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Visceral Games

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Visceral Games
FormerlyEA Redwood Shores (1998–2009)
Company typeDivision
IndustryVideo games
Founded1998; 26 years ago (1998)
DefunctOctober 17, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-10-17)
Headquarters
Redwood City, California
,
US
Key people
Products
Number of employees
80 (2017)
ParentElectronic Arts

Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores)[1] was an American video game developer studio owned by Electronic Arts. The studio is best known for creating and principally developing the Dead Space series, and was also involved in making Tiger Woods PGA Tour games between 1999 and 2006.

History

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EA Redwood Shores (1998–2009)

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In 1998, Electronic Arts (EA) moved from San Mateo, California to a new corporate headquarters building that they had constructed in Redwood Shores, California.[2] In this move, they founded a studio at this location, named EA Redwood Shores, which operated under the general "EA Games" division.

EA Redwood Shores's initial title was Future Cop: LAPD, released in 1998. Subsequent games through 2008 were generally licensed tie-ins with movies and other properties.[3] According to designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell, EA had not been keen on producing original intellectual property (IP) during this time, but the studio was pursuing an idea of making a second sequel to System Shock and Vice President and General Manager Glen Schofield had been trying to coax EA's executives to let them pursue this. While they had some gameplay and ideas set for this game, the title changed upon the release of Capcom's Resident Evil 4 in 2005, which received high critical praise and commercial success. According to Wanat and Bagwell, not only did Resident Evil 4 alter their ideas for the System Shock game, but it also helped Schofield to convince EA's management to let them pursue a new title. The game became known as Dead Space.[4]

Redwood Shores becomes Visceral Games

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Dead Space was a critical success, leading the studio to be rebranded to Visceral Games in 2009.[3] Along with this, the studio was moved out from EA Games and became its own division under EA, being the first "genre" studio within the company, with the focus of developing third-person action games in the same vein as Dead Space.[5] Alongside the rebranding, two sister studios, Visceral Montreal in Montreal, Quebec alongside EA Montreal, and Visceral Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia were established.[6]

Alongside its work for Dante's Inferno, inspired by the Divine Comedy, Visceral had announced plans in 2009 for a title called The Ripper, which was inspired by Jack the Ripper.[3] The Ripper was confirmed to have been cancelled, potentially as early as 2009,[7] but industry rumors suggested that a spin-out of that title Blood Dust had been at work at the Visceral Melbourne studio before the project was cancelled. The Visceral Melbourne studio was closed down on September 19, 2011.[8]

On its release in 2010, Dante's Inferno received mixed reviews, and the studio subsequently returned to Dead Space with its sequel Dead Space 2, released in 2011.[3] The sequel has similar critical success, but in 2017, it was revealed that the game was considered a financial disappointment with EA; following the studio's closure, former level design Zach Wilson estimated that with development costs around $47M and an equivalent marketing budget, EA did not recoup enough costs on 4 million in sales.[9][3]

Visceral continued working on the next title, Dead Space 3, which they wanted to make in the same vein as the first title, but according to Wanat, there was concern from EA about this approach, and among other large changes, had the team introduce co-operative play into the game.[10] Wanat described that there was pressure to make the game play faster and appeal to a broader audience, an approach that was at odds with the roots of the series in the horror genre.[4] Though the game still had generally positives on its release in 2013, it sold far less than Dead Space 2.[4] EA's VP Patrick Söderlund said in a July 2013 interview, following Dead Space 3's that while they still valued the franchise, Visceral was not working on a fourth title, and instead had been assigned to two new projects.[11]

Visceral had also been developing Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel with the Visceral Montreal studio. Upon its completion, EA let go of the whole of Visceral Montreal on February 21, 2013.[12] One of the two projects that Visceral started working on in 2013 was Battlefield Hardline, a "Cops and Robbers" variation on the previous Battlefield games.[3] A smaller team then started working on a project called Jamaica, a pirate-themed game.[13]

Final years

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Main article: Project Ragtag

In early 2013, Disney had acquired Lucasfilm and shut down its game development studio LucasArts. EA quickly made a deal to help develop lucrative Star Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral.[13] Furthermore, Ubisoft had announced Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which also was based on a pirate theme.[13] EA cancelled the Jamaica project in favor of a Star Wars game. The studio opted to pitch a third-person action game that maintained the spirit of Jamaica, having players play as "space scoundrels" in an open-world-style Star Wars universe, and code-named this project as Yuma.[13] Amy Hennig, the writer for the first three Uncharted games from Naughty Dog, was brought into EA for Visceral as creative lead and to help write the story for Yuma.[13] The concept was later changed, making it about a large-scale heist and renaming it Ragtag.

EA made the decision to close down Visceral on October 17, 2017.[13] EA reassigned the Star Wars game to its EA Worldwide Studios, led by EA Vancouver, and said they will revamp the gameplay.[14] The closure of Visceral was seen as a sign of the waning interest in publishers in making games that are strictly single player, as many of Visceral's games had been.[3][15][16][17] In light of these concerns, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson stated that the reason for Visceral's closure wasn't a single-player versus multiplayer game issue, but instead one based on listening to player feedback and following marketplace trends. The company felt that the current design of Ragtag wasn't fitting these changes and that the closure of Visceral and reassignment to another studio was because "we needed to pivot the design".[18]

Games

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Year Game Platform(s)
as EA Redwood Shores
1998 Future Cop: LAPD Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation
1999 CyberTiger PlayStation
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2000
2000 NASCAR Rumble
Road Rash: Jailbreak
F1 Championship Season 2000 PlayStation 2
2001 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2001
Rumble Racing
James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
2002 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 PlayStation 2
Freekstyle PlayStation 2, GameCube
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
2003 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox
2004 James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
2005 Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360
James Bond 007: From Russia with Love GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, PlayStation Portable
2006 The Godfather Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
2007 The Sims 2: Pets GameCube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii
MySims Wii, Microsoft Windows
The Sims 2: Castaway Wii, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable
The Simpsons Game PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Xbox 360
2008 The Sims Carnival: Snap City Microsoft Windows
The Sims 2: Apartment Life
Dead Space Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
MySims Kingdom Wii
2009 MySims Party
The Godfather II Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
as Visceral Games
2009 Dead Space: Extraction PlayStation 3, Wii
MySims Agents Wii
2010 Dante's Inferno PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
The Sims 3: Ambitions Microsoft Windows, OS X
2011 Dead Space 2[19] Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
2013 Dead Space 3
Battlefield 3: End Game[20]
Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
2015 Battlefield Hardline Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Cancelled The Ripper PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Cancelled Blood Dust PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Cancelled Dante's Purgatory Likely PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Cancelled "Project Ragtag" - unnamed Star Wars title Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

References

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  1. ^ McWhertor, Michael (May 4, 2009). "Dead Space Devs Change Their Name To Visceral Games". Kotaku. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
  2. ^ Simon, Mark (February 23, 1995). "EA Plans To Leave San Mateo / Game company moving to Redwood Shores". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved October 19, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g McCarthy, Caty (October 19, 2017). "The Rise and Fall of Visceral Games". US Gamer. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  4. ^ a b c Paget, Mat (January 15, 2017). "How Resident Evil 4 turned System Shock 3 into Dead Space". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  5. ^ Nutt, Christopher (February 10, 2010). "A Distinct Vision: Nick Earl And Visceral Games". Gamasutra. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  6. ^ Alexander, Leigh (October 13, 2010). "Interview: Earl Reveals EA's Expansion Of Visceral Label". Gamasutra. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  7. ^ Conduit, Jessica (February 24, 2012). "All clues point to concept art for Visceral's canned Jack the Ripper title". Engadget. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  8. ^ Reilly, Luke (September 18, 2011). "Visceral Games Melbourne Shut Down". IGN. Retrieved August 4, 2012.
  9. ^ Chalk, Andy (October 18, 2017). "Former Visceral designer says Dead Space 2 cost $60 million and 'underperformed'". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  10. ^ Bratt, Chris (February 23, 2017). "The Dead Space 3 the developers wanted to make". Eurogamer. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  11. ^ Makuch, Eddie (June 18, 2013). "Dead Space series not killed". GameSpot. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  12. ^ Marchiafava, Jeff (February 21, 2013). "Update #2: Visceral Montreal Employee Confirms Entire Staff Let Go". Game Informer. Archived from the original on February 24, 2013. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  13. ^ a b c d e f Schreier, Jason (October 27, 2017). "The Collapse Of Visceral's Ambitious Star Wars Game". Kotaku. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  14. ^ Wales, Matt (October 17, 2017). "EA has shut down Visceral Games". Eurogamer. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
  15. ^ Sarkar, Samit (October 18, 2017). "EA's Star Wars 'pivot' is a vote of no confidence in single-player games". Polygon. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  16. ^ Staff (October 19, 2017). "Does Visceral's closure prove AAA single-player games are dying?". Gamasutra. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  17. ^ Klepek, Patrick (October 17, 2017). "Today's Star Wars News Makes the Future of Single-Player Look Very Messy". Vice. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  18. ^ Chalk, Andy (November 1, 2017). "EA CEO says Visceral closure and 'Ragtag' cancellation wasn't about single vs. multiplayer". PC Gamer. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  19. ^ "EA Brings the Terror to Space in Dead Space 2". Electronic Arts. December 7, 2009. Retrieved December 8, 2009.
  20. ^ "Visceral made the End Game DLC for Battlefield 3". Reddit. June 3, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
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