The rapid rise of eSports has forced publishers such as Activision to take charge of the competitive gaming community for their respective franchises. Electronic Arts is now stepping into the game as announced via blog by Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson with the creation of the EA Competitive Gaming Division (CGD).
Wilson announced that EA’s COO Peter Moore will head the CGD, stepping into his new role as Executive Vice President and Chief Competition Officer. Moore was a key figure in launching several of EA’s competitive gaming programs such as the FIFA Interactive World Cup and the EA SPORTS Challenge Series. Moore will remain as COO until the end of the fiscal year in March 2016.
The creation of the CGD will put EA in direct control of the competitive gaming movement of popular games like FIFA, Madden NFL, and Battlefield. The CDG will work around 3 core pillars described by Wilson below:
- Competition – To create highly-engaging competitive experiences with our games, officially supported by Electronic Arts.
- Community – To celebrate, connect and grow our community of players across all levels of expertise.
- Entertainment – To develop live events and broadcasting that bring the spectacle of competition to millions of people around the world.
Joining Moore is 14 year EA veteran Todd Sitirin who will work in the role of Senior Vice President and General Manager of CDG. Sitirin is known for his marketing work, particularly with the EA Sports Division.
In an interview with IGN, Moore spoke about the potential for future games to cater to more of the eSports audience. “There are things you don’t need anymore that are going to be replaced by esports modes,” Moore said.
And I’m not saying you’re cutting things out of the game. But our dev teams look at engagement every step of the way, and there are things that just don’t get played…. The data doesn’t lie. So you eliminate that, and you put whatever resources were against that, and put them toward something people are going to engage with.
Wilson commented that EA games will still be available to regional competitions worldwide in the coming year but the CGD will work on centralizing their own games sometime in the near future. Now with EA entering the fold alongside big names such as Valve, Blizzard, Activision, and Riot Games the question to be asked is how this would effect leagues such as Major League Gaming and ESL who had headed the eSports movement from its origins.