Project Ragtag was a codename for an untitled action-adventure third-person shooter video game set within the Star Wars universe.
Electronic Arts (EA) made an exclusive deal to help develop lucrative Star Wars games through three of its studios, including Visceral.
The studio opted to pitch a third-person action game that maintained the spirit of Jamaica, having players play as "space scoundrels" in an open-world-style Star Wars universe, and code-named this project as Yuma.
[1] Amy Hennig, the writer for the first three Uncharted games from Naughty Dog, was brought into EA for Visceral as creative lead and to help write the story for Yuma.
These films shared the same nature of a haphazard group of people coming to work together to pull off a stint, thus leading her to give the project the name Ragtag.
[3] Gameplay would have included the player switching between multiple character viewpoints, akin to the format used in the Star Wars films, as parts of the heist came together.
[1] After Hardline finally shipped in 2015, EA let go of Visceral's General Manager Steve Papoutsis and replaced him with Larry Probst's son, Scott.
Such numbers were too small for a large game, and to avoid having to lure in more programmers to the San Francisco area and its high cost-of-living, they established Motive Studios in Montreal, led by Jade Raymond, the original producer of the Assassin's Creed series, with their first project to work with Visceral on the Star Wars title.
[2][9][10][11] In light of these concerns, EA's CEO Andrew Wilson stated that the reason for Visceral's closure wasn't a single-play versus multiplayer game issue, but instead one based on listening to player feedback and following marketplace trends.
[15] In April 2019, EA announced a new single-player game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, to be released later that year and developed by Respawn Entertainment.
Hennig stated that this seemed like a change of strategy related to the criticism that EA received after its closure of Visceral and its strong indication that it was moving away from single-player games.