EA Motive Boss Discusses Canceled IP Gaia, Iron Man Development

EA Motive's Dead Space remake isn't out for several months, but the company is already working on its next big project, Iron Man. In an interview with Eurogamer, the studio's general manager Patrick Klaus frankly discusses its first attempt at a new IP, and why it was canceled without seeing the light of day.

In the piece, Klaus explains that Motive had not yet shipped a game when he took the studio's lead position from Jade Raymond in 2019. After publishing Star Wars Squadron in 2020, Motive focused all its efforts on Gaia, a new IP that its developers had been working on for years. The only public look at the game came at E3 2020, which showed a player character flying around with a jetpack and manipulating physics objects in an urban environment.

Klaus says that the project proceeded in the prototype stage for around two years, but they were never able to find the unique experience that they were hoping for. Motive's relative inexperience as a studio also contributed to the decision to cancel Gaia in 2021. However, Klaus clarifies that Motive ultimately made that call, not EA headquarters.

"Cancellations in video game development shouldn't be a taboo thing," he told Eurogamer. "...It's part of the creative process and the uncertainty that comes with exploring different things. The one thing that I thought was really important at the time is that this wasn't an executive EA headquarters call. It was our call."

Later in the piece, Klaus also reveals that some developers at Motive were skeptical of the Dead Space remake, in part because the original developers were working on their own spiritual successor in The Callisto Protocol. However, once they started working on the game, they came around. Now, the studio is working on a high-profile game based on Iron Man. You can't help but wonder if that jetpack tech from Gaia is going to come in handy there.

EA Motive's Dead Space remake comes out January 27, 2023. Last we heard, Iron Man is in pre-production, so don't expect to see that for a few years at least.