Friday 27 Lifestyle | MixTape Friday, October 20, 2017 Another one bites the dust: EA, Visceral and gaming’s dire straits

By Aakash Bakaya

This week’s piece was supposed to be about something com- pletely different but I felt this recent event had to be addressed. On Tuesday night, EA announced the closure of , adding yet another beloved game-maker to EA’s discard pile. Visceral Games was the studio behind ‘’, ‘’ and ‘Battlefield: Hardline’ but it’s their new work on an unannounced ‘’ title that has left the gaming world shaking their head in disbelief with this rash decision. Visceral has being working on the title for over 5 years now and this year’s E3 even had a video update on it. My infuriation on this topic (and I am quite distraught) has little to do with Visceral actually closing down - but with EA’s tone-deaf response that personifies mainstream gaming’s cor- porate, behind-closed-doors culture. On a bland, all white webpage, they apologetically speak about the “changes” to their upcoming Star Wars title while only indirectly speaking about Visceral staff being “moved” to other projects. I’m not asking for EA to celebrate yet another failure on their part that has led to yet another studio closure but maybe an acknowledgment of the studio’s work or a show of thanks would be a pleasant change for once. They leave those responses entirely to the media and the fans and then they wonder where the outrage comes from. So what is the long-winding reason for this change to the Star Wars project? To quote EA’s document itself they say - “In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, ‘Dead Space’ was a beloved Visceral Games property published by EA. linear . Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening approach is mind boggling but that is the reality of modern tioned are only a minuscule example of just how well some of to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and gaming. The success of MOBAs, multiplayer shooters and now these titles are doing financially. Store-fronts like Steam and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has battle-royal games are making big publishers push their high- GOG are main source for finding these games and they’re become clear that to deliver an experience that players will ly experienced and successful talents into creative ruts that some of the best gaming deals you’ll ever find. want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we appeal only to profit margins than any long-lasting artistic needed to pivot the design.” What they are basically saying is appeal. Murdered potential their moving away from a purely single-player experience and I applaud any of those talents who jumped the “AAA” ship EA might applaud their own “independent” division every moving towards making the game appeal to a wider “market- a long time ago because except for a handful of publishers, E3 but after the curtains are drawn - all the lights on these place” IE yet another soulless, cosmetic micro-transaction the larger companies have seemingly lost their way. It’s funny projects go off as well. You would think they would at least driven multiplayer game. to see so many gamers shunning these “blockbuster” titles as attempt to market them but apart from a few pre-release off late because the indie and mid-tier scene is doing better updates, they are quickly swept under the rug to make way for Sad reality than ever before. Titles like ‘Stardew Valley’, ‘Rocket League’, their premier showpieces. EA has always had the potential for It’s hard to look at it any other way. The game director ‘Darkest Dungeon’, ‘Hollow Knight’ and ‘Cuphead’ have built an amazing mid-tier lineup. and from the ‘’ series was leading the project and her fan bases on top of universal critical acclaim and none of were the talent behind ‘SimCity’ and ‘Command and Conquer’ departure surely nails whatever original approach they were those titles are sold for more than 20 dollars - 1/3rd of the franchises and both of those studios have been brutally shot in going for. Even saying a “linear adventure game” is an original standard retail price for major releases. The titles I’ve men- the head by EA’s unforgiving corporate hands. Recent titles in those respective lineups have ranged from mediocre to down-right broken (the less said about the ‘SimCity’ reboot the better) but reasons for those failures are evident. “C&C” barely tried to innovate the struggling RTS genre while the online implementation in ‘SimCity’ (a beloved single player city builder game) was one of the worst decisions in gaming history. Except for scaling back or reiterating on those decisions for future titles in their respected series - they were swiftly abandoned and now potentially lost forever. Just another childhood defining series of games left to rot by EA. Visceral Games will be missed by fans and non-fans alike. It is an all too familiar scenario whenever EA decides enough is enough. One of the biggest names in the industry is also one of the most universally hated and that honor can only be seen in the consistently moronic games industry. As the dust begins to settle on another studio closure, one can only wonder which beloved game developer is next to find itself in EA’s crosshairs. On that I say - if I was working for ‘Bioware’ right now, I’ll be updating my CV.

The faith of Visceral’s ‘Star Wars’ project remains unknown.