EA Executive: DICE 'Begged' To Do New Battlefront Game
In an interview over at ComputerAndVideoGames.com, EA Games executive vice president Patrick Söderlund described how EA's DICE studio asked for the opportunity to develop a new Battlefront game as part of EA's exclusive multi-year Star Wars deal with Disney. According to Söderlund, DICE was adamant about developing the game, which was a surprise coming from a studio with a history of preferring original properties like Battlefield.
Here's the Star Wars part of CVG's interview with Söderlund (emphasis in answer added):
So one of your big surprises was DICE working on the new Star Wars: Battlefront. As you said, that's pretty much a match made in heaven for fans... but those sorts of dream collaborations don't happen often.
I'm glad you say that because it was almost not happening. It was just something as boring as resources and availability. The DICE guys Karl Magnus Troedsson and Patrick Bach were talking and I told them we were in dialogues with Disney over this deal and they just looked at me and said, "Why haven't you spoken to us? What are you doing? We want to make Battlefront."
DICE is a very particular place and they are very proud of what they do and you don't really tell them what to do. I didn't anticipate them wanting to work on a license - they've always been new IP or their own IP. But they were just like, 'we would kill to make this game' and the whole studio started talking about it like, 'please give us this game'.
That's when I called Frank [Gibeau, EA Labels boss] and I realised we had something here. 'If they want it that badly, then the game will be freaking awesome - we have to figure it out'. So we figured it out, we got them the game and it was that simple. They begged to do it, the opportunity was there and that's exactly why you'll see a game that will be what it needs to be.
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