EA Redwood Shores (1998–2009) In 1998,
Electronic Arts (EA) moved from
San Mateo, California to a new corporate headquarters building that it had constructed in
Redwood Shores, California. In this move, it founded a studio at this location, named EA Redwood Shores, which operated under the general "EA Games" division. EA Redwood Shores's initial title was
Future Cop: LAPD, released in 1998. Subsequent games through 2008 were generally licensed tie-ins with movies and other properties. According to designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell, EA had not been keen on producing original
intellectual property (IP) during this time, but the studio was pursuing an idea of making a second sequel to
System Shock and Vice President and General Manager
Glen Schofield had been trying to coax EA's executives to let them pursue this. While they had some gameplay and ideas set for this game, the title changed upon the release of
Capcom's
Resident Evil 4 in 2005, which received high critical praise and commercial success. According to Wanat and Bagwell, not only did
Resident Evil 4 alter its ideas for the
System Shock game, but it also helped Schofield to convince EA's management to let them pursue a new title. The game became known as
Dead Space.
Redwood Shores becomes Visceral Games Dead Space was a critical success, leading the studio to be rebranded to Visceral Games in 2009. Alongside the rebranding, two sister studios, Visceral Montreal in
Montreal, Quebec alongside EA Montreal, and Visceral Melbourne in
Melbourne, Australia were established. Alongside its work for ''
Dante's Inferno, inspired by the Divine Comedy, Visceral had announced plans in 2009 for a title called The Ripper, which was inspired by Jack the Ripper. but industry rumors suggested that a spin-out of that title Blood Dust'' had been at work at the Visceral Melbourne studio before the project was cancelled. The Visceral Melbourne studio was closed down on September 19, 2011. On its release in 2010, ''Dante's Inferno
received mixed reviews, and the studio subsequently returned to Dead Space
with its sequel Dead Space 2'', released in 2011. Wanat described that there was pressure to make the game play faster and appeal to a broader audience, an approach that was at odds with the roots of the series in the horror genre. Visceral had also been developing ''
Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel with the Visceral Montreal studio. Upon its completion, EA let go of the whole of Visceral Montreal on February 21, 2013. One of the two projects that Visceral started working on in 2013 was Battlefield Hardline, a "Cops and Robbers" variation on the previous Battlefield'' games.
Final years In early 2013,
Disney had acquired
Lucasfilm and shut down its game development studio
LucasArts. EA quickly made a deal to help develop lucrative
Star Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral. The closure of Visceral was seen as a sign of the waning interest in publishers in making games that are strictly
single player, as many of Visceral's games had been. In light of these concerns, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson stated that the reason for Visceral's closure wasn't a single-player versus multiplayer game issue, but instead one based on listening to player feedback and following marketplace trends. The company felt that the current design of
Ragtag wasn't fitting these changes and that the closure of Visceral and reassignment to another studio was because "we needed to pivot the design". ==Games==