Some game studios have pilgrimage sites for worshippers-Blizzard, Naughty Dog, FromSoftware. Then, every morning, many developers go to work, and they are bothered by players camping outside the front door. These are support studios: studios that appear in subtitles but rarely appear on the splash screen or on the media. But they are essential. As publishers have been trying to get you involved in a more beautiful and broader world, the team has grown to thousands. Without Support Studio, there is no Red Dead Redemption.
Sometimes supporting studios can make headlines. Last year was Asobo, who graduated from The Crew 2 in Plague Story: Innocence, an ambitious vintage of unknown vintage. Maybe the next one will be DICE LA.
In recent years, the studio has been supporting its well-known Swedish company with trivial victories. You will find Rorsch MK-1 railguns for the Final Stand DLC of Battlefield 4 in the sculptural hands of the lobby. But now, DICE LA is caught in the attention of powerful EA executives, Apex Legends' head of Respawn, Vince Zampella.
"We want to give it a new look," Zampella told the Los Angeles Times. "We want people to say,‘ this is the destination where you can create new content. ’”
The new DICE LA will be called "something else-something unique" and will be separated from its Stockholm mothership to develop indie games. This seems correct because the studio actually has a long history.
DICE LA is the closest life to DreamWork s Interactive, the developer of the first medal of honor created for Steven Spielberg in the 1990s. Until then, first-person shooters have been the domain of Superman-their role is to make us feel dangerous. The Medal of Honor took this power, leaving a new loophole. Although PS1 has limited its shooting and scale, every World War II shooter can see its somber and respectful tone thereafter.
There is almost no need to explain the impact of this genre on mainstream games. But it is worth noting that without the Medal of Honor, there would be no offensive by the Allies, without it, there would be no Call of Duty, so there would be no Respawn, and finally, Vince Zampella in the EA management department would not give DICE LA brings due responsibility. The impact is very strong, just like the flaps of the Messerschmitt wing.
Trespasser also has another strange heritage-the most ambitious and broken "Jurassic Park" game in history. Its team is committed to taking your world to the roots, throwing away the HUD, expressing your health as a tattoo on your body, and you may go around in a first person perspective. Although strange, Trespasser's design goals finally paved the way for Mirror & # 39; s Edge, and designer Austin Grossman later shined on Deus Ex and Dishonored.
However, Trespasser is not what you call success, which means a medal of honor to define a studio, for better or for worse. As EA Los Angeles, it implements Call of Duty throughout Europe and the Pacific, never completely catching up with Infinity Ward's lead. But at the same time, it did a great job: developing large RTS games during a time when the genre of games was disappearing.
During EA's "Lord of the Rings" license, the "Battle of Middle-earth" was a rare victory. Led by Dustin Browder, who continues to direct StarCraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm, it simplifies base management and sparks Peter Jackson-style small-scale conflicts. -Usually this is due to the dazzling shock wave of the white Gandalf.
HD mods and fan servers that are still running today proved their success in the absence of a strategy, and the fact that EA subsequently gave the studio the key to Command & Conquer.
However, in the end, EA LA was killed for chasing Spielberg's high post. The studio was renamed Danger Close and can restart the 2010 Medal of Honor and its sequel, Warrior. The latter's title may give you clues that there is still not much inspiration in the series on the 11th outing.
After rigorous criticism, even EA acknowledged that the Medal of Honor had an "implementation problem", which was attributed to poor leadership. EA's Chief Creative Director Rich Hilleman told RPS in 2013: "We now think that in the next few years we will have a great thing in this area. So we are Choose it as Battlefield. "
EA LA was disbanded and senior employees entered the new DICE department. The employees in the office no longer belong to the kind of studios that have had magazine interviews or planned stage performances at E3 Magazine. However, some of us still remember their best days-especially Vince Zampella. With a new name, an exciting project and a bit of luck, maybe DICE LA can finally reconnect with its deep roots.