IGN Australia has a pretty good interview up with Glen Schofield, executive producer on EA’s much-covered sci-fi shooter Dead Space. In it, he talks about censorship, the ongoing ban discussion, and the difference between the “old” EA and the Electronic Arts of 2008. He states that Japan and Korea have both banned the title, but interestingly enough, Australia is letting it fly:
“Australia is getting the full, complete version. No cuts. We’re not softening it for anybody. You know, I think a part of it was – he’s not a killer. He’s killing aliens and that’s why we thought for a while we’d get it through in Germany. And they were like ‘well, the fact that he can get dismembered pretty grotesquely is bad, so…’ We thought it was cool.”
Schofield brings up the attitudes of the old EA which were evident with some helpful “suggestions” from one executive:
“You know, at one point, one of EA’s marketing guys – and I don’t even think he’s there anymore – said, ‘hey – let’s get a big actor to play Isaac’ because that’s what EA would do. The old EA. We had Sean Connery in From Russia with Love and it didn’t do a damned thing.”
Schofield claims that there is now a “new” EA, one that we’ve only seen for “two or two-and-a-half years” and we are only just beginning to see the kind of games it is putting out.
Dead Space is certainly exciting, and if it truly represents a blockbuster title for Electronic Arts that even the hardcore gamers can get behind, then maybe EA could be on the path to reform. Its CEO has stated many times that he wants his company to change, but we’ve not seen many moves forward to improve. Perhaps Dead Space is indeed the first in a line of quality titles from EA. We can only hope.
