One of the top-secret game collaborations between EA and Academy Award winning director Steven Spielberg has been cancelled.

After more than two years in development, the game, codenamed Project LMNO, is officially no longer in production.

The news comes from Jake Kazdai, a former developer on Project LMNO, during his appearance on the most recent 8-4 Play podcast. In talking about the reasons behind the game’s cancellation, Kazdai had this to say:

"I don't know exactly what was the thing that made it fall apart. 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."

Despite EA’s recent efforts to expand and take risks on new and unproven IP’s with games like Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space, it seems that not all of them are destined to see store shelves. It’s a shame that internal conflicts may have derailed a release linked to an artist as revered as Spielberg.

It has to be disappointing for fans of the Boom Blox series (Spielberg and EA’s only effort to date that's been released) that at least one of the projects in the filmmaker’s four game deal is dead.

On the other hand, it’s also probably a little disappointing for those who were waiting for something other than a party game to come out of the collaboration. With Project LMNO’s Lead AI Programmer, Borut Pfeifer, stating at the AIIDE conference back in 2008 that this game was looking at bringing “Spielbergness” to the AI, it seems as though this could have been that game.

Spielberg super-fans shouldn’t get too upset though since EA has confirmed that it has not ceased working with the filmmaker entirely.

How about it Spielberg fans? Is this news a major let down from both a big publisher and a big director? Or are you too excited for Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming games to care?

Source: GameInformer