EA Motive hires portal designer Kim Swift

Kim Swift, famous for her design work on Valve hits Portal and Left 4 Dead, has joined EA Motive Studios as a design director on EA Motive’s still-unannounced project.

The news was announced by Jade Raymond, the group general manager for both Motive Studios and Visceral Games in a post on the EA Motive Studios website.

"Motive has a mission to innovate and pioneer new ways to play and create worlds that allow for relentless discovery. I couldn’t think of a better person than Kim to help us achieve those ambitions," said Raymond. "We’ve devoted much of the past year at Motive to building a team of amazingly talented people to work on our new IP and Star Wars™ projects. I could not be more excited to welcome an all-star like Kim, who shares our enthusiasm for building exceptional games. Her first question to me: ‘When can I set up the Frostbite engine and start prototyping?’ shows a hands-on approach that we value here at Motive. The team is buzzing with new ideas and I can’t wait to see what we can bring to life together."

This brings a trio of veteran designers together at the top level of EA Motive and Visceral, with Amy Hennig making up the third role. The two studios are working together on several projects to varying levels.

Most recently, Swift has been working as a senior designer for Amazon Game Studios.