EA's Peter Moore and Jade Raymond have spoken about working on Star Wars games at the publisher, with Moore commenting on Battlefront's lack of a single player campaign and Raymond discussing EA Motive's work on Visercal's unannounced title.
Speaking to GameSpot, Moore was asked if the EA executive team regretted not including a single player campaign. "Well, you never kick yourself about these things," Moore said. "You make a decision, years out, and you plan for what the world looks like when a game ships in two or three years. That's about the intuitiveness about the executive producer, and his or her vision for the game. Between when a dev team starts work on a game, and when it finishes, the world becomes a different place."
Moore gave the example of Star Wars: The Old Republic, noting that when development started the subscription MMO model was the one to go for, but by the time the game released there had been a shift to free-to-play, and EA had to reflect that by offering microtransactions as well as the option to subscribe.
GameSpot's reporter commented that AAA games with single player stories tend to sell better than those without, to which Moore replied, "So, there's two phenomena with that statement. The first is that yes, you might be right. The second is that very few people actually play the single-player on these kinds of games. That's what the data points to."
Battlefront developer DICE has previously said the series is "predominately a multiplayer franchise."
Asked about recent EA hire Raymond, Moore said, "We love her, and her ability to bring fresh thinking to our company, especially when you think about the storytelling potential in teaming her up with Amy Hennig [the former Naughty Dog writer, now at EA Visceral]."
Raymond's new studio, EA Motive, is helping BioWare develop Mass Effect Andromeda, working with Visceral on its Star Wars game, and is beginning to create its own IP as well. In an interview with Game Informer, she said, "I’ve known Amy [Hennig] for a while, and a big focus now is on Star Wars. That’s going to be a big game, and we’re doing a big portion at Visceral and a big portion at Motive. That’s a huge opportunity. I have a ton of great, talented people who are huge Star Wars fans who really want to work on that. We’re going to be focusing on that first."
Adding that a "significant portion" of Motive's work is dedicated to Visceral's Star Wars project, she said "The focus for the first year is primarily on Star Wars. There might a couple of key people [developing the new IP], but the senior people working on the concept for the new IP should also be contributing to Star Wars in some capacity."
Star Wars Battlefront launches for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 17th.
