Exhuming EA Black Box

If you ever played a Need for Speed game between 2003 and 2011, the name Black Box might sound familiar to you. Today, I want to take a look back at their history, so let's just begin.

The studio was founded in 1998 by former Radical Entertainment employees. The first games they worked on were released in the year 2000, namely NHL 2K published by the now defunct Midway Games and the PlayStation 1 version of Nascar 2001. They went on to make NHL Hitz 2002, paradoxically in 2001.

The year 2002 brought with it the breakthrough hit of the studio: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, more exactly, the PlayStation 2 version, the other versions being developed by EA Seattle. This particular version of the game shares only the aesthetics with the Seattle version, but the staff of Black Box showed their knack for detail, adding stuff like a forest fire and some firetrucks on the map Coastal Parklands and adding a more detailed lighting model to the game, outclassing its counterpart's better general fidelity. It also helps that the game let you choose between an arcade handling model and a more sim-like option by the way of Need for Speed 2. In addition to all this, they overhauled the police system, meaning that now the police helicopter not only drops explosive barrels along the track, but it also shoots guided rockets towards the player. Unrealistic? Yes. Amazing to watch? Also yes. This year also brought NHL Hitz 2003 published by Midway and Sega Soccer Slam, published by, evidently, Sega. It should be noted that Black Box was bought up by Electronic Arts during the development of Hot Pursuit 2 and rebranded as EA Black Box, but for simplicity's sake, I will continue to refer to them as Black Box.

From this point on, Black Box became the new caretakers of the NFS IP, releasing classics such as Underground, Underground 2 and the most famous of them all, Most Wanted, on a yearly basis. Between these now legendary titles which do not need any further elaboration on my part, and which actually changed racing games forever, they also released NHL 2004 and 2005.

In 2006 the house of cards finally started to crumble. EA mandated that the next Need for Speed game, which would eventually become Carbon, must come to both generations of consoles, meaning they would develop the game simultaneously for 7 platforms. The game turned out ok, featuring everything you would expect in a Need for Speed game from this era, including cop chases, a pretty great handling model, customization, goofy rivals and a nonsensical story.

Things would start to get worse in 2007, as Black Box would develop NFS: ProStreet, a simcade experience with striking aesthetics (I love them to this day, tbh) which was received poorly by the public, as it wasn't similar to the other games, featuring no open world and there being a huge emphasis on clean driving, as cars are really fragile. The situation was not helped by the fat that because of the yearly schedule, the game was rushed to market and also the fact that Black Box still needed to make a PS2 version of the game, because of the absurd spread of the console. The studio also had 2 more projects released this year, a sports game, NBA Street Homecourt and Skate, a skating game in which tricks are done using analog sticks, contrasting with the Tony Hawk series of games, leading to the studio being streched very thin.

If 2007 was a bad year, 2008 would be worse, as NFS Undercover was released in a clearly incomplete state, featuring physics glitches, bad framerates and questionable design (for example, although the game is open world, the races can only be started from the map screen). These problems lead to the game being panned across the board, both by critics and fans of the series. It should be noted that there was a PS2 version of the game, cobbled together by Exient Entertainment. This version runs on the NFS Carbon version of the engine and it uses a modified Most Wanted map, but it is also subject to glitches and bad design, as EA granted them a pretty short development schedule. The collaboration between Black Box and Exient would pop up again the same year with Skate It, a sequel to Skate made for the Wii, featuring earthquakes.

The year 2009 was a merciful pause, as Black Box only assisted the development of Need for Speed Shift, the studio taking the full brunt being Slightly Mad studios of Project CARS fame. They also released Skate 2, considered bigger and better than its predecessor. This would change in 2010 as Black Box would codevelop Need for Speed World with EA Singapore. The game would be a MMO version of the series,featuring the maps of NFS Most Wanted and Carbon merged together. They would also bring out Skate 3 in an unfinished state, only a year after Skate 2, which is not a testament to EA's corporate culture at all.

Now, we are close to the grand finale, as 2011 brought us the underappreciated NFS: The Run, panned for daring to be different, bringing back a linear story progression and a more cinematic approach (no, not the interactive movie cinematic), with set pieces like driving through a lightning storm or being chased by the mob through a refinery. This would be the last game developed by the studio, which would be rebranded as Quicklime Games and it would provide support to NFS World until 2013, when it would be closed down. The studio would be revived as EA Jawbreaker, a support studio, which helped the also now defunct Visceral Games with Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel (2013) and Battlefield Hardline (2015), but also Ghost Games, the new legal guardians of NFS (not anymore in present times), with Rivals. After Hardline, Jawbreaker was also dissolved, ending the legacy of this proud studio.

All in all, time and time again, we see Electronic Arts destroying studios and then closing them down, overworking them with strict schedules. In the end, the studios always falter and that wrong step turns them into dust. Now, we can see this happening to Ghost Games, turned into a support studio, being stripped of their name, now being called EA Gothenburg, and maybe also BioWare, after the Anthem fiasco.

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