Visceral Games

Formerly	EA Redwood Shores (1998–2009)
Company type	Division
Industry	Video games
Founded	1998; 27 years ago (1998)
Defunct	October 17, 2017; 8 years ago (2017-10-17)
Headquarters	Redwood City, California , US
Key people	Scott Probst (general manager) Amy Hennig (creative director)
Products	PGA Tour series (1999–2006) James Bond series (2001–2005) Dead Space series (2008–2013) Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel (2013) Battlefield Hardline (2015)
Number of employees	80 (2017)
Parent	Electronic Arts

Visceral Games (formerlyEA Redwood Shores)^[1] was an Americanvideo game developer studio owned byElectronic Arts. The studio is best known for creating and principally developing theDead Space series, and was also involved in makingTiger Woods PGA Tour games between 1999 and 2006.

In 1998,Electronic Arts (EA) moved fromSan Mateo, California to a new corporate headquarters building that they had constructed inRedwood Shores, California.^[2] In this move, they founded a studio at this location, named EA Redwood Shores, which operated under the general "EA Games" division.

EA Redwood Shores's initial title wasFuture Cop: LAPD, released in 1998. Subsequent games through 2008 were generally licensed tie-ins with movies and other properties.^[3] According to designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell, EA had not been keen on producing originalintellectual property (IP) during this time, but the studio was pursuing an idea of making a second sequel toSystem Shock and Vice President and General ManagerGlen 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 ofCapcom'sResident Evil 4 in 2005, which received high critical praise and commercial success. According to Wanat and Bagwell, not only didResident Evil 4 alter their ideas for theSystem Shock game, but it also helped Schofield to convince EA's management to let them pursue a new title. The game became known asDead Space.^[4]

Dead Space was a critical success, leading the studio to be rebranded to Visceral Games in 2009.^[3] Along with this, the studio was moved out from EA Games and became its own division under EA, being the first "genre" studio within the company, with the focus of developing third-person action games in the same vein asDead Space.^[5] Alongside the rebranding, two sister studios, Visceral Montreal inMontreal, Quebec alongside EA Montreal, and Visceral Melbourne inMelbourne, Australia were established.^[6]

Alongside its work forDante's Inferno, inspired by theDivine Comedy, Visceral had announced plans in 2009 for a title calledThe Ripper, which was inspired byJack the Ripper.^[3]The Ripper was confirmed to have been cancelled, potentially as early as 2009,^[7] but industry rumors suggested that a spin-out of that titleBlood 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.^[8]

On its release in 2010,Dante's Inferno received mixed reviews, and the studio subsequently returned toDead Space with its sequelDead Space 2, released in 2011.^[3] The sequel has similar critical success, but in 2017, it was revealed that the game was considered a financial disappointment with EA; following the studio's closure, former level design Zach Wilson estimated that with development costs around $47M and an equivalent marketing budget, EA did not recoup enough costs on 4 million in sales.^[9][3]

Visceral continued working on the next title,Dead Space 3, which they wanted to make in the same vein as the first title, but according to Wanat, there was concern from EA about this approach, and among other large changes, had the team introduce co-operative play into the game.^[10] 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.^[4] Though the game still had generally positives on its release in 2013, it sold far less thanDead Space 2.^[4] EA's VPPatrick Söderlund said in a July 2013 interview, followingDead Space 3's that while they still valued the franchise, Visceral was not working on a fourth title, and instead had been assigned to two new projects.^[11]

Visceral had also been developingArmy 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.^[12] One of the two projects that Visceral started working on in 2013 wasBattlefield Hardline, a "Cops and Robbers" variation on the previousBattlefield games.^[3] A smaller team then started working on a project calledJamaica, apirate-themed game.^[13]

In early 2013,Disney had acquiredLucasfilm and shut down its game development studioLucasArts. EA quickly made a deal to help develop lucrativeStar Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral.^[13] Furthermore,Ubisoft had announcedAssassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, which also was based on a pirate theme.^[13] EA cancelled theJamaica project in favor of aStar Wars game. The studio opted to pitch a third-person action game that maintained the spirit ofJamaica, having players play as "space scoundrels" in an open-world-styleStar Wars universe, and code-named this project asYuma.^[13]Amy Hennig, the writer for the first threeUncharted games fromNaughty Dog, was brought into EA for Visceral as creative lead and to help write the story forYuma.^[13] The concept was later changed, making it about a large-scale heist and renaming itRagtag.

EA made the decision to close down Visceral on October 17, 2017.^[13] EA reassigned theStar Wars game to its EA Worldwide Studios, led by EA Vancouver, and said they will revamp the gameplay.^[14] The closure of Visceral was seen as a sign of the waning interest in publishers in making games that are strictlysingle player, as many of Visceral's games had been.^{[3][15][16][17]} 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 ofRagtag wasn't fitting these changes and that the closure of Visceral and reassignment to another studio was because "we needed to pivot the design".^[18]

• Visceral Games atMobyGames

• Visceral Games
• 1998 establishments in California
• 2017 disestablishments in California
• Companies based in Redwood City, California
• Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
• American companies disestablished in 2017
• Defunct video game companies based in California
• Electronic Arts subsidiaries
• Video game companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Video game companies disestablished in 2017
• Video game companies established in 1998
• Video game development companies
• American companies established in 1998

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• Use mdy dates from July 2021