EA Canada

Lore & Background

Electronic Arts (EA), based in Redwood City, California, acquired Distinctive Software in 1991 for $11 million and renamed Distinctive Software to EA Canada. At the time of the business acquisition, Distinctive Software was noted for developing a number of racing and sporting games published under the Accolade brand. Distinctive Software, Inc. was a Canadian video game developer established in Burnaby, British Columbia, by Don Mattrick and Jeff Sember after their success with the game Evolution. Mattrick (age 17) and Jeff Sember approached Sydney Development Corporation, who agreed to publish Evolution in 1982. Distinctive Software was known in the late 1980s and early 1990s for their racing and sports video games, including the Test Drive series, Stunts, 4D Boxing, and Hardball II. In 1991, Distinctive was acquired by Electronic Arts in a deal worth US$10 million and became EA Canada, which is where the most EA Sports branded games are developed.

In Their Own Story

It is late November in Burnaby. Rain sheets down the windows of the studio's upper floor, and the only light in the motion-capture bay is the blue glow of tracking markers on a retired midfielder who spent three weeks here learning to let the engine read his hips. His boots are still wet. He kicks the ball into the net for the fourteenth time, and a junior developer at the monitoring station mutters, 'That's the one,' and hits save.

Down the corridor, a QA lead is on her sixteenth replay of the same free-kick sequence, checking whether the wall's jump timing matches the broadcast footage they pulled from last month's Champions League quarter-final. The rain ticks against the glass. Somewhere a coffee machine gurgles. The build is due in nine days, and the whole studio knows it: get the touch right, get the wall right, and the world will feel the pitch under their thumbs before the season even starts.

Reader's Guide

The campus consists of a motion-capture studio, twenty-two rooms for composing, fourteen video editing suites, three production studios, a wing for audio compositions, and a quality assurance department. There are also facilities such as fitness rooms, two theatres, a cafeteria, coffee bars, a soccer field, and several arcades.

Did You Know?

• Distinctive Software won a lawsuit against Accolade in 1989 over the use of source code for the game Out Run.
• EA Vancouver houses the world's largest video game test operation.
• EA Seattle was closed in 2002 and half the jobs were moved to EA Vancouver.
• EA acquired Black Box Games in 2002, which became part of EA Canada under the name EA Black Box.