EA Salt Lake City shop bulks up

While the industry has been hit by a wealth of layoffs and studio closures in recent months, at least one shop is going in the opposite direction. Electronic Arts has announced that it is adding a new development team to its Salt Lake City studio, headed by "key leaders" pulled from the publisher's Sims studio at Redwood Shores.

The new team will be put to work on a "groundbreaking new project," though an EA representative would not confirm for GameSpot whether it had any ties to the Sims franchise beyond the team leadership. The new team will join EA's existing Salt Lake City operation, which currently houses the developers of Hasbro-branded titles like Littlest Pet Shop and Nerf games. To make room, EA is moving the entire studio into larger facilities in downtown Salt Lake City.

The development team will eventually ramp up hiring but first must fill some key roles. Currently, EA's official job site is listing seven open positions at its Salt Lake City location, including creative director, art director, technical director, and senior online engineer.

The creative director listing indicates that the game will be a new intellectual property and asks for experience with single-player and multiplayer online games. Meanwhile, the art director should have experience with "a mature, contemporary art style," and EA wants a senior online engineer with experience working with the online functions of the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3.