Electronic Arts President Laura Miele Outlines Structural Changes Player Ownership and the Future of Battlefield Development
In an in depth industry talk on the Game Business show hosted by Christopher Dring where she discusses the publisher's ongoing structural changes, Electronic Arts President of EA Entertainment Laura Miele said the company was dealing with a major corporate acquisition by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund in conjunction with private equity groups
. Still under regulatory review, Miele said the company's development teams have been kept well motivated on the software while they are focused on managing the organization in a flow that keeps the creatives on track to match players' needs during unparalleled changes in the market.
The total world wide player base has grown to nearly 4 billion, representing a fundamental shift in how audiences engage with digital media. According to Miele, next generation gaming is in effect a social ecosystem, a new environment in which people encounter larger cultural motifs.
Internal analytics show that 40% of Gen Z users and 30% of Millennials discover new music via the interactive software, and 25% use games to discover television series. Accordingly, this larger cultural footprint has altered publishers' respect for intellectual property from one of soft consumption to aggressive community forging.
This ownership among players was exemplified in a crucial studio summit where Miele held a get together with fifteen major content producers to chart out the publisher's future trajectory. During this congregation, a community voice challenged the corporate decision making process and caused a significant strategic shift for many dormant series. As Miele narrated
I don't know why you haven't made a game your fans are requesting. We've been asking for Skate we have been asking for College we've been asking for Dead Space.
This dialogue resulted in greenlighting the titles. Regarding the re emergence of Skate, the publisher selects an open development process, and maintains the game in public playtests for over 2 years ahead of an early access launch. Equating to crowd collaboration, this process enabled the core physics mechanics to appeal to the off road fanbase while shaping a contemporary live service area where users may interact and codeCustom.
Managing legacy properties requires balancing the desires of a dedicated core audience with the expansion of mobile platforms. Miele cited the release of Command & Conquer Rivals as a major learning experience for executive leadership. While the development team was passionate about bringing the strategic franchise to mobile devices, the long term PC community resisted the shift. Recognizing the friction, the company immediately partnered with original developers to produce a comprehensive PC remaster of the classic games, eventually releasing the open source code directly to the community to foster continued modding.
As Miele said, this cycle revealed the special role of developer and audience. Unlike a commodity that is just to be bought and try out, the players constitute a managing human into the virtual worlds. She said, They come to walk around with us in our narratives and virtual spaces and become the characters. With their invested emotion, they reach a new kind of television.
The magnitude of where game creation is today can be seen in the production of the next installment of the Battlefield series. The current production effort, centralized under a stronghold of experienced industry professionals (Vince Zampella, Byron Beaty, among others), on this project stretches across studios around the world (DICE, Criterion, Motive, Ripple Effect). Miele characterized the leadership of the project as committed to unblinking ambition, humorously incorporating a philosophical phrase of looking to the horizon
I like the concept of the notion of the whole TED lasso be a goldfish. Like, be a goldfish and just, you know, you can reference the past to learn and grow, but don't be frozen by it.
During this production cycle, the Battlefield Labs platform was used to beta test 30 variations of the game in real time, collecting 92,000,000 hours of player data prior to release. Miele recounted a story of a meeting in Stockholm where the senior development team stayed up to analyze the game from the various builds overnight ending with Zampella falling asleep on the conference table. This is the type of focus the executive feels will bring interactive media into the forefront of entertainment for the next 5 years.
Miele was more optimistic on the topic of AI tools emerging in game creation. She pointed out that she feels these will be used to make pipeline more efficient. She expects that these tools will be used to remove the mechanical friction and tedium from the pipeline so that engineers and artists can vet ideas much more rapidly. Rather than reducing the cycle, she sees these tools raising the ceiling.
Miele brought her presentation to close by remarking on the game that had most impacted her career, namely the World of Warcraft that she had been playing for over a decade. Running a family guild with her husband, sons and daughters kin, Miele had first hand insight into the social utility of games. Her family had skipped structured linear television for years in favor of orchestrating digital raids and encounters toward a dual purpose of fun with fellow humans and serious emotional bonds.
