14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts’ Patrick Soderlund has revealed that the company constantly strives to innovate and create all-new intellectual properties, instead of just resting on its laurels and pumping out sequels every year.
EA made a name for itself several years ago by relying almost completely on yearly installments of its big franchises, from Need for Speed, to FIFA or Madden. In recent times, however, the company has focused on new IPs and, while some may not have worked out, like Mirror’s Edge, others have spawned several installments, like Dead Space.
Creating new games is crucial to a company like EA, at least according to Patrick Soderlund, who told MCV, via CVG, that “the day we stop doing new IP is the day we put ourselves on life support and then we're slowly going to die.”
According to the executive, this emphasis on innovation also keeps its developers happy, as they “need something different to think about. They have a lot of creativity built into them that they need to get out."
"We demand so much from our employees that frankly if we can't show them that we're willing to go all out, why will they? That's my philosophy. And we have certainly made some difference to other studios with that mentality.”
Soderlund also emphasizes that innovation doesn’t have to happen within a new game, as plenty of improvements can be made in a sequel, like with Battlefield 3, which introduced a stunning new game engine, in the form of Frostbite 2.
"A lot of people criticise EA for not being innovative. But look at what EA has done with Battlefield 3. We said, here's a game that looks like nothing you've seen before. We looked at animation, we looked at audio, we looked at audio, we looked at every single part of the visual experience and we said: how can we change this? I think if that's not innovation, I don't know what is. Those things don't just happen by mistake, those are all diligent strategies with someone saying: 'probably not good enough'.”
Electronic Arts has quite a lot of sequels in the works this holiday season, from Medal of Honor: Warfighter, to Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but the company is still keeping most of its new IPs, like the one coming from BioWare, under wraps.