Amy Hennig joins EA's Visceral Games to work on Star Wars

Former Naughty Dog creative director Amy Hennig has joined developer Visceral Games to work on a new Star Wars project at Electronic Arts, the company announced today.

Steve Papoutsis, vice president and general manager at Visceral, made the announcement in a post on EA's The Beat blog.

"Amy has long been recognized as one of our industry's top visionaries, and is coming off an amazing run as the Writer and Creative Director of the Uncharted franchise," Papoutsis wrote. "But her contributions go beyond the games she helped create at Naughty Dog and at Crystal Dynamics, where we worked together many years ago. As both a colleague and friend, I've always admired her approach to creative development — focusing on nailing down the soul of a game first, and then making sure the writing, the gameplay, the design and the art comes together to form a unified, interactive experience for the player. This fits in perfectly with what we're trying to do here at Visceral and Amy's going to help us continue in our pursuit to make the most thrilling, immersive games in the world."

Hennig started her video game development career at Electronic Arts in the early '90s. On Twitter, she spoke of her desire to work on the Star Wars franchise at EA, saying, "It's a privilege to have the opportunity to contribute to the Star Wars universe, after it's had such a formative influence on my life."

She'll work as creative director on Visceral's new Star Wars title, which is unannounced.

In March, Hennig left Naughty Dog after a 10-year career at the studio, where she served as writer and creative director on the Uncharted franchise. She was working on the next entry in the Uncharted series for PlayStation 4 prior to her departure.

In 2013, Electronic Arts inked a deal with Disney for an exclusive, multi-year licensing agreement to publish Star Wars games. Titles are in development at Visceral Games, DICE and BioWare. One of those games is expected to hit mid-2015, prior to the release of the next Star Wars film.