EA knew that the Star Wars license deal with Disney would be big for the publisher, but it wasn’t until their internal powerhouse studio signaled their excitement and willingness to make the next Battlefront game did they feel like they had a sure thing. In a recent interview, DICE and EA both explain their positions on Star Wars: Battlefront, and why it’s going to be “freaking awesome”.
In the video game world, licensed games are very rarely good. The biggest studios are usually working on creative projects, that have been built from within. DICE for example, handles only a handful of franchises. They make the Frostbite Engine, the Battlefield series, and other games in the past, but are very selective about the projects they take on. According to EA, they weren’t sure that DICE would want to work on Battlefront at all.
If they want it that badly, the game will be freaking awesome
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 realized 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.”
A small teaser for Battlefront was a show-stopper at EA’s E3 Press Conference, despite being very brief and consisting only of CG. We’re still not sure when to expect the new game, but you can find the teaser below in case you missed it earlier this month.
