Electronic Arts’ EA Originals label was set up in 2016 with the aim of supporting small, independent developers with unique ideas. Although Zoink’s Fe was the first game released under the label, it was Coldwood’s Unravel that inspired EA to run the program.
With the publisher announcing three EA Originals games at EA Play 2019, IGN quizzed Executive Vice President of Development and Growth, Matt Bilbey, about the future of the program and potential for growth.
According to Bilbey, the increase in the number of EA Originals titles can be attributed to the “quality of opportunities” and EA isn’t opposed to further growth. He said:
It’s scaled up due to the quality of the opportunities from the independent development scene that we saw. As we look ahead to the next one or two years, I could see us scaling up to more.
It was just the volume of quality ideas, and if that continues I could see [EA Originals] continuing to grow. What is important is every game that we have, we assign a producer within EA that acts as the tentacle limb to Electronic Arts. We don’t want to get to the point where one producer’s looking after 10 or 15 different developers because that’s when we’ll lose the real uniqueness of what EA Originals is.
Bilbey added that there are “absolutely no boundaries of creativity” when it comes to EA Originals and referred to Hazelight Studios’ upcoming game as “Project Nuts.”
Not much is known about the upcoming EA Originals games but we do know that they’re in development at Hazelight Studios (A Way Out), Zoink AB (Fe), and Glowmade (WonderWorlds).
[Source: IGN]
