During these days one of the blackest pages in the world of video games has been written: Visceral Games officially closes its doors. The development house, formerly known as EA Redwood Shores, was one of EA's longest-running software houses, since it was founded in 1998. Needless to say, this news was a real thrashing for many fans, the reason? For those unfamiliar with visceral Games we only tell you that they were the creators of the entire Dead Space saga, Dante's Inferno, The Godfather and many others, so being disappointed as well as surprised is absolutely justified. In this editorial we will talk to you not only about the great things done by this studio, but also to analyze the reasons for this sudden closure and what will be the possible scenarios that will unfold for the future.
Let's start with the basics. In recent years, the concept of videogames has revolved around having to continuously give users multiplayer experiences. This business model, in addition to being less expensive in terms of resources spent, is also the most profitable, since a multiplayer with continuous paid DLC or microtransactions allows constant economic gain. Precisely for this reason more and more publishers, especially important ones, have decided to follow this company philosophy, thus abandoning the idea of developing singleplayer adventures and dedications to adventure. Unfortunately, the market has spoken clearly and when things like the closure of an important development company happen, we certainly cannot remain impassive to observe a panorama that, as things have gone, prefers a future made up of games oriented to the "mass", pass me the term, rather than titles that are perhaps in some ways more intimate and that really leave something to the players.
The latest example is on the unfortunate Star Wars dei visceral Games: The title was announced in 2014 under the command of Amy Hennig, a former Naughty Dog employee who has worked on the likes of Legacy of Kain, Jak and Dexter, Uncharted. The premises that the videogame made the fans of the brand dream were all there and, in 2016, gameplay was also shown at E3 2016. It is incredible to think how things have changed in just one year, with Electronic Arts announcing that the project will continue but will also undergo heavy design changes, thus approaching market demands. This decision was made after getting feedback from several players taken as samples. As much as one could argue very much about this market model, it is really unfair to think that the Visceral Games have closed for this reason.
I visceral Games they were certainly getting a worrying downturn: after the excellent Dante's Inferno in 2011, the software house had the courage to dare with the first chapter of Dead Space, a title that is still remembered today as one of the scariest horror games ever. The second chapter we have recently discovered that it cost the beauty of 60 million, only reached 4 million copies sold and, much of this turnover, was achieved only after some substantial price changes. Here, therefore, is the choice to turn the saga on a more action-packed gameplay which, logically, should have given a new rod to the series. Unfortunately, in this case, the choice was never more wrong, thus marking the end not only of the terrifying adventures of Isaac Clarke, but also of the development company itself.
Since that time Visceral Games has been increasingly relegated to minor and unsuccessful projects such as Battlefield Hardline or Army of Two. After time of anonymity, the big opportunity returns with the arrival of a brand like Star Wars in your hands and, from the latest news that emerged in recent weeks, it seems that the entire project was totally in disarray. So the problem was not only the single player and too linear nature of the work, but also that the production of the game was much more backward than expected. Despite this, the Game Director of God of War, Cory Barlog, defended the closure of the team, praising single player titles and saying that great creativity can be used even in a linear narrative. Certainly EA has shown with this decision to have a business model totally focused on earning, looking at the video game as a service and not as pure entertainment. The goal is to earn, without ifs and buts, by inserting as many ways to squeeze the user, thus going towards a future made up of copy and paste games with few changes in terms of mechanics.
Without a shadow of a doubt we can say that, despite the dramatic vision just described, 2017 was a fantastic year from the point of view of releases and, apparently, 2018 will be just as much. As long as there are development houses such as Square Enix, Bethesda, Naughty Dog, CD Project Red and many others, the single player market is well safe, with products at the height that not only excite but which, in a certain sense, reward players. Say we need more houses like visceral Games it is an understatement, as it is inevitable that there are players who are looking for and need another type of experience. Fortunately, the market is wide and varied but, frankly, seeing publishers who mostly aim at services close a project like Star Wars, because it is linear and too focused on narration, only to see it transform into a substitute for Star Wars Battlefront is something that does. really bad heart. What we have left of visceral Games it is the clear example that development studies can, and in some cases must, be wrong. The resounding failure of the Dead Space saga certainly was an unexpected blow to EA, but relegating the software house more and more to the margins of the company was not the right way to restore confidence to a team that had lost its former luster.
