EA Officially Cancels Spielberg's Project LMNO

Electronic Arts has officially announced that their long-stalled Steven Spielberg collaboration, code-named Project LMNO, has been cancelled. Responding to a request for comment from Joystiq, EA confirmed that development on the project has ceased, clarifying that "EA maintains its relationship with Steven Spielberg." The announcement comes after an appearance on the latest 8-4 Play podcast by former EA developer Jake Kazdal, who said he worked on the project for two-and-a-half years before its cancellation. "I don't know exactly what was the thing that made it fall apart," Kazdal said on the podcast. "I'm sure anybody you ask is gonna tell you something a little bit different, but it didn't end up ever taking off." "There was some rival game stuff that may or may not have come out of EA that was basically the same thing minus some of the stuff we were doing. There was just a lot of politics." Following on the critical success and commercial failure of EA and Spielberg's first collaboration, 2008's Boom Blox, Project LMNO was reportedly centered around bringing "Spielbergness" to believable AI characters. Many in the industry considered the project dead in the water after the closure of EA internal developer Blueprint Studio in late 2008, but Electronic Arts had insisted the game was still under development numerous times in the past two years.