Visceral Games is Now a Dead Space

Visceral Games appeared to be a studio in fine shape despite going through some hurdles. The Dead Space survival/horror series became a reliable franchise for them and publisher EA, until the latter demanded more after Dead Space 2 didn’t reach the lofty sales required of a mid-gen AAA game to justify its budget. Dead Space 3 was more action based despite retaining some horror themes, and featured human enemies mixed in with the horrifying and grotesque monsters. Fans didn’t take well to the changes, and it didn’t attract many players who didn’t experience the first game, so it also sold below expectations. This was sadly the end of the Dead Space series.

Also: You know there’s a problem with how games are budgeted and their sales expectations when selling four million worldwide isn’t enough, and this issue has only worsened since.

Despite losing their key franchise, it seemed Visceral would move along okay after handling the single-player mode for Battlefield: Hardline. The team responsible for Dead Space, though, was given a far more important project in a new Star Wars game. Anticipation for the title rose further when it was confirmed that Amy Hennig, known for her contributions to the Legacy of Kain and Uncharted franchises, was helming it. It was nice that she was given a new project after having a falling out at Naughty Dog. There hadn’t been any news or leaks about trouble at the company.

The above info is why it was surprising to see the sudden news that EA is closing Visceral Games. It’s been a little more than a day since the announcement, but it’s still a shock. This wasn’t helped by EA’s statement about the reasons being PR fluff. Speculation suggested the Star Wars game was taking a while because the development heads were giving the team reasonable work hours, but it appears all wasn’t well behind the scenes.

We first heard about the project after EA made a deal with Disney to develop several Star Wars games in April of 2013, but development started in earnest when Hennig joined the company in April 2014. Since then, though, we heard little other than assurances that it was still in development. It was confirmed to be a single-player game in the spirit of an Uncharted title, familiar territory for Hennig. There were also rumors saying it was planned to launch alongside the recently titled Solo: A Star Wars Story (man, that name…), implying that it would have some kind of connection to it.

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it preview was finally shown as part of a video that detailed the future of Star Wars games at the EA Play conference during E3 2016, which showed only six seconds of it. This was taken as a prelude to a larger reveal at E3 2017, but that sadly never happened. Instead, Hennig tweeted that this was Star Wars Battlefront II’s year, and said nothing about the state of this game’s development. There were no reports about it having development issues despite it taking a long time to manifest, so many took this to mean it was still fine, and that it would be revealed sometime later this year. Basically, this news isn’t what most expected.

The game’s development woes are only part of the reason for these issues. There’s been plenty of discussion about how AAA single-player games are having a rocky time, and this is only the latest piece of evidence showing EA’s directional change. EA previously put a smaller team at Bioware on the single-player focused Mass Effect Andromeda, for instance, while the larger team is still working on persistent online experience Anthem. Andromeda was sadly unsuccessful critically and commercially, which resulted in the Mass Effect franchise being put to a (supposed) temporary rest, while the big team is still focusing on the persistent online game. This recent news is another signal that EA wants to focus less on single-player-focused games and more on Games as a Service titles, and that’s bad news for anyone who enjoys the former on a AAA level.

EA confirmed that development of the Star Wars game has been moved to EA Vancouver, and will undergo a directional change. In reading between the lines, this means the old game has been cancelled, and a brand-new project that will use its assets and perhaps some ideas will take its place. They claim to have analyzed player desires throughout the development process, who said they want a title they can “come back to and enjoy for a long time to come.” That’s enough to suggest this will no longer be a linear single-player game, and either an open-world title or a persistent online experience like Destiny or the aforementioned Avalon, set in the Star Wars universe. You can count on it being stuffed to the brim with microtransactions and loot boxes. It’s unfortunate news for those of us who like single-player AAA titles, and knew Visceral could deliver a potentially enjoyable one.

It’s worth noting that Kotaku’s Jason Schreier, who’s proven to be an extremely reliable insider in the past, heard the game wasn’t cancelled because it was single-player. He was actually told the project was a mess, but EA didn’t want to tell investors that. The new game just happened to fit the direction that EA wants to go in.

Meanwhile, EA is currently “in discussions” about Hennig’s next move, which sounds pretty grim. She specialized in directing and producing single-player projects, so they may not have anything for her if they’re leaving those behind, unless they’re okay with giving her a lower-budget project.

Come to think of it: Fate has dealt a seriously poor hand to single-player Star Wars games lately. Before this, there was Star Wars 1313, a linear Uncharted-style game that was being developed by LucasArts’ internal studios. Disney shuttered them when they purchased the rights to the Star Wars franchise, as part of an effort to get out of non-mobile and browser gaming. When the deal was made for games with EA, it was suspected that Visceral’s game would inherit the spirit of this title; turns out, it did.

We won’t receive a cinematic single-player Star Wars game for a while, as long as they’re under EA. But it’s difficult to determine what the state of video games will be like in (yikes) 2023 and beyond, assuming Disney doesn’t renew the Star Wars license with EA. There’s a good chance they’ll renew it, so hopefully developers can put some good work into smaller single-player efforts like the campaign for Battlefront II. But we’ll have to primarily get our sci-fi single-player fix elsewhere in the future, along with our survival/horror fix.