revealed that the “core four” properties Paramount Games is targeting are Ninja Turtles, Star Trek, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and SpongeBob SquarePants, the executive confirmed the “Sheridanverse” — referring to Yellowstone’s creator, Taylor Sheridan — is also a property Paramount Games is interested in building upon.
“All of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone-adjacent titles, Landman, Tulsa King, these are all priorities for us,” Kittelsen tells Polygon.
An American neo-Western drama, Yellowstone is an original series that follows the Dutton family, who own the largest cattle ranch in Montana. While it mostly follows the Duttons, the show delves into topics like the displacement and mistreatment of Native Americans and the gentrification of land. A new spinoff, the Kevin Costner-less Dutton Ranch, continues to be the most popular thing on TV, Paramount Pllus and beyond.
Yellowstone wasn’t the only property that Kittelsen expressed interest in. He also pointed to Sheridan’s other work, Lioness. An American spy thriller, the series focuses on a CIA team that enlists female operatives to go undercover in life-threatening situations to make an impact in the war on terror.
While no details were given on what sort of video game to expect for the proposed titles, it’s undeniably exciting news for fans of Sheridan’s work, made even more so by Kittelsen’s comments that Paramount Games is taking extra care in choosing which partner works best for which IP.
“We are not brand managers, and we are not IP value extractors,” Kittelsen explains. “We are cultural stewards, and these stories, characters, and worlds mean something to the fans who invest so much of their time and money in them. We need to honor that relationship, or we will lose them.”
“If we start like, willy-nilly licensing everything that we can and just to check boxes and fill the coffers, people will get wise to it, and we won’t actually see the success that we could. But if we build pillar by pillar, find the right partners, and make the right games for the audience, I think we can achieve massive success.”
Kittelsen further stressed that the player’s perspective comes first — hence why Paramount Games Studio isn’t working with anyone who hasn’t produced a classic before.
“Everything has to come from that player first, fan-first perspective. We’re being much more selective about our partners because everything that we do, we don’t want to just spray and pray. Like we always say: we want missiles, not bullets.”
But it’s worth noting: Sheridan’s domination of pop culture has already come for video games in the form of 2028’s Call of Duty movie. It seems like only a matter of time before the pipelines works in reverse.