Visceral Games

Visceral Games, previously EA Redwood Shores, was an American video game developer studio owned by Electronic Arts. The studio is best known for creating and principally developing the Dead Space series. In 1998, Electronic Arts (EA) moved from San Mateo, California to a new corporate headquarters building that they had constructed in Redwood Shores, California. In this move, they founded a studio at this location, named EA Redwood Shores, which operated under the general "EA Games" division. EA Redwood Shores's initial title was Future Cop: LAPD, released in 1998. Subsequent games through 2008 were generally licensed tie-ins with movies and other properties. According to designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell, EA had not been keen on producing original intellectual property (IP) during this time, but the studio was pursuing an idea of making a second sequel to System Shock and Vice President and General Manager Glen Schofield had been trying to coax EA's executives to let them pursue this. While they had some gameplay and ideas set for this game, the title changed upon the release of Capcom's Resident Evil 4 in 2005, which received high critical praise and commercial success. According to Wanat and Bagwell, not only did Resident Evil 4 alter their ideas for the System Shock game, but it also helped Schofield to convince EA's management to let them pursue a new title. The game became known as Dead Space. Dead Space was a critical success, leading the studio to be rebranded to Visceral Games in 2009. Along with this, the studio was moved out from EA Games and became its own division under EA, being the first "genre" studio within the company, with the focus of developing third-person action games in the same vein as Dead Space. Alongside the rebranding, two sister studios, Visceral Montreal in Montreal, Quebec alongside EA Montreal, and Visceral Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia were established. Alongside its work for Dante's Inferno, inspired by the Divine Comedy, Visceral had announced plans in 2009 for a title called The Ripper, which was inspired by Jack the Ripper.