Respawn CEO to lead and rebrand EA’s DICE LA studio

Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella is to take charge of support team DICE LA, which will become its own studio entity under his leadership.

While the LA branch of Stockholm-based Battlefield developer DICE has previously acted as a support team, Zampella plans to rebrand the EA-owned studio ahead of the release of a new game of its own.

Zampella will continue to oversee Respawn, the Titanfall, Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order developer he co-founded in 2010 and which was acquired by EA in 2017.

“We will probably rebrand [DICE LA],” Zampella told the LA Times. “We want to give it a new image. 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.’”

Laura Miele, EA’s chief studios officer, added: “I think under Vince’s leadership the expectation is to have them work on and create a game on their own… They can go from a support team to a full stand-alone studio to create a new game offering.”

Respawn is currently developing Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond exclusively for Oculus Rift. Directed by Pete Hirschmann, the VR title is scheduled to be released this summer.

Meanwhile, Fallen Order director Stig Asmussen is set to continue leading a narrative-driven branch at Respawn, while Chad Grenier is overseeing the ongoing development of character-based shooter Apex Legends.

Zampella also reiterated that Respawn looks unlikely to return to Titanfall any time soon, telling the LA Times the series had begun “to read as generic sci-fi.”

“That’s terrible for me to say about my own game,” he added, “but we wanted something more identifiable by going into characters… To identify with a character, either by play style or because you like who they are and what they stand for, it was important for us to take that next step. Character-based is now super important to what we do.”