From the official release:
EA and Steven Spielberg Team Up To Develop Three Original Videogames
October 14, 2005 – In a ground-breaking long term agreement, Electronic Arts today announced that Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg will be collaborating with the game makers at EA’s Los Angeles studio (EALA) to create three new original franchise properties. Beginning this year, with offices located on site at EALA, Spielberg will work directly with EA’s development teams to offer his signature style of storytelling to the concept, design, story and artistic visualization of the new games. EA will own the intellectual properties and the game franchises will be developed, published and distributed worldwide by EA. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
"I have been playing EA games for years and have watched them master the interactive format." said Steven Spielberg. "Having watched the game industry grow from a niche into a major creative force in entertainment, I have a great deal of respect for EA's understanding of the interactive format. I'm looking forward to working closely with the team in Los Angeles." “There is no greater storyteller than Steven Spielberg,” said EA Chairman and CEO Larry Probst. “In addition to his gift for pleasing movie audiences, he has an innate understanding of games and how to immerse players into a fantastic world of action and characters.”
“It’s incredibly exciting to be collaborating with Steven Spielberg,” noted Neil Young, VP and Studio Head at EALA. “He shares our vision for the potential of the medium and has the passion and creativity to help us finally deliver on the promise that a game can not only engage and compel you with its interactivity, but can also move you emotionally.“
The mission at EALA is to be the definitive creative destination for game makers and game development in Southern California. It is home to the award-winning Medal of Honor™, Command & Conquer™ and The Lord of the Rings™ franchises. EALA drives innovation in technology, art and game design by employing a first-class studio of game-makers at its campus in Playa Vista, CA. The studio is also home to EA’s Worldwide Music and Music Marketing group and EA Mobile.
This is interesting. Many members of the community are hailing this as the best news in years, but I'm not so sure it is. Do we really want Spielberg, a movie director with no connection to and very little knowledge about C&C involved in whatever C&C is next? Maybe luckily, it's probably not going to happen. Neil Young, head of EALA, has conducted an
interview with
Gamespot about the Spielberg/EA deal. The snippet below indicates that he will probably be doing a next-gen title, which I sure hope is not a C&C:
GS: You mentioned that Spielberg was excited by the power of next-generation consoles. Can we presume that the first game is going to be a next-gen title?
NY: It'll certainly lead on next-gen, but I wouldn't preclude it being on other platforms. This is such an exciting time in our industry right now. We've just got such a great opportunity to deliver some really breakthrough experiences. What we're really interested in doing is not just delivering the same game experiences with new maps. We're interested in delivering new game experiences--not just the next generation of graphics, but the next generation of game design. When you have people like Steven Spielberg involved, you know, on the narrative side, and you have people like Doug Church involved on the design and technology side, I think you can start to create some pretty interesting things.
Full interview
here.
Last edited by Blbpaws on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 at 7:44:59 PM.
