Ex-Infinity Ward leads Jason West and Vince Zampella might have set up their new studio pretty quickly, but EA Partners boss David DeMartini says it will be a long time before its new game sees the light of day.
There’s always plenty of things a studio needs when it’s making a game, and when it’s starting from scratch like West and Zampella’s Respawn, the list is even longer. Respawn doesn’t just need a lead animator, for example, it needs a desk for that animator to sit at, and a building to put that desk in.
That kind of administration, DeMartini says, has to be taken care of before the studio can start work on a game. “The thing everybody needs to remember is they were starting at absolute zero,” he said. “This is two guys who really know what they’re doing, having to go find a place for the team, buy chairs and desks and furniture, find new technology from the ground up, and pull a team together.” DeMartini says that Respawn hasn’t even settled on what its game will be, and that the team that had been assembled so far was kicking ideas around trying to figure out which one to work on. He likened it to the selection of a new Pope, saying that you just had to let the cardinals get on with it and they’d come to you when they were ready.
He said that he was glad he could have played a part in getting West and Zampella back on their feet as quickly as possible, but surprisingly, DeMartini isn’t reveling in his “victory” over Activision. He says that while he obviously wants EA to be the most successful company around, he doesn’t want other publishers to struggle or release bad products because that isn’t good for the industry.
It’s likely to be months before any project from Respawn is announced, and years before it’s released. It will be interesting to see though, what the next step is for West and Zampella.
Source: Eurogamer
