The co-founder and head of Titanfall maker Respawn Vince Zampella is now going to be looking after Electronic Arts' DICE LA studio.
As reported by The LA Times, the development vet is going to be heading up EA's Los Angeles studio, which is going to be run separately from DICE's Stockholm headquarters and Zampella's own Respawn. The firm is also likely going to have a change of name at some point.
“We will probably rebrand,” Zampella said.
“We want to give it a new image. We want people to say: ‘This is a destination you can go and make new content.’ I think they’ve kind of gotten the branding that they are the support studio for DICE Stockholm. I think rebranding is important for showing people, ‘Hey! Come work here. We’re going to do some amazing things.’”
EA's chief studios officer Laura Miele added: “I think under Vince’s leadership the expectation is to have them work on and create a game on their own. And I genuinely believe that he is going to help guide them creatively. He’s going to help them further fortify and build out their talent and their team. I think we’re going to have a really strong studio out of our Los Angeles location. They can go from a support team to a full stand-alone studio to create a new game offering.”
It's also likely that Respawn has some unannounced games in the works. Zampella lists the projects that the studio is currently developing, adding that "there might be more".
Respawn was founded by vets of Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward back in 2010 after their rather dramatic ousting from the developer by publisher Activision.
The studio's debut was Xbox-exclusive Titanfall in 2014, published by EA, before a sequel launched on multiple platforms two years later. In 2017, EA bought Respawn. At the start of 2019, the developer-surprise launched free-to-play Titanfall-inspired battle royale title Apex Legends - a game that has attracted 70m users, 50m of which played the game in the first month - ahead of the release of Jedi: Fallen Order at the end of the year.
