Thread by @LucasfilmGames, [After LucasArts]Visceral Games' Project Ragtag (canceled in 2017).To @MinnMaxShow , producer @zachulon [...]

[After LucasArts]
Visceral Games' Project Ragtag (canceled in 2017).

To @MinnMaxShow , producer @zachulon again told this story of bad decisions made by EA (then)executives, who killed this very ambitious Star Wars game supervised by Amy Hennig (Uncharted).

A sad story.

"The sequence of events was like - 'hey, we have a studio with their own engine who make really high quality single-player games - the Dead Space series - and we're going to take that studio, move them to Frostbite and have them make a Battlefield game'. OK, I'm fine with that."

"But we had a lot of people at the studio who were experts on narrative and single-player games and those people left. And that's fine - some of them went to Crystal Dynamics and worked on the Avengers game. That kind of stuff happens."

Ragtag artwork:

"Then we went and hired a bunch of multiplayer first-person shooter experts to help us with Hardline. Cool. So to ship Hardline and go 'hey you guys are now going to make a single-player third-person [game]...' That's the thing which is hard for me to get over."

"Who's making this plan? There is no plan, obviously. We were experts at this [genre of] game two years ago and then we re-made our studio. And it was hard. And we pulled it off. And then it was like 'go back to what you guys did before'."

"And we were like 'well those guys who were good at what we did before left'."

Me, every time someone tells me this story:

"I think we would have made the best SW game ever made. The story and the setup and the characters... [were] set up for success but what we had to execute was going to take a while. I think the company saw that - 'hey you guys are eventually going to make a crazy good game'."

"Wwhen we got shut down, [EA exec] Patrick Soderlund was even like - what's the game with 'Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner'? PUBG? - they even sent out a press release that was like 'no one cares about single-player any more'. I just wish they'd figured that out two years ago."

This story makes me crazy. I'm so sorry for all of those who worked on this project (a few worked on 1313 too). With everything I know, I think it really could have been a great SW game.

Now, I didn't know about the AT-ST.

"[It was] this crazy AT-ST moment which was really cool. You were on foot running from it and it was trying to hunt you down but you were more agile, slipping through these alleyways, barelling through and crashing and using all the destruction of Frostbite..."

"You would have been like 'oh that's like Star Wars Uncharted'."

"We just had a lot of gameplay people never got to see," Mumbach continued. "We had levels, they weren't done but they were close. We had one set-piece which was basically done - we were putting the final touches on it right when the studio was shut down."

The history of Battlefield Hardline is crazy (or how to kill the studio that made the excellent Dead Space by driving away its employees), but the passage on Frosbite recalls what we know about the developments of Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, etc.

Thank goodness they left Respawn alone to make Jedi: Fallen Order (but they only bought the studio during development).

One interesting thing: development costs at Visceral had been put forward to explain its closure. But:

"We were sitting in one of the most expensive places to make a video game. But Jedi: Fallen Order was made in LA, one of the most expensive places to make a video game."

More on Eurogamer and MinnMaxShow: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-12-cancelled-star-wars-ragtag-game-details-surface

Cancelled Star Wars Ragtag game details surface

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-12-cancelled-star-wars-ragtag-game-details-surface

I'll have a making of Ragtag someday, but 1313 is coming before.

I think we could write an entire book comparing the developments of Ragtag and Jedi: Fallen Order. Two Star Wars games, two EA games being created almost simultaneously but with very different stories.

I understand all those who have gone indie or who have left the industry.

Yes, it's disappointing for us who can't play Ragtag, 1313, First Assault, and many more. But it is especially those who work on these games who suffer from these situations.

Visceral closing when rents are extremely expensive in the Bay Area = a entire family is moving.

Or this person who had just crossed the country to join Telltale, a few days before closing.

I dream of making games, like many (I tried), but I prefer to tweet. ^^

Seriously, everyone who works in this industry is my hero.

If you're interested by Ragtag, @jasonschreier wrote a great story, 3 years ago.

"Two former Visceral staff recall EA asking where Chewbacca was. “EA would get obsessed with market research and start asking people what’s important to them about Star Wars”
https://kotaku.com/the-collapse-of-viscerals-ambitious-star-wars-game-1819916152

(the answer was: what's important to people about Star Wars is to play Squadrons)

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