At this year’s E3 conference, publisher Electronic Arts revealed a new project from Burnout and Need for Speed developer Criterion Games. The untitled project was still deep in its prototype stage, but it looked promising, with hints of the Burnout Paradise chaos but with more vehicles.

But this announcement followed several reports of turmoil at Criterion. Last September, the studio was reduced to just 16 people, down from around 60 during development on Burnout: Paradise. Many of the other employees moved over to Ghost Games, which is now in charge of the Need for Speed series. In January, the developer’s co-founders both resigned from their positions. But general manager Matt Webster argues that this reduction has actually allowed the team to focus its resources and use its creativity better. In an interview with Eurogamer, Webster explains that the developer wasn’t significantly affected by the departure of founder Alex Ward: “The spirit of Criterion is not just defined by one person–it’s the people who are in it. It’s different for sure.”

“If you start with knowing Criterion and then adding multiple vehicles all in the same place, you know the trajectory that we’re going on.”

He continues to say that the smaller scope helped Criterion start its new project: “We [had] a smaller team that was agile, and as we’ve sort of gone through the turn of the year, the last six months we’ve started to grow and add to that. And the phase we’re in is we now know the game we want to make, so it’s much clearer and we can now begin to scale the team.”

This new game, though, is pretty different than Criterion’s past work with Need for Speed and Burnout. Webster describes how the team came about the idea for the new project: “We’ve kicked around the idea of multiple vehicles for years, and we’ve always been excited about doing something beyond cars. We hinted at that a little with the bikes we put into Paradise, and we were [working] with some planes in there as well. That just kept coming back, and what you learn is when we keep coming back to something, that’s a start point for us to start figuring something out. If you start with knowing Criterion and then adding multiple vehicles all in the same place, you know the trajectory that we’re going on.”

Seeing games very early in development is a new trend that EA seems to have embraced. But does this mean that we’ll see a paid alpha version for Criterion’s game? Webster doesn’t negate the possibility. “I think if you follow the logical progression of the way games are made, now, it’s never been easier to make games and publish games and get people involved with paid alphas or whatever,” he says. “There are so many ways games get made and sold–and I think it’s all going to change soon.”

One of the questions that always comes up with Criterion is when, or if, it will return to the Burnout franchise. Webster says that the series is far from dead, and that we’ll see a new game in the future. “People have asked is Burnout dead–of course it’s not. I’m sure we’re going to come back to it at some point.”

Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news of Criterion’s mysterious project when it becomes available. What are you looking forward to most in a Criterion game with multiple vehicles? Let us know in the comments!

Alex Newhouse is an editorial intern at GameSpot, and you can follow him on Twitter @alexbnewhouse
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