Electronic Arts has announced that it is closing down Visceral Studios. Visceral Studios was the team behind the Dead Space series, and was working on a brand new action adventure Star Wars game. Unfortunately, though, EA decided to restart this Star Wars project with a new team, and is shutting down Visceral Studios.
According to EA, the game simply did not meet its expectations.
“In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.”
Electronic Arts claimed that it will shift as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at it. Now I can’t help but remember the story with Slightly Mad Studios, and how EA – according to Ian Bell – tried to close the studio. Sounds a bit familiar?
Electronic Arts also stated that it will shift the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency. The game will still be using the Frostbite Engine. It will also reimagine central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.
And that is that. Visceral Studios is no more. Unfortunately we won’t ever know what this Star Wars game was all about, and whether its new version will be dumbed down in order to appeal to a broader audience.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Loved the first 2 DS, i was hoping to see something interesting from this star wars project too. Sad day…
“Unfortunately we won’t ever know what this Star Wars game was all about, and whether its new version will be dumbed down in order to appeal to a broader audience.”
Videogaming world, the latest decade, in a nutshell.
Several decades, actually.
No, not really, a single decade is quite correct actually, i’d say 2006/2007 is the year trash like PS3 X360 and Wii came out, and many games started going multiplatform so yeah, dumbed down versions, and a decreasing overall quality of titles that started back then, and it’s still going down nowadays.
E3 2007: The year Video Game Journalists turned into wh*res.
2007: The year “PC Gaming is Dead” started.
2007: The year the industry underwent its massive ideological shift, from a PC-first “quality-over-quantity” focus to a console-first “quantity over quality” focus, which has directly lead to the current situation.
Albeit, it may have in fact started “internally” in mid-to-late 2006, but 2007 is when it all publicly came to a head, as I recall.
It’s partly funny, because just a few years before that, we had the legendary 2004, i think there was never a better year for videogames.
A lot of people *cough cough* had expectations that 2011 would live up to it, in one form or another….. then the Fall 2011 season actually hit us & those expectations were quickly shattered.
After that, I think most people just stopped presuming anything, any more.
“then the Fall 2011 season actually hit us & those expectations were quickly shattered.”
No wonder.
i agree so much with this
before the ps360: the gaming world was divided into 3
1.console games mostly japanese games that took advantage of gamepads and were not trying to be too much complicated to appeal to the masses was good for everyone and pleased children and adults(for kids spyro the dragon,ratchet and clank and for adults resident evil,metal gear,silent hill…)
great for local multiplayer games like super smash bros,mario kart and tekken…
2.pc gaming mostly western dev making amazing open world rpg games like baldur gates and morrowind and home of RTS and SIMULATORS that was a platform that pushed visual and technical innovations like half life 2 and the first far cry,and games were complex aiming at a mature hardcore audience.
and home of online gaming!
3.handheld games from the gbc to gba to psp and nintendo ds mostly pared down games from the home consoles mostly aimed at children or nomad gamers still they were some gems on them that the handheld nature of those consoles were perfect for those games like pokemon or patapon…
no matter which system you chose you had something special no other system can deliver.
today its all about pleasing the masses and destroying legendary IP’s by dumbing them down for consoles and mostly to attract any type of gamer instead of core fans.
i would not blame only the consoles i would blame greed.
greed destroyed diversity and originality and no big risks whatsoever are being taken in the gaming industry anymore.
we get sequels after sequels and remasters we are so hungry for nostalgia some games like sonic mania exist which is a good thing.
today games are not even complete they get released broken because developers knows most gamers got access to the internet so they can patch it while taking their sweet time(and making money out of impatient customers)
they get released with limited content compared to their older counterparts and they got the cancer named “dlc”
when in older games those content were in the game or locked by playing the game unlocking said contents(or using cheat codes damn i miss those),today they are behind a paywall most of the time.
i started playing on the snes then ps1 and ps2 at the same time i got into pc gaming around the ps1 era at first lightly because i was still a kid but i saw the advantages of the pc platform and the versatility.
Anyway as i get older i keep thinking about if it was really better before…sure there are some advantages today but i truly think gaming are on a regression in term of quality nowadays or maybe i just cant keep up with the time…time will tell
The industry has definitely featured major regressive qualities in the last decade, absolutely.
“Unfortunately we won’t ever know what this Star Wars game was all about, and whether its new version will be dumbed down in order to appeal to a broader audience.”
What’s the bet Visceral wanted to make another Dead Space (OG) or a spiritual successor to the original Dead Space, whereas EA wanted another Dead Space 3? Probably with a nice side of loot boxes, to boot.
After all, these
peopleanimals never learn…..Which reminds me the recnt article about cd project. The site glassdoor says
Rating 3.3
Approve of CEO 64% reccomend to a friend 61%
on ubisoft
Rating 3.9
Approve of CEO 98% reccomend to a friend 86%
and finally ea
Rating 3.9
Approve of CEO 96% reccomend to a friend 82%
I guess some people are masochistic.
More like bots, I’m thinking.
EA kills DEAD SPACE games first, second, Visceral Games itself.
EA f**ck you!
So not only do they kill the devs who made Dead Space, a game loved by many, they turn this new Star Wars game possibly into something your six-year old autistic nìgger who can’t fûcking read will be able to play.
When are we going to boycott EA games? There won’t be a gaming industry left once they suck every ounce of life from it! As it stands, there aren’t any games from them. It’s all IP themed, loot gambling, pachinko, GaaS garbage.
When? I don’t know about anyone else, but I started years ago, already.
i already uninstalled origin a long time ago, i’ed recommend to each and everyone that has a functioning brain to do the same (same to Uplay)
their games are not worth playing and if i desire to replay to pre-EA bioware game
there is always GOG
Well, I’ve been doing my part, not bought a hing from them since ME 3 and BF3 back in 2011-12
After Bioware dies properly. As much as I hate to admit, underneath the rubbish bloated tedious exterior of inquisition, there was still a great game with a lot of heart(play the expansions). Once that heart is ripped out, most of us will be done.
If Anthem fails to deliver, BioWare Edmonton is absolutely next on the chopping block. And of course, either way, Dragon Age 4 has serious expectations to live up to, lest BioWare Austin go the way of BioWare Montreal…..
honestly if the game’s anticipation is too low they’ll just can the studio and the project
that what happend to C&C 4 when they decided it’s gonna be always online fee2pay game
same thing happend to Fable legands and many other games
not enough expectation–publisher axes the studio and the project–member when Company X made som good games memes–EA’s public opinion recede even lower
Sounds like Activision; “doesn’t pay taxes, record profits, still axes as many jobs as possible, because f*ck spending money :D”
it’s like a competition for them
who can be the cheapest, greediest laziest sack of $hit publisher that ever lived
As a Star Wars fan I’m really disappointed….
We’ll get a “new” multiplayer! (maybe sand box! ) with endless DLC and season passes!, and please please don’t forget the loot crates!
They did the same with Mirror’s Edge, and now this….
My condolences. From a Fan Of Westwood games. EA killed . No suprise.
“Throughout the development process, we have been… closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace”
Expect loot boxes, consumable DLC, micro-transactions, gated content exclusive to those who pre-order and at least two season passes in the ‘restarted’ game when released.
No, thats no what he meant, its the disgusting, teenage Open World, co-op and MP
new game already confirmed guys xD
https://i.imgur.com/TkU3KzB.jpg
don’t give them any ideas…
To be fair, the loss of BioWare Montreal was a joyous occasion.
Bioware? we already lost it 10 years ago! 🙁
EA is the Satan of gaming, no other publishers has ruined so many studios for the sake
of greed or ignorance (or propaganda)
i sincerely hope that one day they’ll go bankrupt and get eaten by another money hungry publisher
that or the next video game crash (we SORELY need another crash)
You clearly are not seeing any objective positives of EA, I am not a fan, just saying that:
– EA Access and Origin Access cost 2,08€ per month, you will get pretty much every EA AAA game older than 6 months, what other publisher have it?
– Demo/Beta on every new release
– Free AAA games on Origin (On the house)
– They finance new experimental titles, Titanfall, Unravel, Mirror’s Edge etc…
– New in-house technologies, Frostbite is one of the most advanced engines in the gaming industry, pushing real-time graphics boundaries
– Big DLCs for free (everything in Titanfall 2 is for free)
– Free will of developers, just look how Ghost Games added new features to NFS 2015, DICE added SP campaign in Battlefront, exactly what fans wanted
and yet there is not a single game worth playing
all the good games were made before 2013 and what we currently have is just a $hitstorm of bad rushed microtransactioned infested, SJW crammed, multiplayer foucsed games with no redeemable quality
as for titanfall, it’s the exception and not the rule..
“New experimental” like Mirror’s Edge? Seriously? It was a reboot of a DICE IP they made long ago, for f*ck’s sake.
Yeah, but they’re forcing Frostbite down everyone’s throats, which has resulted in many issues, already.
Yeah, they dumped their IP-killing Map Pack system in favour of microtransactions. Yippe-ki-yay.
“Free will of developers”? You can’t possibly be serious.
already did in 2013
Bioware should be in undead status since it still exists, in name only maybe…
it’s EAware since 2013
none of the original Caucasian staff remain, well except for the cucks that decided to remain under EA’s tyranny
Why bother, they will close down one way or the other, buying or not…
Open world ruined gaming forever.
Open world is a fad that marketing departments decided to bank on, nothing more. That’s like saying Call of Duty 4 ruined gaming forever. It’s not Infinity Ward (OG)’s fault that Activision decided to wh*re out Call of Duty for maximum profits. They made a good game, should they not have?
Yeah, in the long term, Call of Duty caused a lot of damage to the 7th generation. So what. At the end of the day, it’s always the publishers that keep pushing mediocre “quantity + accessibility first” content.
Same with open world; it’s a marketing bullet point made big by actual sandbox RPGs which, however, has failed to generate a new Call of Duty-grade IP time & time again, regardless (surprise!).
hmm, there is nothing wrong with CoD, with few exceptions (pre MW and Ghosts) I finished SP in all of them, its a great ride like watching blockbuster movie, its short and fun, I dont care about MP so no idea how it goes.
I think that every generation of teenagers is dumber than the previous one, if mine in the 80s was building up home BBS and hacking dialup, the current one is dump as bag of fleas, all they want is Sandboxing with their mates and mess-around in the gaming world, no one cares about stories anymore.
Dumb games for dumb “people” no one has patience for Story based games, AND they are “so poor” that its “too expensive to buy story based game that you finish once and forget” (I heard this said online gazilion times), we live in a dumb world where people trying to over stupid each otehr, just compare MTV shows of 80s and 90s to current ones, they wont even put them on replay because its wwayyy to complicated and not PC enough for the modern teenager.
crytek with crysis 1-2-3 ?
They killed themselves.
Yeah, no, like Alfred said, that was all on Crytek. They purposefully, internally made the choice to wh*re themselves out to consoles with the sequel while also turning it into a Call of Duty clone & then they only partly repented with Crysis 3, so yeah.
EA has only ever owned the publishing rights to Crysis, which gives them a voice, but only so much actual power. As such, the decisions made are squarely on Crytek’s shoulders.
good! dead space 3 was terrible. 2 was just a rehash of 1. 1 was decent at best. everyone of value left that studio ages ago anyways.
EA is literally cancer to developers.
A sad day 🙁 , I feel for the teams and their families it always hurts to see a fellow team/company get dissolved by X parent company/publisher.
I really hope this “we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.” is true and they all are taken care of. At this point, I doubt it 🙁
mudhafkas ” it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game” that’s exactly what we need in sea of countless souless empty online multiplayer bs
goddamn it ea you have the tech to make great singleplayer games
but all we get is online bs with lootboxes and microtransactions
EA need to be boycotted , this out of touch braindead making the decisions are farming millions out of us wile delievring less each time, cuz we let them
whatever idiots are preordering those season passes and buying into those microtransactions you are the morons that giving ea the greenlight to keep doing that
STOP u goddamn fking idiots
Ladies & gentleman i Give you
” the Worst Company Award Winner”
twice in a row.
The thng that pisses me the most is that Amy Henning was on it, which means it could be star wars uncharted and non of that sjw feminist crap that battlefornt 2 story wil end up being. I am not kidding look up who writes the story and what are their view about Anita Sarkeesian.
Abut alas, we couldnt have a good star wars game lik jed knight 2 or even republic commando. Ea has to reboot it into a open world colectahaton with lootboxes.
All visceral had to do was to make a dead space game like the first one. Seems we will never see another dead space.
Hey at this point that doesnt sound so bad.
F*CK YOU EA!