How Dead Space Wisely Ripped-Off Resident Evil 4

Implying that EA's Dead Space blatantly borrowed from Capcom's Resident Evil 4 may sound like a bad thing. It's not. Because, as senior producer Chuck Beaver said, there are dangers to doing "too much new."

That's been a common theme at some of the GDC talks we attended this week, as published developers caution their peers to be selective about the amount of innovation they try to pack in to a single video game.

"Don't reinvent literally everything," Beaver warned, noting that the EA Redwood Shores team picked about five new things they wanted to do in Dead Space. That, in itself, was a challenge, as the EARS team was hungry to innovate. Since it had been working on licensed properties like The Simpsons and James Bond for more than fifteen years-its last new IP was Road Rash from 1991-the desire to pile on the "new" was fierce.