14 DAY TRIAL // According to Electronic Arts, Neil Young, one of the veterans of the company and one of the most acclaimed managers of Electronic Arts Los Angeles, is leaving the company. His replacement as head of EA's Blueprint studio is set to be Lou Castle, who came to Electronic Arts when his old studio, Westwood, was gobbled up and then dismantled by the videogame publisher. Once out of the team that he's been part of for so long, Young is planning to start his own independent game studio.
EA Blueprint is one of the central pieces of the new "city states" structure that Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello is putting in place with the publisher. At Blueprint the main concept was to create small development teams made up of talented people who were in charge of developing "prototype games" as well as proof of concept that sought to extend the intellectual property other Electronic Arts studios could draw on to create AAA titles. Some brand extensions, like Facebook games, were also developed.
While at Electronic Arts, Neil Young worked alongside Alan Yu, the main creative director at the studio, and oversaw a number of important projects, most notable of which are the ARG Majestic, The Two Towers sequel to The Lord of the Rings real time strategy and Sims 2. Lately he has been involved in the recent Nintendo Wii development of Boom Blox, which had Steven Spielberg as the director. The second game created by EA in collaboration with the well known film director was also going to be developed under Young's supervision.
Now that Young left, it seems that his Blueprint team, Maxis, which is currently developing Spore, and EA's Redwood Shores and LA teams are now under the direct coordination of Nick Earl, who is a senior vice president in the company.
Frank Gibeau, who is president at EA Games, elaborated on Young's departure in an e-mail, saying that "Neil is an 11-year EA veteran who has created a lot of great games and many good friendships at EA. We wish him the very best on his new project. Neil will always be welcome at EA".