Announcing EA Originals

2016-06-12
EA Staff

By Patrick Söderlund, Executive Vice President of EA Studios

Today at EA PLAY, I was proud to announce EA Originals, and provide a first look at an amazing new game that we will bring to all of you.

Last year when we first saw Unravel™ and started working with the passionate team at Coldwood in Sweden, we saw a game that we knew deserved the world’s attention. It deserved to be played.

But our partnership on Unravel with Coldwood also showed us something more profound, something bigger than just one game. It confirmed something we'd been thinking about for some time, and spurred us into action.

There are so many amazing games out there today, with highly creative development teams putting their hearts and souls into their projects. There are more stories like Coldwood and Unravel, making games you deserve to play.

With EA Originals, we are committed to finding great new games that we know players are going to love, and working with small developers to make sure those games get discovered and into the hands of players.

EA Originals is about three things:

First, it is about taking first-time experiences that are unique, gorgeous, innovative and memorable, and bringing them to the world.

Second, it is about supporting small developers and helping them make the most of their games. We'll seek a few projects each year for EA Originals, and partner with them throughout the process of development to marketing to publishing.

Lastly, it is about funding, and offering small studios a level of security with an EA Originals game. Making games is hard. It's a hard business. These developers have taken on the risk of developing a new IP, and great games deserve to be played. So with EA Originals, we want the profits from these games to go into the hands of the studios making them. We want them to be recognized for their work, so they can keep innovating and creating, and so the players get to play more and more amazing games.

The first game coming from EA Originals is definitively innovative and memorable. It's called Fe, and it's developed by a small studio in Gothenburg called Zoink. Today, the world got its first look into the magical and beautiful world of Fe. You can view the first trailer here.

At its heart, Fe is a personal narrative about our relationship with nature, the land, and its beings. It’s a wordless celebration of our longing to be one with world around us. It’s a story that reminds us that everything in this world is connected, living in a delicate balance that is constantly under threat. It's a game full of discovery, conflict, and relationships.

Having spent time with the team at Zoink and playing the game, I can tell you it is something very special. And that is what we hope to say with every game that is part of EA Originals.