| Project Ragtag | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Visceral Games[a] |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Director(s) | Amy Hennig |
| Producer(s) | Julian Beak |
| Writer(s) | Amy Hennig |
| Engine | Frostbite 3 |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | Cancelled |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure,third-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Project Ragtag was a codename for an untitledaction-adventurethird-person shooter video game set within theStar Wars universe. It had been under development byVisceral Games since around 2013 and set to be published byElectronic Arts before its cancellation in 2017. The project was led by the creator of theUncharted series,Amy Hennig. It was to be a linear game about a large-scale heist, taking place in the wake of events ofStar Wars IV: A New Hope.EA Vancouver andMotive Studio had assisted the game's development. Visceral Games was shut down by Electronic Arts on October 17, 2017, and the game's development was rebooted by EA Vancouver to become anopen world title. Despite this, the project was reportedly cancelled.
In early 2013,Disney had acquiredLucasfilm and shut down its game development studioLucasArts. Electronic Arts (EA) made an exclusive deal to help develop lucrativeStar Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral.[1] Visceral was working onJamaica, a pirate-themed project at that time. 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.[1]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.[1]
Battlefield Hardline became a company-wide priority for the studio as its development became troubled in 2014. The switch to a different engine, style of gameplay, and narrative causedYuma's production to stall, and by the timeHardline was released, Hennig no longer wanted to do a non-linear game but instead return to a strongly linear narrative game.[2][1] Hennig stated that as she started the project, she found bothStar Wars andUncharted were based onpulp adventures, but whileUncharted had its roots in the single-protagonistIndiana Jones,Star Wars was more akin toheist films with an ensemble cast, comparable toThe Dirty Dozen orWhere Eagles Dare. These films shared the same nature of a haphazard group of people coming to work together to pull off a stint, thus leading her to give the project the nameRagtag.[3] This effectively became a new game, maintaining the "space scoundrel" approach and making it about a large-scale heist, taking place in the wake of events ofStar Wars IV: A New Hope,[1] fitting into the canon of the series amid theanthology films andanimated series.[3] Gameplay would have included the player switching between multiple character viewpoints, akin to the format used in theStar Wars films, as parts of the heist came together.[3] Several of the former Visceral employees called the game's goal's "lofty", and there was significant trouble in adapting theFrostbite engine for third-person shooters. They also stated that there were several creative gates they had to pass with Disney/Lucasfilm for character design and art assets, and described internal conflicts with Hennig, believing that she wanted strong creative control of the game.[1]
AfterHardline finally shipped in 2015, EA let go of Visceral's General Manager Steve Papoutsis and replaced him withLarry Probst's son, Scott.[4] Wanat and Bagwell left as well in 2015 to co-found Outpost Games.[5][1] EA further flattened the structure at Visceral to give the creative leads more power, mirroring the structure at Naughty Dog. Half of the team was assigned toRagtag, and the rest todownloadable content forHardline.[1] At the time that pre-production started onRagtag in mid-2015, about 30 employees were assigned to it, with plans to bring the remaining 30 aboard once they completedHardline. Such numbers were too small for a large game, and to avoid having to lure in more programmers to the San Francisco area and its high cost-of-living, they establishedMotive Studios in Montreal, led byJade Raymond, the original producer of theAssassin's Creed series, with their first project to work with Visceral on theStar Wars title.[6][1] This added an additional 70 people toRagtag's development team.[1] Around that time, tensions between Visceral and EA arose over the direction of the game on two issues: the lack of any recognizedStar Wars characters or Jedi force powers despite having been given creative freedom to create new characters from Disney/Lucasfilm, and the expectation thatRagtag would be a critically praised game with a highMetacritic score as to challenge the upcomingUncharted 4.[1]
EA releasedStar Wars Battlefront in November 2015, which was extremely successful.[1] Because of this, Visceral found that EA started to draw away fromRagtag, and instead funnel more of its studios intoBattlefront's sequel,Star Wars Battlefront II; Motive Studios were taken offRagtag, and Visceral was not allowed to hire additional staff.[1] During 2016, EA laid off some of Visceral's staff, and others left for other positions, leavingRagtag's development stalled. Visceral knew they had to make a good game demo to get further development funding from EA, and began work on this in 2016. Part of this demo was shown atE3 2016 in June of that year.[7] With more of Visceral's staff leaving, EA opted to bring itsEA Vancouver team to help withRagtag's development.[1] While this provided extra man-power to expand the demo, the new structure enforced in Visceral made it seem to the developers that EA was positioning EA Vancouver to take over the project.[1]
The team presented its internal demo to EA for agate review in April 2017, and were given the green light to continue development, with expectations to have another review six months later.[1] Visceral worked to get the demo in place, and showed it to EA in mid-October 2017, but based on the state of the demo EA made the decision to close down Visceral days later on October 17, 2017.[1] According to Hennig, EA had already planned to cancelRagtag a few months earlier, and only formally made this decision after the October demo.[3] EA reassigned theStar Wars game to its EA Worldwide Studios, led by EA Vancouver, and said they will revamp the gameplay, which had been described as a linear, story-heavy title, into "a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency".[8]
Journalists saw the closure of Visceral as a sign of the waning interest in publishers in making games that are strictlysingle player, as many of Visceral's games had been.[2][9][10][11] In light of these concerns, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson stated that the reason for Visceral's closure wasn't a single-play 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 was not fitting these changes and that the closure of Visceral and reassignment to another studio was because "we needed to pivot the design".[12] EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen further said that their company found the game was toolinear for what they felt consumers were looking for and towards EA's goal of pushing the game "to the next level". At the time of Visceral's closure, the studio was down to about 80 staff after losing several over the years, which Jorgensen said was a "sub-scale nature" that required them to assign EA's Vancouver and Montreal studios to help, and that the closure was primarily a business, cost-saving measure.[13]Kotaku'sJason Schreier reported on end of the game's development at Visceral in October 2017.[1]
In June 2018, Hennig announced that she had left EA earlier that year in January. While Hennig had been involved with some of the initial work at EA Vancouver, she stated the new game was more open-world and far different from the title Visceral had developed. However at the time of her departure, she stated that theStar Wars game was stalled and EA Vancouver was working on something very different.[14] In January 2019, sources toldKotaku that the game at EA Vancouver had been cancelled.[15]
In April 2019, EA announced a new single-player game,Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, to be released later that year and developed byRespawn Entertainment. Hennig stated that this seemed like a change of strategy related to the criticism that EA received after its closure of Visceral and its strong indication that it was moving away from single-player games.[3] The Electronic Arts' exclusivity deal with Lucasfilm forStar Wars games expired in 2023 leading to multiple games: In April 2022, it was announced thatSkydance New Media would be collaborating withLucasfilm Games to produce anaction-adventure game based in theStar Wars Universe, with Hennig serving as head of the project.[16][17]Ubisoft releasedStar Wars Outlaws in 2024, which drew comparisons toRagtag.[18]
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