{"id":3596,"date":"2017-10-27T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T19:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/308522"},"modified":"2017-10-27T19:40:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T19:40:00","slug":"visceral-devs-share-the-story-of-the-studios-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/10\/27\/visceral-devs-share-the-story-of-the-studios-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"Visceral devs share the story of the studio’s closure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“<\/em>A lot of things started turning around [in 2017] but I think there was a little bit of a too-little, too-late aspect to it. I don\u2019t think it mattered.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

– One of many anonymous\u00a0devs speaking to Kotaku details the studio’s closure<\/em><\/p>\n

Kotaku has published an extremely detailed story<\/a> chronicling the years and years of distress that led up to the recent closing of Visceral and the demise of its untitled Star Wars game, creating a must-read cautionary tale for other game developers in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking anonymously, many\u00a0developers that had worked at the studio both before and at the moment of its closure offer an inside look at the cascading complications Visceral faced in the years leading up to its end.<\/p>\n

As with many complicated closures, no single\u00a0issue can be blamed for the studio\u2019s demise, but the developers speaking to Kotaku shed some light on the problems that likely contributed. One developer said that the sheer cost of maintaining a development team in San Francisco might deserve some of the blame, saying that Visceral was the most expensive studio under EA\u2019s ownership.<\/p>\n

Another said\u00a0the slow back-and-forth between both internal and external groups critically wounded the development of Visceral\u2019s ill-fated Uncharted<\/em>-like Star Wars title. Part of those complications, the developer said, was because the constant need for concept approval from the Star Wars people could drag even small decisions on for months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, would Dodger really look like this? What would his weapon look like? Potentially years of that. Would he carry this? Would that really work in the Star Wars universe?\u201d the anonymous dev told Kotaku. \u201cWith Uncharted<\/em>, they can build any world they come up with, because it\u2019s their world. With Star Wars you have to have that back and forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were complications within the studio as well, as many developers said that former Uncharted<\/em> director and then-Star Wars director Amy Hennig had stretched herself too thin by trying to take control of everything from gameplay to level design all at once.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Per a former Visceral employee, the bits of the game shown off to EA at a mid-year check in earlier this month were all too similar to Uncharted<\/em> for EA\u2019s tastes, with the unnamed employee saying that each of the three scenes could be paired to an almost identical moment in Naughty Dog\u2019s Uncharted<\/em> series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After that, it seems the studio\u2019s fate was sealed. Kotaku\u2019s full write up<\/a> provides additional context and information beyond the points assembled here that is well worth a read, both as a record of Visceral\u2019s struggles and as an inside look at the complicated process of bringing an ambitious project to fruition. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A lot of things started turning around [in 2017] but I think there was a little bit of a too-little, too-late aspect to it. I don\u2019t think it mattered.\u201d – One of many anonymous\u00a0devs speaking to Kotaku details the studio’s closure Kotaku has published an extremely detailed story chronicling the years and years of distress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}