Respawn hasnt started its EA game

Vince Zampella and Jason West’s Respawn Entertainment has yet to decide exactly what its first game for publisher EA will be.

The thing everybody needs to remember is they were starting at absolute zero,” EA Partners boss David DeMartini told Eurogamer.

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. I need to get HR people and contracts. There are all kinds of things and administration that need to take place.

Amongst all that administration they’ve pulled together the core of a fantastic team and they’re starting to work on a whole bunch of ideas to try and find what is going to be the one right idea for us.”

DeMartini also downplayed what is viewed as the growing tension and competition between EA and publishing rival Activision that reached new heights when West and Zampella signed an agreement with EA just weeks after being fired by Activision.

Most people would say you stuck it to Activision,” he added. No matter how you slice it or dice it, no matter how many opportunities you have on the other side, getting fired is not fun.

We win some, they win some. It goes back and forth. I don’t see it as some big competition. Sure, I want EA to be the most successful, but I don’t want Activision to fail. It’s like going to a bad movie. Sometimes movies are so bad you don’t got to any movies for a while because you’re burned by whoever made that last movie. I don’t want consumers spending money and playing bad games. I want them to play good games.

I want EA to be the most successful and that’s my singular mission in life. But whether it’s THQ or Activision, I don’t want them putting out bad product either because it’s just bad for the industry.”