Visceral to shut down

[DjchunKfunK]

Looks like trying to make a good third person Star Wars game is harder than people think as EA have announced that the game Visceral were working on is being revamped and moved to a different studio whilst Visceral themselves are being shutdown.

This quote from Soderlund about the game is pretty depressing.

“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe,” EA’s Patrick Söderlund said in a blog post. “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.”

Basically the game wasn't Star Wars Destiny, so we killed the studio.

Another EA studio bites the dust, seriously who would ever sign up with EA?

[Mantis]

Looking forward to an online only, loot box laden, open world, collectible and gear grinding, co-operative multiplayer experience instead.

Don't you just love how all these top tier games always end up the same? It's like booting up an old favourite rather than having to make the effort of learning something scary and new.

Can't wait, personally. Good on EA for listening to focus groups and market forces.

[Raid]

we needed to pivot the design.”

What a horrible euphemism.

I'm not going to lie, the idea of a shared-world Star Wars game does actually appeal, so if Star Wars Destiny is what they're going to make I'll at least listen to the pitch. If though it does just turn into a 10 hour story followed by a 5000 hour grind, then I'll probably just ignore it as I have Destiny.

[Sly Boots]

Don't ignore your destiny, Raid. Embrace it.

[Raid]

Currently my destiny is the uneaten Twix I have sat next to me. I shall embrace my destiny post-haste!

[Sly Boots]

[eVoL]

Any Hennig mulling over some life decisions

[Animalmother]

What game was this anyway? Sounds a bit like what happened with that other 3rd person SW game that got shit canned (Floor 2626 or something similar?) a few years back.

[Prey]

I mean I understand Visceral had been stripped down a peg or two to what it once was when it first brought us Dead Space but...these guys brought us Dead Space! One of the most fantastic survival horror games series ever devised. Sure DS3 didn't set the gaming world on fire and EA utterly fucked it up for many with their greedy tactics but I still personally enjoyed it - especially in cooperative mode. Granted also that sales for the series were never that high but what did they expect, it's scary as fuck.

Not only have they shut down a studio that still could have done great things but the fact Amy Hennig was brought on board only for it all to fall apart like it has is nothing short of a tragedy. We all know something no doubt very special and precisely what we wanted was in the making all this time but EA being EA see cash before creativity as always and we now have another Star Wars 1313 on our hands. Something that could have brought Star Wars games back to the forefront where they rightly belong only for it to be cruelly demolished right along with yet more of our dreams for a truly memorable Star Wars game.

Also reading through EG's comments with many mentioning the death of their long term hobby is nothing short of depressing because the fact of the matter is they are spot on. The industry is destroying itself from within due to frankly out of control inflated developmental costs and the need to recoup the money via the means of the ever growing but still ever shitty preorder culture and significantly underhanded in game business practices that are now bordering on being outright illegal. It's sad to see what it has become and even sadder to think that many will one day walk away from their life long hobbies out of simple disgust when there is still so much left to enjoy. Things need to seriously fucking change before it's too late.

Fucking EA man. Devourer and destroyer of studios. As said why anyone would sign up with them is beyond me.

[Animalmother]

Why anyone would want to get involved in the gaming industry at all these days is beyond me, sounds fucking horrific.

(Also loved Dead Space 3....)

[Prey]

There's stuff popping up now on Twitter from ex Visceral guys...

Dead Space 2 cost 60 Million dollars to make and they were merciless with their budget. they only sold 4 mil and that wasn't enough.

I don't know if it turned a profit. But it underperformed, and meeting expectations are as important.

[DjchunKfunK]

You got a link for those tweets Dave?

[Prey]

Sure Nat...

https://twitter.com/covernode/status/92 ... wsrc%5Etfw

[DjchunKfunK]

Thanks.

[Lee]

Wow so they spent the same on making the game as marketing it and they wonder why their not making a huge profit off of 4 million copies sold.