Amy Hennig is a veteran in the games industry. She got her start over two decades ago, and proceeded to have a hand in games such as Tomb Raider and the original Uncharted as well as its two PS3 sequels. After leaving Naughty Dog, she would go on to work at EA, where she would attempt to create a linear, single player, story driven Star Wars game.

You can probably guess what happened next—as is EA’s wont with all things Star Wars, they ended up cancelling Hennig’s game, and Hennig ended up departing EA. Now, with all this experience on AAA game development under her belt, Hennig finds herself disillusioned with it all. Speaking to GamesIndustry, she pointed at trends like crunch in development, as well as mass layoffs (both of which have been recently publicized), noting that development doesn’t feel sustainable at this rate.

“I think we keep doing it that way because we have these established companies and teams, and that’s a resource, an asset you don’t want to just throw away,” she said. “But on the other hand, we’re seeing news stories left and right where developers are folding and publishers are laying off hundreds of people. It feels like something feels inevitable, because the cost of development and keeping all these people on staff, especially in expensive areas, just doesn’t feel sustainable.”

The solution, according to Hennig, is to follow the model of the TV and movie industries—more outsourcing, and less trying to take on everything in house.

“Obviously that would require a big sea change in the industry — probably towards unionization, too — but you would have a lot more external partners or freelance developers as part of a team, do more things as distributed development rather than have everything in-house,” Hennig said. “It would allow for a lot more flexibility rather than feeling that constant pressure, that churn of salaries.

“And I think it would allow us a little more downtime, too. A lot of what we talk about with crunch pressure is not just the ambition of the titles, it’s also just the fact that these people are employees. So we said, ‘Thank God’ when DLC became a thing, because there might be this huge dip of downtime where you might need 10 people but you have 300, so what are you going to do? They’re employees. Now we can shuffle those people onto DLC content, but even then that creates this crunch churn on the staff.”

Honestly, I find it hard to disagree with anything she has said. It is telling that companies that are doing the best with development are companies like Nintendo, which famously have incredible employee working conditions. I think that one way or the other, something has to give as far as western AAA game development goes.

Over the last couple of years, we have seen the narrative that single player games are not viable begin to die out. We have had the large scale success of single player games such as Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War, Spider-Man, Resident Evil 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2 turn the whole notion on its head.

However, through all this, we have also seen Fortnite become the most popular game in the world, and EA cancel several Star Wars single player games. That’s because a pitch for a purely single player game, like the original Uncharted on the PlayStation 3 was, does not work in today’s climate anymore, according to Amy Hennig, the creator of the Uncharted franchise, who would eventually leeave Naughty Dog to work with EA on a similar single player Star Wars game- which got cancelled.

Speaking to GameRanx, Hennig noted that a pitch of that nature simply would not be accepted by publishers today. “I’ve said that I don’t think a game like the first Uncharted, even though it was the foundational footprint for that series, would be a viable pitch today,” she said. “The idea of a finite eight-ish-hour experience that has no second modes, no online — the only replayability was the fact that you could unlock cheats and stuff like that. No multiplayer, nothing. That doesn’t fly anymore. Now you have to have a lot of hours of gameplay. Eight would never cut it. Usually some sort of online mode. And of course you see where things are pushing, toward live services and battle royale and games as a service.

”All of those things — I don’t know the word I’m looking for, but they play less nicely with story. They’re less conducive to traditional storytelling. That has a shape and an arc and a destination, an end. A game that is a live service, that continues, does not.”

Hennig’s sentiment, which she has expressed previously, is of course, informed by her time at publishers like EA. Nonetheless, I can only hope that the continued success of so many single player games, as outlined above, will make publishers consider pushing out traditional style single player games in addition to their multiplayer live services going forward, rather than opting for just one over the other.

When Electronic Arts announced that the former Visceral Studios’ untitled Star Wars game had shifted to EA Worldwide Studios, which EA Vancouver would lead, the obvious question was: What about Amy Hennig? The Uncharted creator was at the helm of the rumoured Project Ragtag and constantly discussed whenever news of it emerged. Since the closure of Visceral Studios, where has she been?

As it turns out, Hennig is no longer with Electronic Arts. Speaking to Eurogamer during the Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Hennig actually parted ways with the publisher in January and is currently looking to start her own independent studio.

“I have not worked at EA since January, technically, legally. Yes. This is the problem, it was hard enough for them, but people were immediately asking them ‘Is Amy working with you?’ and the answer was ‘Well, we’re in negotiations…’ like, hmm. It was, sort of the soft pedal answer.

“I haven’t been in, but look – I get along with all those people, I consider even the guys on the exec team friends. But it made it awkward because it was like, ‘I never got the chance to announce that I’m not at EA so I need to just pull off that band-aid at some point’ – but also had nothing to announce. It makes it sound like I just went home! But I’m doing all this stuff, working on all kinds of things.”

Hennig is currently “consulting with some people” to set up her indie studio and could dabble in VR gaming. “I’m hoping to bring some people on board, I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and do some more projects, do some VR stuff – I’m consulting with some VR companies and doing a ton of research because I haven’t played a lot to immerse myself in it.”

As for her Star Wars project, the original concept that she had in mind seems to be retired. “I’m not doing anything Star Wars. And, who knows what the future may hold, but that project is on the shelf now. The Vancouver studio is working on something pretty different. It’s really not… Y’know, once you go more open world it’s such a different game to the one we were making. Everybody loved what we were doing and I’d love to see us resurrect that somehow, but it’s complicated.”

At the very least, it seems that Hennig left Electronic Arts on amicable terms. The situation as a whole doesn’t seem to be a simple matter of EA having nothing for Hennig to work on but honestly, we don’t have all the facts. Time will tell what the real deal is so stay tuned for more information.

Visceral Games’ ill-fated Star Wars project, which was led by former writer/director for Uncharted 1-3 Amy Hennig, is currently being handled by EA Vancouver. While much has been made about the game changing and incorporating more live services in line with today’s trends, there appears to be a single-player narrative intact.

In fact, those exact words were used in a recent EA job listing for Senior Online Designer. It notes such responsibilities as “working with the Creative Director, Game Director and Lead Writer to align all connected features with the single-player narrative and gameplay into a cohesive experience.” Of course, candidate will also work with various creative heads to “define and execute on the vision for a unique online experience”.

Furthermore, the execution and tuning of the game’s “features and economy in a live service environment together with the Live Team” and serving to champion “the vision for the connected experience and live services” is also mentioned. Finally, the candidate will look to “Track, analyse and communicate on forward-looking trends and player-desired features in online gaming and live services”.

If we didn’t know better, it would seem that the untitled Star Wars project is something akin to a new Destiny or The Division. The mentions of “economy” and “player-desired features” seems to indicate as much. Overall though, it seems Electronic Arts is serious about turning this another bastion for live service activities.

We still don’t know what that means for the single-player component but more information won’t likely come soon.

Streaming games and sharing Let’s Plays on YouTube is an interesting question on game ownership that pops up time and time again. Companies like Atlus and Nintendo have often tried to claim that streaming a game or sharing it on YouTube is a fundamental violation of their authorship of the game and its contents, while other companies embrace it as a facet of the social media era. In fact, every modern console, including the Switch itself, allows people to share videos of their gameplay.

However, there is an argument to be made that for single player cinematic style games especially- games that are particularly endangered in the present AAA climate- watching game streams can act as an adequate replacement for playing games for many. That’s what Amy Hennig, the creator of Uncharted, has also expressed in an excellent piece that I encourage everyone to read over on Polygon.

“There is also this trend now that, as much as people protest and say, ‘Why are you canceling a linear, story-based game? This is the kind of game we want,’ people aren’t necessarily buying them,” Hennig says in the piece. “They’re watching somebody else play them online.

“When you’re spending millions on a story-based game that may not be perceived to have long-term value beyond that one playthrough, the question is, ‘Well, why would anybody buy this if they can just watch somebody play it?”

I think she does have a point to a certain degree- though on the whole, I want to argue that the effect of streams and let’s plays is additive, not negative. People who watch a stream that they like end up going out and buying the game themselves- that was, in fact, how Persona 4 got so big in the west (thanks to Giant Bomb’s “endurance run” let’s play of the game). But from the game developers’ perspective, I can at least see where they are coming from.

It’s an uncomfortable question that will need to be answered eventually.

Following the closure of Visceral Games by Electronic Arts with its untitled Star Wars project shifting to EA Vancouver, new details have emerged about the studio’s trials. Former level designer Zach Wilson, who now works at Bethesda, spoke out about Dead Space 2 and how its budget hit $60 million. However, the game itself would only sell 4 million copies.

Wilson said that EA wanted an even higher budget and a large amount of marketing, cuts given to Microsoft and Sony, and so on resulted in the $60 million cost. Along with Wilson, former game director Scott Warner also spoke out and noted that while Visceral was meant to do well, it was ultimately “defeated by forces beyond our control”. Warner, who now works as a design lead at Oclus VR, said that it was “way more complicated” than just blaming Electronic Arts.

Though the Star Wars title, codenamed Ragtag, hasn’t been cancelled, it’s undergoing significant changes. Originally helmed by former Uncharted director Amy Hennig, the publisher confirmed that it was in discussion with her to decide her “next move”.

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Dead Space and Battlefield: Hardline developer Visceral Games has been shut down by its parent company Electronic Arts. The studio was in the middle of developing a new Star Wars title codenamed “Ragtag” with former Uncharted director Amy Hennig at the helm.

In a public statement on the same, EA’s Patrick Söderlund said that the company would have to “pivot” the design based on feedback from players and “fundamental” changes in the marketplace.

“Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.”

Visceral Games is currently “ramping down and closing” and Söderlund notes that “we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.”

Also, thanks to these developments, the release date for Ragtag is pretty much up in the air now. “Lastly, while we had originally expected this game to launch late in our fiscal year 2019, we’re now looking at a new timeframe that we will announce in the future.”

In an internal email to employees that Kotaku obtained, it was revealed that development on the title has now been shifted to EA Vancouver. The studio, along with other Worldwide Studios, has been working on the project for some time now and EA executive producer Steve Anthony will lead to the team. It was also revealed that much of the assets created by Visceral would form the base for the new title.

As for Amy Hennig, an EA Spokesperson told Jason Schreier over email that, “We are in discussions with Amy about her next move.”

Whichever way you slice it though, the game that’s now in development at EA Vancouver will be fundamentally different from the vision that Visceral Games and Hennig were pushing for. It’s a sad state of affairs all around and hopefully the development team members will find other opportunities soon.

EA have some pretty exciting new projects in the pipeline- especially due to their double punch combo of Jade Raymond and Amy Hennig, exceptional designers known for working on blockbuster IPs like Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted in the past, who both joined EA some time ago.

Speaking about the kinds of games they are working on during the UBS Global Technology Conference (via DualShockers), EA Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen noted that EA has traditionally not done well in the open world acton game genre, which is today’s biggest gaming genre by far. He pointed out, however, that the company can do well in the future, which is why they brought Raymond on board, and established a new studio for her in Montreal. Raymond’s next game, he said, should be out in the next three years, and is hopefully the start of a new franchise.

As for Hennig, she is currently working on a Star Wars action game, which he thinks will be a ‘huge opportunity for growth.’

It will be extremely interesting to see what these two games are, and how they end up doing- EA haven’t put out a truly bad game in a very long time now (only highly disappointing ones, like Dragon Age Inquisition, Battlefield Hardline, Need for Speed, and Star Wars Battlefront)- and hopefully these new studios maintain that record.

Over the last few years, AAA game development has gotten more and more out of control. Games now take hundreds of millions of dollars to be made, with teams of hundreds working on them, months spent on bug testing (to no avail, because the games are still shipped broken, often with extensive day one patches), with multiple delays, and years long development cycles, and only franchise games being made, due to the high risk involved in AAA game development.

It’s a total mess, and something needs to be done before the bottom falls out of the games industry. This isn’t just something I’m saying- the director of Uncharted, Amy Hennig, shares this sentiment as well.

Suggesting that something has ‘gotta give,’ when it comes to AAA game development, Hennig described her own time at Naughty Dog, and the stress that went with it, in an interview with Idle Thumbs’ Designer Notes podcast (via GamesIndustry.biz). “[It was] really hard. The whole time I was at Naughty Dog – ten-and-a-half years – I probably, on average, I don’t know if I ever worked less than 80 hours a week. There were exceptions where it was like, ‘Okay, let’s take a couple of days off,’ but I pretty much worked seven days a week, at least 12 hours a day.” Hennig also said that the lifestyle that goes with AAA game development is not worth it.

She discussed how AAA game development works at large, noting that the cycle has become untenable, and something needs to give.

“When you go to pitch a game like this, it’s like, ‘Well it better have this many hours, and you’d better have this mode, and you’d better do this.’ Or we could go, ‘You know what, we’re gonna make the best fucking six hour game you’ve ever seen. And that’s all it is. And could you please make that $40?’

“We’re definitely at the point where something’s gotta give… And my hope was that different means of distribution, the fact that everything wasn’t bricks-and-mortar and in a box, it would be that. And I think in some quarters that’s true, but I think for AAA development we’re still stuck in that rut, and the ante keeps getting upped.

“I mean, Uncharted 1; a ten-hour game, no other modes… you can’t make a game like that any more.”

She’s definitely right about that- about all of that. AAA game development is brutal on the developers, and has led to most of the games industry being stuck in a stagnant rut. With the mid tier of game development having died out last generation, high end console gaming is in serious danger of becoming too unsustainable for most companies to bother- and if you think that’s alarmist thinking, you only need to look at the rise of mobile gaming, and just how many companies are content with focusing on that over AAA games.

Visceral Games’ untitled Star Wars game, teased at E3 2016, certainly has its fair share of expectations. Along with being set in the vaunted film franchise, it has former Uncharted director and writer Amy Hennig at the helm. Hennig was at PAX West to discuss the action adventure title, as noted by DualShockers, and shared her thoughts on the challenges of development.

Visceral is working with LucasFilm’s story division, led by Doug Chang, and the goal is to make things as authentic as possible.

“Authentic Star Wars can mean that we get the AT-ST right, right? And of course we have to do that too, but it’s all about the new stuff, the new characters, the new story, the new locations, the new creatures, the new tech. All of this stuff that has to sit authentically alongside the Star Wars that we’re so familiar with.”

And while there may be plenty of similarities for working on Uncharted and Star Wars, there are plenty of differences as well. “So I thought that some of the rules I had used making Uncharted no longer applied,” said Hennig. “In Uncharted or in Indiana Jones you actually kinda stick with Indie the whole time. There are times you cut away, but it’s always something that informs you on what he is doing, like Marion in the tent. In Star Wars you’re always cutting away to the bad guys, and seeing what they’re doing: ‘Meanwhile, back at the villain ranch…'”

Hennig also talked about experiencing the adventure without the privilege of knowing things that the main characters don’t. “When we watch a film, we’re the privileged observer, right? We’re not the protagonist. Their struggle is illuminated by the things we can see that they don’t. Suspense and all that kind of stuff. How do you do that in a game where you’re supposed to identify with the protagonist and cut away the things that they don’t know?”

Nevertheless, like the prequel trilogy and the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Visceral’s Star Wars will make its characters the underdogs facing tough odds. “They have to work together and they have to be cleverer than their enemies. Therefore, how do you turn that into gameplay. How do you take that idea and then deconstruct it as mechanics, sequences, that then play to that core principle. That’s the challenge of making these kinds of things.”

What are your hopes from Visceral’s Star Wars? Let us know in the comments.