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Indie-style titles the focus for EA Blueprint
Michael French Feb 26 2008, 4:55pm
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Neil Young-headed division looking to create low-cost cross-media new IP
Although the company is still trying to keep a lid on its official plans, more news has emerged fleshing out EA's fledgling new Blueprint project, explaining it is focused on developing low-cost original IP that can be used across multiple media.
Variety's Ben Fritz managed to get Blueprint boss Neil Young to talk on the subject at GDC last week: "We focus on creating IP in new ways for our media and finding smart ways to spread it across the media landscape.
"We want to find a new way to make games with smaller teams," Young explained.
Operating under the EA Games label, Blueprint is a banner for an number of teams at EA, including Maxis and the EA LA teams making three games in conjunction with Steven Spielberg, and is looking at making games with smaller budgets and ideas that go beyond video games.
Young added that Blueprint is looking for ideas that come from outside EA as well, and Variety described the division as "apparently an attempt for EA to get out of its internal creative rut by taking risks, somewhat along the lines of a studio speciality division like Fox Searchlight or Miramax".
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“There's no 'I' in 'EA'”
Posted by: Rasputin - Feb 27, 3:14pm
There's something a bit strange about mega-corporation EA looking to specialise in smaller dev teams. Is it really the right sort of publisher to try and pull this off?
“Re: There's no 'I' in 'EA'”
Posted by: JohnR - Feb 27, 3:55pm
I think a bigger question is this - can ANY mega company like EA, be it Activision or Sony, invest small? The games industry is built on big tent-pole investments, not smaller innovations that explode into money-makers - look at how facebook and youtube have effectively kicked the games industry's **** when it comes to user-generated content and communities. They started small, and went big. I'm not sure the games industry can do the same thing.