Leading up to the release of Battlefield Hardline and just weeks before he would leave EA and the studio he helped to build, Steve Papoutsis, vice president and general manager at Visceral Games, talked to games™ about the studio’s history, its design philosophy and where it’s going next…
Your studio has had an interesting journey – can you talk about how you’ve moved from genre to genre, licence to licence?
Here at Redwood Shores, we’ve had a variety to work on different things; from the Bond licence to the Lord Of The Rings licence, and we even worked on the Tiger Woods games for a few years. What was interesting through the years was, well… we didn’t have an identity, really. People saw us as an EA studio, but we really wanted to establish ourselves as a proper studio. Even the first Dead Space came out branded as an EA game, you know? So Dead Space: Extraction was really the first Visceral game, and it was really exciting for us to have our own identity and be able to put a stamp on our games.
Was choosing Visceral as a name for yourself a statement or a hint towards your philosophy as a studio?
I think it was a bit of both – we were looking for a new name, a name that made sense to us, and ‘visceral’ had that. It’s a word that’s got these raw, emotional connotations, and it connects with players. So you can go back to our Lord Of The Rings games and see it there – obviously those games were based on the great stories [from the licence], but they were also very visceral in terms of their gameplay. It was just a natural fit, calling the studio that.
Visceral is known for its genre-hopping – which genre have you found to be the most fun to work in?
I think in game development, it changes quite a lot. For me, it comes down to what I’m working on right now: in order for me to be really focused, I need to throw myself fully into whatever it is I’m doing. So right now, I love what we’re doing with Hardline – it’s a completely different animal, working on a first-person shooter. It’s been a lot of work, though, we’ve had to learn a lot of stuff. But it’s given us the opportunity to learn a lot, too – using our [past experience] to bring new things to the FPS genre that maybe people haven’t tried before. It’s pretty exciting.
In terms of my favourite, though? Well, the one thing that really gets me thinking, gets me excited about games, is the connection to the player and how you establish that. It doesn’t matter how you do that, from a first- or third-person perspective, as long as you have interesting and fun gameplay mechanics and a great story, that’s all you need.
Your studio worked with Glen Schofield and Michael Condroy for many years – how does it feel to be making the ‘other’ triple-A FPS alongside your old colleagues at Sledgehammer Games?
We’re really happy that they’re able to go and make their game and really drive the games industry forward – there are so many players that love the [Call Of Duty] franchise and I wish them all the best with that. It’s interesting that we’re working on a shooter right now, too, but we’re really just focused on making the best game we can make, and giving our fans something that they’ll enjoy. I don’t necessarily see it as a rivalry [with COD] whatsoever.
You’ve been with EA quite a while now – through the hard times and now through its recovery – what’s it been like working with the publisher over that time?
Well I’ve been with the company 15 years now, making videogames overall for about 20 years. Our industry has changed so much in 20 years, you know? With the internet coming in and people being able to connect with companies and push their opinions and thoughts through those channels… it’s great that we allow people to get their opinions out there: I think it helps keep companies honest. We make games for players, and we want to focus in on their thoughts. But the challenge is sifting through all the feedback, and figuring out which pieces of feedback are consistent, and which pieces of information you want to focus on.
But in terms of EA’s reputation, I’ve been here a while, and we’ve seen it go up, we’ve seen it go down… but right now we’re really focusing on putting our players first and listening to our community so we can drive a more positive sentiment and show our players that we are listening and that we are taking their feedback into account so that we can make better games.
Have you ever been affected by the negative way people can respond to game elements or company policy online?
I think, ultimately, the most important thing when making games is to put your passion into the things you do, alongside embracing the people that are passionate about what you do. Engage, listen to your community – even though sometimes you might hear some harsh criticisms that might be the harshest thing you’ll see on the internet… I just try to focus in on the fact that these are passionate people, that they really care about what we do. There aren’t a lot of other industries where people comment quite so much on what you do, so if you put the right lens on it all, you can see the passion and the [devotion] fans have. You know, I use my own Twitter handle to interact with the player base – I respond where I can and I think it’s important to see what’s going on, on that level.
And do you ever think you’d return to Dead Space?
Many, many people here at Visceral have a warm spot in their heart for Dead Space, and right now we’re busy with Hardline and… other things… but it’s definitely something we’d love to look at again, and there’s definitely a lot of interest internally for us to pick that up again at a future date.
Originally published in games™ 158
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