Amy Hennig Speaks About EA’s Ragtag Project
Amy Henig was appointed by EA to work with the developers at Viceral Studios as Creative Director this project was called Ragtag but lots of problems led to the closure of the studio and the dismissal of the project by EA. Henig was recently interview by VentureBeat and she spoke vastly on what happened at Visceral and its closure and she harshly spoke about EA’s business practices.
“It’s very hard to support compared to studios that cost a third of the price in places where there are tax credits. That’s a hard sell. That was a constant drumbeat, feeling like you had to justify the existence of a Visceral,”
Hennig also said that working with EA’s Frostbite engine was a “hurdle” as it wasn’t the best option for Ragtag which was a third-person “cinematic traversal action game”
“But we knew going in that that was the goal. We were going to put this functionality into Frostbite. A lot of the team was hired to do Battlefield, and so that was a bit of a cultural shift, to make this different kind of game,” she said. “Normally you cache for the project you’re making rather than trying to–it’s hard to convert the people you have if that’s not their type of game.”
She then decides to reveal that EA’s was more interested in a “come back to and enjoy for a long time to come,” type of game which might indicate that EA’s was thinking of a multiplayer kind of game.
“I think that where EA is at right now, they’re looking more at games as a service, the live service model. More open world stuff, trying to crack that nut, versus this more finite crafted experience,” she explained. We were trying to make sure that we built in other modes and extensibility and all that stuff. But the fundamental spine of the thing was more like Uncharted than one of these open world, live service games. That’s a big gap to cross.
“I don’t know how you get from here to there. And then to try to push something that may not quite fit into the portfolio as it is today, and try to do it at this really expensive studio–it was a bit of an uphill battle. All of that stuff is publicly known.”
The ragtag project was changed to an Open-World project called Orca which was recently cancelled, Orca featured the assets from Ragtag and was being developed by EA Vancouver. After EA received huge backlash from fans and big personalities in the industry they have confirmed that they’re committed to develop more Star Wars’ games and Disney have confirmed that they are OK with EA’s management of the franchise.
The upcoming title that will please fans will be Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which will be revealed at Chicago on April 13th. So keep it tuned at Gaming Instincts for all the latest news.
Read the full interview at – VentureBeat.
