Spielberg was "hands-off" with canned EA project

A lack of effective leadership contributed to the cancellation of Steven Spielberg's planned LMNO project at EA.

Jason Rohrer, who worked as a consultant on the title, told Edge that the project had plenty of "potential" but was derailed by poor organisation.

"It just seemed strange and ineffective, the way they would get these big groups of people together," Rohrer explained.

"Even to design an important, core part of the game, they would have all these people kind of tossing [ideas around].

"Low-level producers, lead creative directors and everybody else in between would be in the room, batting ideas back and forth, and it was like, where's the cohesive creative vision, the person who says, 'No, it's gotta be this way'? They didn't really have that. Even the lead creative positions - Doug Church and Randy Smith - were kind of sharing that position. Which is a strange way of doing things."

Rohrer added that despite Spielberg's name being attached to the project, the famous movie director was never spotted at any of the brainstorming sessions.

"Spielberg was of course the big creative vision behind the whole thing but he wasn't even there! He would come in every week or so and meet with them and see what they were doing, but he wasn't there when I was there and I never got to talk to him or see him or anything.

"He wasn't being very hands-on, so it was kind of Doug and Randy trying to interpret his vision and show things to him and it kind of felt like it lacked direction. That's what I would say. Maybe that's why it kind of failed in the end."

EA announced last year that work on the game, which would have seen the player helping a mysterious alien life force evade capture, had been wound down.

Footage from the game that leaked last November painted an intriguing picture of what might have been.