The Significance of the Visceral Games Studio Closure part 1
Originally published November 2017Electronic Arts (EA), one of the biggest video game publishers, announced a few weeks ago that they were shutting down their studio: Visceral Games. Visceral started out as an in-house developer for EA before they got their own name to help with a marketing push for a new initiative for EA during the PS3/Xbox 360 generation of consoles, in which EA was attempting to spawn new franchises from scratch. This initiative included Army of Two, Mirrors Edge, and Dead Space. Dead Space is definitely the one that most players remember fondly, and it did the best financially with its multiple sequels. It also was the first game that Visceral made with their new name. With EA's new Star Wars initiative, it looked like Visceral Games was ready to lead the way yet again with a new single-player, story-focused Star Wars game in their wheelhouse, but after the recent announcement from their parent publisher, that project's destiny is now in limbo and the developer has been dismantled.
Disclosure: I personally own a small amount of Electronic Arts' stock, and I have some personal friends who work or have worked at EA, but my direct affiliation with the company ends there.
Despite this being a series of posts about the closure of one game developer, there's a lot to dissect here. I want to talk about EA and their reputation as a publisher and how that's changed over time. I want to talk about Visceral Games and their surprising demise. And, I want to talk about why I think the closing of one studio acts as an ill omen for what's to come in the future of video games.
The "Evil Administration"
If you ask any person out there who is somewhat involved in video game culture and reads video game news, there's one company that gets more ire from the public than any other, and it's Electronic Arts. For several years in a row, it managed to win the title of "Worst Company in America" in the online polls that Consumerist hosted. As I'm sure I've mentioned in the past, there were plenty of other companies to choose from that were far worse and responsible for more heinous transgressions than EA. Nonetheless, a lot of gamers hate Electronic Arts, vehemently. Why?
EA has been around for decades. The first game I remember playing that had their logo on it was Road Rash for the Sega Genesis. Since that time, EA has gotten bigger and bigger and has managed to become one of the three biggest third-party publishers of video games. In the process of becoming this behemoth, they've published a lot of beloved franchises. There is probably no publisher, other than Nintendo, that has ownership over more popular and beloved video game franchises than Electronic Arts. There's also no other publisher with a developer body count as high.
Yes, despite the fact that EA has a long history of publishing great games and a legacy of great titles under their belt, that belt is blood-stained. Their reputation for publishing great games is overshadowed by their reputation for buying up developers and then inevitably closing them down. I mentioned this in my articles about Mass Effect: Andromeda and how BioWare, a popular developer that was bought 10 years ago, may soon find itself in the same position as Visceral and so many other developers before it.
The list of developers that EA has absorbed and executed is staggering, especially when you consider what those studios have made over the years and how much revenue and praise their products gathered. There were some studios that were absorbed and barely given a chance to prove themselves under EA's rule, like Pandemic Studios, which was shut down just one year after being acquired by EA and just before their last game, The Saboteur, was released. Then there were the studios like Maxis, which had been with EA for years and were responsible for some of their most successful franchises, like SimCity and The Sims. Even developers like Maxis were not safe from EA's ax. Now, with yet another company that seemed like it was in a safe spot gone, people are all the more worried about the remaining developers: Bioware and Dice.
But it's not just their reputation as a developer executioner that makes EA so reviled by the public. It's also their strategy for testing the market and trying to mimic success elsewhere. For one thing, EA gets a lot of flack for their sports franchises, namely Madden and FIFA. Their sports games are really the games that keep EA as big as it is because their continual success over the years has raked in a lot of cash. The games always sell well and very little about their gameplay or graphics changes from year to year; it's just roster updates, for the most part. Some work is put into them, sure, but without having to spend much money on art assets or developing new gameplay, the projects cost a lot less to make than something risky like a new franchise. When EA holds their press conferences during E3 each year, you can expect a solid 15-30 minutes of it being dedicated to their sports games. Now that they've killed off so many of their developers and ended the various franchises outside of their sports games, however, I really wonder what else they're going to talk about during those conferences. Pretty soon, EA will just be a sports game publisher.
Most notably negative about EA, though is their propensity for following "consumer trends." No other company ever seems so desperate for a golden goose franchise that will continue to lay golden eggs. It's not like they already had a few that did this, but it often seems like that's simply not enough. EA likes projects that are high-roller gambles and are expected to pay out big. So, when they've seen examples of these gambles paying off for their main competitor, Activision, they've often shifted their projects to match their format. For example, when Call of Duty was the biggest game in the world, EA started re-envisioning their first-person shooter franchises like Medal of Honor and Battlefield, and changing their gameplay to better compete. World of Warcraft has been a huge golden goose for Activision for years, so EA published their own game of that style with the Star Wars label to help its chances: Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now, Activision has Destiny 2 and Overwatch as the newest golden geese worth chasing, which have further popularized in-game transactions and loot box economies that have made those games worth even more than originally projected. While EA doesn't currently have anything to specifically compete with these titles, one is on the way with Bioware's Anthem, though perhaps not soon enough. Many have pointed to this fact as a primary reason why Visceral was closed. But we'll get to that soon enough.
Image: Bungie | In Destiny 2, the real color you can choose here is the color of money
The point is, EA has proven to be a big publishing powerhouse that has done a great deal for the games industry over the years by publishing some beloved franchises that have helped shape game development. But there have been a lot of losses along the way. There have been plenty of instances in which attempts at finding a new revenue stream have altered the development of a game and caused some negative consequences. Dead Space 3 was one of the first examples of a full-price game that had micro-transactions in it, for example, and many players hated the game for it. EA is a corporation and a ruthless one that is constantly re-evaluating itself and its strategies to stay on top. So it's no surprise that another studio has shut down, and I don't really blame it for doing so, but the reasoning behind it acts as an ominous harbinger for what's to come.
Be sure to come back next week for part 2 of my rambling series on the Visceral Games development studio closure and what it means for the game's industry.
Want to read my thoughts about another studio that may end up on EA's chopping block within a few years? See my Mass Effect articles here:
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