This week on Sessler’s Soapbox, G4TV’s Adam Sessler bids a fond farewell to Pandemic studios, who recently suffered deep personnel cuts and a move to EALA’s offices. Sessler goes on to analyze how this may signal the end of the John Riccitiello plan at EA of introducing new IPs for the betterment of the future of the company, and what it means for the industry as a whole. You can watch it at G4TV or check out the embedded video below:
Update: A Shacknews report confirms that EA has cut a large potion of the workforce at Pandemic, but says that it is not getting rid of the studio, - it is consolidating it into a “core team” and moving it to EALA. Here’s what EA said officially:
“Pandemic Studios and its franchises will be relocated to the EALA facility in nearby Playa Vista,” a rep for the company told Shacknews. “This move has resulted in a reduction in the work force at Pandemic…That said, the Pandemic brand and franchises will continue to live on. A core team of Pandemic developers will move to EALA and continue development on Pandemic games with a focus on quality, cost management and schedule integrity.”
Original Story: Is the other shoe about to drop for Panedemic’s L.A. studio? According to this Kotaku report, citing reliable sources close to the situation, EA will lay off most of Pandemic’s Los Angeles studio at 11 AM PST. The Saboteur, the current project being developed by Pandemic will be shifted to Army of Two developer EA Montreal - also according to the Kotaku report.
Pandemic’s Brisbane studio, which was developing a game adaption of the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, was cut loose from the EA family in January of this year. Pandemic is best known for developing such franchises as Full Spectrum Warrior, Mercenaries, Star Wars: Battlefront and Destroy All Humans.
If this rumor is true it means that most of the 200 people that work at Pandemic L.A. will be out of work right before the holidays, which is absolutly horrible, but a typical move by corporations in the fourth quarter. Earlier in the month EA laid off a large number of employees from its Maxis studio. No doubt EA will be making cuts across the board as it tries to hit the restructuring number of 1500 before the next fiscal quarter in March 2010.
We’ll have more on this story as it develops and hopefully an official confirmation or denial from EA soon.
Can a realistic war game help treat the stresses of real war in a soldier? That the debate going on in the country right now about a game being used to do just that called Virtual Iraq. Because video games are a comfortable medium for many, using a game like Virtual Iraq to treat war-related posttraumatic stress disorder seems like a perfect fit. On the flip side, many are not comfortable with the idea of undergoing traditional psychological treatment to deal with the very serious issues was can produce in returning soldiers.
The game is part of Virtually Better, which is run by Josh Spitalnick, PhD, The group developed “Virtual Iraq” and several other virtual reality games to treat posttraumatic stress disorder via a two-year open clinical trial of 20 participants funded by the Office of Naval Research. The program is showing positive results but more rigorous testing is needed to fully understand the advantages or disadvantages of using games as a treatment method.
Gaming has a lot of nonclinical benefits because it is widely accepted by younger generations, relatively low cost and easily accessible.
Robbi Saletsky, PhD, clinical associate professor and director of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Program for Depression and Anxiety Disorders at Upstate Medical University in Rochester, N.Y., is conducting one of the 15 studies using Virtual Iraq around the country. Saletsky said she has found similar virtual reality programs to be successful because they open up options to a population that might not respond well to traditional exposure-method treatments that rely on the patient’s imagination.
And in a separate study set beginning next year, the U.S. Air Force for will also use virtual reality treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder at its Lackland base in San Antonio.
EA’s Pandemic Studios announced that its open-world sandbox action game, The Saboteur, will be available worldwide on December 8, 2009. Inspired by a true story (which we expect and hope has been highly embellished for the sake of action), The Saboteur stars Sean Devlin, a street-tough Irish race car driver trapped behind enemy lines in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. Motivated by personal revenge and a strong sense of survival, Sean must fight, climb, and race through Paris, sneak into the heart of the Nazi operations and sabotage their every move.
With the help of the French Resistance, the British intelligence, an arsenal of weaponry, and an uncanny knack for staying alive, players will exact revenge by committing various acts of sabotage including derailing trains and blowing up zeppelins. Sounds like much more fun than Mercenaries 2.
The Saboteur is being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360, and the PC. Those attending the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International, (July 23 – 26), will be able to check out The Saboteur for the first time at EA’s show booth, stall #5213 in the San Diego Convention Center.
EA and Phenomic ahev lowered the price today announced a new lower price tage on its real-time strategy game BattleForge. Now you can pick the fantasy themed trading card game inspired RTS at the reduced price of $29.99. The new pricing is effective immediately in North America. Additionally, gamers can check out the BattleForge demo on BattleForge.com. There’s no indication why EA decided to cut the price of the game, but it’s never a bad thing when we can get something for less.
In the demo, players start with a random faction deck and have limited access to maps. Players will have access to sparring ground player versus player (PvP) battles as well as player versus environment (PvE) maps. Players will then be able to upgrade to the full product in-game. For more information and the demo, visit www.battleforge.com.
Update: The footage is actually not as “new” as I originally reported. In fact it ran earlier this week in this Kotaku story. All apologies for drumming up excitement where there was none. Still if you haven’t seen the footage don’t let my mistake stop you from taking a look at it (again, even).
Original Story: Though Pandemic’s Brisbane, Australia development studio has been shuttered and the Dark Knight game it was working on was canned, early development footage continues to turn up all over the Internet. Two more clips, showing animated test footage have been dug up by Evan Narcisse, who was nice enough to pass them along. You can check out both below:
According to some Internet scuttlebutt Pandemic’s Brisbane Australia studio has been cut loose by Electronic Arts. The LA based studio remains intact, so don’t freak out or cheer if that was your measured response to the situation.
The studio behind the Destroy All Humans franchise apparently gets to keep all of its intellectual property and is currently looking for new partners. While there’s no hard evidence to support it beyond a prior relationship, the studio probably can find a friend or two at THQ; the company has published several titles including Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon and Destroy All Humans! 2.
