Vince Zampella will now lead DICE L.A as well as Respawn Entertainment

According to an interview from the Los Angeles Times, Vince Zampella, the CEO of Respawn Entertainment, will be leading DICE L.A in addition to staying as head of Respawn Entertainment. DICE L.A has been a support studio in the past, assisting with the development of games like the Battlefield franchise or Star Wars: Battlefront II.

Under Zampella’s leadership, the studio is going to be working on a new project and will likely rebrand and move away from the DICE name, while staying separate from Respawn Entertainment. This will be part of the move to take it from being a support studio to a standalone studio developing its own games.

Stig Asmussen, the director of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, will continue leading a “narrative-driven branch” at Respawn Entertainment. Chad Grenier is continuing to oversee Apex Legends while Peter Hirschmann takes the lead on on a Medal of Honor VR Game.

“I think under Vince’s leadership the expectation is to have them work on and create a game on their own,” said Laura Miele, chief studios officer at Electronic Arts (EA). “And I genuinely believe that he is going to help guide them creatively. He’s going to help them further fortify and build out their talent and their team. I think we’re going to have a really strong studio out of our Los Angeles location. They can go from a support team to a full stand-alone studio to create a new game offering.”

Zampella and Miele also noted that Respawn has the ability to rapidly get an idea going, sooner than other studios at EA. This has encouraged new ideas of prototyping and experimentation being shared across EA studios.