Respawn's Vince Zampella takes leadership role at EA

All things considered, 2019 was a pretty fantastic year for Respawn Entertainment. In February, the company launched Apex Legends by surprise, and it quickly became a game that battle royale fans mentioned in the same breath as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite. While much of the year was focused on building out and supporting Apex Legends, Respawn had another hit toward the end of 2019 in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.Fallen Order is something of a rarity among modern-day Star Wars games, as it focuses solely on single-player storytelling without any microtransactions or loot boxes in sight. Fans ate it up too, with EA announcing that Fallen Order became the fastest-selling digital launch for a Star Wars game.

With a successful 2019 under his belt, it should be little surprise that Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella will have a new position with EA in 2020. In a profile about Zampella, the LA Times revealed that he'll head up DICE LA, which has long operated as a support studio for DICE Stockholm. With Zampella overseeing things, it sounds like DICE LA will become a fully-fledged studio in its own right, creating new games that will then be published by parent company Electronic Arts.

"We will probably rebrand," 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.'"

Zampella will still be involved with Respawn too, describing his role with the studio as that of "head coach." It's unknown what new game DICE LA will be working on with Zampella at the helm, but we're guessing that with his name attached, it'll probably be a big project. We'll keep our eyes peeled for more, so stay tuned.