According to a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times, Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella has started working on new project as the leader of a new Los Angeles-based studio from Electronic Arts’s EA DICE division. DICE is the EA-owned Swedish studio behind the Battlefield franchise and the latest iterations of the Star Wars: Battlefront series. Zampella will still play a critical “head coach” role at Respawn Entertainment despite taking on a new and expanded leadership position at DICE LA.
We’re going to do some amazing things.
Zampella explained that his role will begin while the studio is called DICE LA, but the branding would undergo changes. As of now, the studio is labeled as part of DICE but will undergo some changes to separate it from DICE’s offices in Stockholm, Sweden and Respawn Entertainment itself. “We want to give it a new image,” Zampella told The Los Angeles Times in the interview. “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.'”
All of the DICE and Respawn studios are part of the larger publishing company Electronic Arts, as DICE was fully acquired in 2006 and Respawn in 2017. Regardless of the eventual rebranding, the new DICE studio will fall under the EA umbrella, but the new image and name will help differentiate their projects from those in the past. The DICE studio in LA is working on an original, brand new, and unannounced title, with Zampella at the helm.
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.
Laura Miele, EA’s chief studios officer and longtime EA executive, is overseeing Zampella’s transition to his expanded role as the head of the new DICE LA studio. “I think under Vince’s leadership the expectation is to have [DICE LA] create a game on their own,” Miele explained. “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.”
EA confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Zampella will continue to serve as the head of the Respawn Entertainment development studio and that his new position at DICE LA is an expansion of his current role. Respawn Entertainment had an astounding 2019, seeing the successful releases of the free-to-play shooter Apex Legends in February and the single-player narrative-driven Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in November. A new Medal of Honor title for VR called Above and Beyond is set to release this year.