The plan is to expand the studio, 'probably' rebrand it, and start work on a new, original game.
www.pcgamer.com
Ahh, I fucking knew it; granted I figured it would have been overseeing Dice and not a sub-studio.. but its one stepping stone to the top. It should just take one solid release for Zampella and the continued declining interest in the BF franchise.
Is anyone familiar on Zampella and West's brainpowers? only really familiar with West as director and Zamp as producer of early cod/infintyward turn ceo's of respawn. It'll be nice to see if Zamp at the head pushing out a modern shooter with the frostbite engine.. or will he branch from shooters and be given game development rights to all future starwars games lol.
I feel like we are still in a bit of independent and/or retro resurgence. It has only been getting bigger over the last years, while the strongest studios continue to strive and the weaker ones keep dying/bought out. I'd imagine these other 'indie' developers will either become a bigger studio or produce something of triple a quality eventually. Larian Studios is a pretty decent example of releasing successful? cult? titles, to getting a pretty 'legendary honor' of developing the next Baldur's Gate; assuming there will be no micro trans. While you have games like Untitled Goose Game crushing it with sales and being an internet phenomena for a period. ZA/UM came out of no-where with Disco Elysium which has garnered a lot of recognition, but doesn't tend to stay on peoples tongues due to the lack of multiplayer and arguably niche. Then you had Kojima Productions releasing the long awaited Death Stranding which I think was received well and i'm excited to see he is back on his "producing the scariest game" with the hopes of either Junji Ito or Guillermo onboard(both cameo'd in DS). If any of these had micro-trans; I have no idea, did not play any.. I just think we are in a bit of a renaissance or neo-classical period of video games.. because nintendo stay crushing with re-skinned games with the switch.. and next gen consoles are around the corner which will probably bridge the gap between PC/Console even closer to irrelevancy where everyone is basically just playing PC to some degree.
We're also in a bit of attention deficit disorder curse of where we now expect games to be updated/patched consistently(atleast my gaming sphere), and it is really sink or swim when it comes to producing content because the crowd shifts happen so fast while trying to maintain that player count. As my friend says, whether true or not, these micro-trans basically keeps other departments of development going with art and content; rather than cut/layoff/shift departments/ or put onto 'code-name' developing. I'm just happy we are shifting a little bit away from DLC, most of the online games I play now aim at a battlepass which can be self regenerating, with optional content for cosmetics. I haven't really ran into a p2w moment, and I get to laugh at people who dropped 20$ or even 150$(apex) for an item in voicechat. I guess i'm a degenerate and would rather feed my actual addictions than buy digital makeup. Regardless, I try to look at mtx as a form of someone paying my mmo sub for me while I get to run endlessly in circles at the main city.. as long as it doesn't impact the game play, I could careless.. and if it prevents a game from doing yearly, or even bi-yearly installments; even fucking better.
But yeah, mobile games are ridiculous. I don't know how people do it, I just can't see a point in dropping money on gachapon game mechanics.. i'd be nice if it was easier to play by earning, but the wall you face at a certain point when no investment/support is just pure cuck.