Back in September we reported that EA had closed its Melbourne studio, Visceral Games. Today a source who worked at the studio who wished to not be identified has leaked a video containing footage of the game the studio had spent three years working on before the plug was pulled.
The source tells Kotaku Australia that the studio was working on a game called Blood Dust, a three-faction, third-person multiplayer shooter for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The game included nine unique classes, 100 upgradable weapons and abilities, wall walking, and leaping. The game was set in the 1930s and was described as a “run and gun experience”.
Our source tells us that despite the developers at the studio believing that EA had made a bad decision in ceasing production on the game, they were well taken care of and treated respectfully after Visceral’s closure. Many of the developers were offered positions in EA’s US studios, and it is believed that some of the developers from Visceral plan on starting up their own studios. Our source tells us that there is talk of the studio’s former designer, Gerry Sakkas, starting up his own studio with former EA and THQ staff members. Visceral’s former lead artist, Kamil Hamra, is also believed to have plans on opening a studio that will focus on providing art assets for other game companies.
Blood Dust was worked on by many developers from various EA studios, but the core team from Visceral Games in Melbourne consisted of the following developers:
• Adrian Hofman – Engineer
• Alexander Lindsay – Senior engineer
• Andrew Lacey – CTO
• Bruce Sutherland – Engineer
• Cameron Lee – Producer
• David Flower – Senior engineer
• Ewen Vowels – Senior engineer
• Gabor Fekete – Animator
• Geoffrey Lester – Tech artist
• Gerry Sakkas – Designer
• Glen Stuart – Engineer
• Gregory Palstra – DD
• Grigor Pedrioli – Senior artist
• Kamil Hamra – Lead artist
• Luke Carpenter – Lead engineer
• Mark Wayland – Senior engineer
• Matthieu Delbosc -Engineer
• Michael Davies – Lead gameplay engineer
• Mitch Harris – UI artist
• Nathan Thomas – Art director
• Nigel Kay – Engineer
• Rohan White – VFX artist
• Stephen Honegger – Senior artist
• Steven Dickinson – Lead animator
• Tara Caruso – Animaton
* Tejesh Munusamy – Lead QA
• Thomas Johnstone – Engineer
• Michael Hampden – Lead Designer
As with most videos of this nature, it is unlikely that it will remain on YouTube for very long, so have a good look at it before it’s gone!
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