One of the weirdest announcements at EA’s E3 presentation was that of SEED (Search for Extraordinary Experiences Division), awkwardly crammed in between games and without any real explanation of what it was. I you can bet that I wanted answers, since I was supposed to be writing TechRaptor’s article on the damn thing.
The closest we got to any sort of closure on it was Patrick Söderlund’s hasty explanation.
“We want to blur the line between reality and the virtual world. What if instead of giving millions of players control of a single virtual character, we had games with millions of characters shaped by you, our players.”
I take it back – that explains nothing at all. Oh look, there’s a YouTube trailer. Maybe that’ll explain it?
Hm, never mind.
Best we can offer right now is that SEED is some form of radical R&D department, with an emphasis on procedural generation and neural networks. Further rumours point at them working closely with the Frostbite engine, and with the Xbox Scorpio in particular. The crazies are in full swing though, with a whole host of theories as to what SEED might actually be. One of my favourite theories of the evening points at SEED being the start of a viral marketing campaign for some form of new EA IP – probably based around the ideas of imaginations turning into reality, and the dangers of all-knowledgeable AI. And while we have next to no evidence that this is the case, damn I’d love it to be true.
Other reactions went down the rabbithole of recent gaming politics:
Most likely their SJW and pandering division considering every game that was announced right now had either a trailer with a black guy or a woman in it.
– Migi
Or poked fun at existing gaming tropes.
Saw the presentation on this and thought immediately, “this sounds like a Peter Molyneux pitch”, but with two scoops bullshit this time!
– InkViper
Either way, we’re not likely to learn much else until EA chooses to release more information. Which could be bloody never.
My favourite answer of the evening came from TechRaptor’s News Editor, Don Parsons.
Oh god damn it. When did EA buy Galbadia Garden?
