Bond "constrained" Dead Space team

By Tom Bramwell Published 30 June, 2009

Gibeau: creative freedom drives quality.

EA Games president Frank Gibeau reckons that losing the James Bond licence brought out the best in Visceral Games, formerly EA Redwood Shores.

"You know, the Dead Space team created a very highly rated, critically acclaimed game last year that we're going to succeed and continue to grow as a franchise. That was the team that was working on the Bond games, you know. They were constrained by that licence," Gibeau told Gamasutra.

"Kind of when we said, 'Alright, we're moving off of that business. We're gonna give the licence back. We don't want to be in this business anymore. You guys get to go create an IP. Let's see what you can do.'"

EA 'lost' the Bond licence to Activision back in 2006, at which point it was seen as a bit of a blow - although it's fair to say Activision hasn't made the most of it.

Back to the present day though, and Gibeau said he and others were "blown away" by the quality of Dead Space - which told the story of a man on a spaceship full of aliens carving them up with an arc welder - and that "turning teams loose" like that had reinvigorated more than a few.

EA has taken plenty of other steps to try and address the quality deficit in some of its line-up, according to Gibeau. One example is injecting a few more months of "polish time" into the schedule at the end of development.

"So, the game is actually functionally complete, content complete, then we go in and put it through massive amounts of tests, massive amounts of re-playthroughs, so that we can really get those five, 10, 15 points of Metacritic that you get at the end of the project." That's also the case for games like Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Need for Speed: Shift, he said.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (20) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dr.Mott #1 3 years ago

    This obsession games companies have with Metacritic is really starting to get on my nerves.

  • AphoticCosmos #2 3 years ago

    Dead Space was a very, very good game. Please let the Redwood team do more on their own!

  • matrim83 #3 3 years ago

    Do another Mirrors Edge as well. Pretty please.

  • lucky_jim #4 3 years ago

    I've said it before, but EA really impressed me with Mirror's Edge and Dead Space. Even Fifa 09 was awesome. I'm not sure what they've been putting in the water at EA this past year, but more of it please!

  • brooza #5 3 years ago

    I think the knock to second place by Acti has done EA wonders

  • AphoticCosmos #6 3 years ago

    @brooza

    That and Riccitello. He certainly knows what he's doing with EA, IMHO. Give the man some more time and I reckon EA could have a complete about turn to become one of the best pub/devs in the industry.

  • kangarootoo #7 3 years ago

    "This obsession games companies have with Metacritic is really starting to get on my nerves."

    Me too, but unfortunately there is a correlation between meta critic averages and sales.


    Anyway, Dead Space was ace. If not having to spend half your budget licensing names and faces means you can instead spend it on making the actual game a better piece of work, I'm all for it.

    Licensing IPs is all about sales and nothing about game quality, and with my gamer hat on I can say I would be perfectly happy if the whole concept of games based on licensed IPs fell off the end of a pier and sank without trace.

  • BabyJesus #8 3 years ago

    EA have really upped their game in recent times, I've been continually impressed by most games I have bought with EA's stamp on it in the last 2 years.

    The sad thing is now that they are good, they are losing money. Funny world.

  • Demiath #9 3 years ago

    I was surprised that they even mentioned Metacritic. Are the developers/publishers really that obsessed with a single website with some aggregated numbers on it? Reviewers on the other hand seem to loathe the site (see latest 1UP Listen Up podcast for just one example of rampant Metacritic bashing)...
    Edited by 1 at 30/06/09 @ 10:24

  • bad09 #10 3 years ago

    Dan you were wrong and you hate Michael Jackson. Admit it.

    / hugs DS

  • Xerx3s #11 3 years ago

    'Alright, we're moving off of that business. We're gonna give the licence back. We don't want to be in this business anymore. You guys get to go create an IP. Let's see what you can do.'

    Lolwut?! You didn't give the licence back, they took it from you because the games where utter shite.

  • skillian #12 3 years ago

    Metacritic isn't perfect, but it's a lot better judge of a game's quality than sales figures are.

    Aiming for a high metacritic score is likely to produce a better game than solely aiming for high sales numbers.

  • wittynic #13 3 years ago

    whats the beef with metacritic? It isnt the one doing the reviewing. I dont see the problem - a high metacritic score often does indicate a better game. I personally look for a few specific reviews within each metacritic compiled list, Eurogamer and Edge for preferance.

  • mkreku #14 3 years ago

    I wonder if this new direction has anything to do with the fact that I enjoy NHL09 more than any other NHL title in recent years..?

  • skillian #15 3 years ago

    there isn't much of a correlation between meta critic averages and good games, as recycled trash tends to get marked up and games that are good and try to be different marked down.

    You might as well say there's no correlation between IMDB scores and good movies. It obviously depends on your tastes, but for me (and most people I reckon) it's quite clear that 'good' games tend to have better scores than 'bad' games, and there's your correlation right there.
    Edited by 1 at 30/06/09 @ 14:19

  • Demiath #16 3 years ago

    According to its harshest critics, the problem with Metacritic is that it

    A) Converts original review grades poorly and inconsistently to its own 1-100 system,
    B) Does not choose the exact same web sites for every game when determining the aggregated score

    The latter basically means that there's no statistically reliable way to compare a Metacritic scores between games...which sort of defeats the purpose of the whole site.

    My personal opinion is that there isn't much to complain about as long as you take Metacritic scores with a healthy bucketload of salt and rely more on individual reviewers which you know from past experience have similar preferences and tastes to you. Metacritic can give you a (very) rough initial indicator of a game's overall critical reception, but that's all.
    Edited by 2 at 30/06/09 @ 15:21

  • smelly #17 3 years ago

    "Aiming for a high metacritic score is likely to produce a better game than solely aiming for high sales numbers. "


    Totally depends on who's reviewing said games and what their opinion of what a good game is.

    Metacritic is only mainly interested in "hardcore" gaming sites reviews.. So will always be skued more in favour of "hardcore" shooting type games.

    Besides, taking an average of an already meaningless score to produce a new even more meaningless score seems a tad dumb to me.

  • smelly #18 3 years ago

    Also there's a tendancy in the games industry to pay out bonuses based on metacritic score.

    Which sucks if you're making a game for kids (for example), as it doesnt matter how great that kids game is.. Most reviewers will never give it more than a 7 - as it's not intended for them.

    So you end up with people refusing to work on games they know wont get high scores.. and so those games are left with the more inexperienced staff.. and then it becomes a self fullfilling prophecy where the game ends up crap afterall - and all the more experienced people doing endless shooters which they know will get a higher score.

    Thus you end up seeing more good shooters, and less good inventive games.

    Mind you - imho, i dont think that it matters that much about original games - as most gamers dont seem to be interested in anything not a shooter/racer anyhows.


    Edited by 1 at 30/06/09 @ 20:42

  • kangarootoo #19 3 years ago

    @smelly

    There IS a connection between metacritic averages and sales figures. It is documented. Anwway, you say that it "depends on who is reviewing the game" but that is the point, it DOESN'T matter because there are so many reviews all averaged together. Removing the nuances of any given individual review is what metacritic is all about.


    "Also there's a tendancy in the games industry to pay out bonuses based on metacritic score."

    It might be a tendancy wherre you work, but its not a common tendancy across the industry. Far more publishers still pay bonuses on actual sales figures (royalties in other words). And there is also not that many people in the business that can be "refusing to work on games they know wont get high scores". Most people in a big company will be able to voice preference, but there is hardly ever any refusal (and if you work in a small studio, there may be no other options other than to leave).

  • kangarootoo #20 3 years ago

    "Mind you - imho, i dont think that it matters that much about original games - as most gamers dont seem to be interested in anything not a shooter/racer anyhows."

    Well if all gamers want are shooters and racers, I would expect those products to sell well. Which means the high review averages on metacritic (which you say that sort of game gets) will align with sales. Yet a second ago you were denying the connection. Make your mind up dude.