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When Rebecka Coutaz joined the DICE team, she joined a company that was harmed.
The developer had just released Battlefield 2042, the latest in the hit shooting franchise, with widespread disappointment. And what followed was a series of changes to the studio. Vince Zampella, co-founder of Respawn and head of the Ripple Effect studio, was in charge of the Battlefield series in the future. Meanwhile, several leaders left DICE at the same time, including General Manager Oskar Gabrielson, Chief Designer Fawzi Mesmar, Content Manager Johannes Soderqvist and Executive Producer Aleksander Grondal.
It was during this time of upheaval and disappointment that Coutaz joined as the new CEO.
“Things are getting better now,” Coutaz explains in one of his first interviews since taking over the job.
Rebecka Coutaz, DICE
“The release of Battlefield 2042 was not as expected. Our players and our community were disappointed, but so was our development team. We focused on the health of the game and therefore error error after patch, patch after patch, we’re fixing and improving. And every patch we have is a small, small victory, and that’s important to our team because they were disappointed. We’re celebrating 30 years as a studio, but also 20 years at Battlefield, and we have players who have been with us for 20 years and disappoint them … it costs us a lot.
“So we want to improve the basic gaming experience and that’s what we’ve focused on. And now, as you know, we’ve just released the first season and we’re having good feedback. Players are enjoying our map and the content that We have provided, so it’s a win for us and it makes us feel better. The team is here to do Battlefield and they’re passionate about Battlefield. We have a lot of Battlefield veterans, so it’s important for us to improve Battlefield 2042 and the experience that we can offer our players. We owe that to them. ”
With so many leadership changes, and given the negative reaction in 2042, it must have been tempting to draw a line under the game and just move on. But Coutaz insists it was never an option.
“No, we couldn’t do that to our players and we couldn’t do that to ourselves,” Coutaz says. “I don’t want to use the word revenge because it’s too strong in English, but you know, we can’t leave it that way. Like I said, we owe it to our players.”
There are more things in DICE changes than just the decision makers. Despite creating some of the most popular online shooting games in the world, the studio still works as a more traditional developer, where they create one game, update it a bit, and move on to the next. Today, the team is moving even further into a live service operation.
“We have players who have been with us for 20 years and to disappoint them … it costs us a lot”
The Battlefield series is also something that is expanding beyond DICE. The franchise has had numerous co-developers for some time. Battlefield 2042, for example, was supported by EA Gothenburg, Criterion, and Ripple Effect. In the future, the franchise is evolving into a “universe” or properties, with Ripple Effect, EA’s new Seattle studio, and mobile developer Industrial Toys, all working on IP.
Coutaz is an expert in this type of developers. He joined Ubisoft Annecy after more than 10 years as a team that has worked on multiplayer service games such as Riders Republic and Steep, and is an established co-developer, having created multiplayer modes for franchises. like Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. . In her time, the team went from 71 people to 340. She knows all about change management, live service, and joint development.
“[DICE] he had four leaders who left. But it was also an opportunity to create a new leadership team around me, “says Coutaz.” So there were some members who were already on the team, but we could also include new leaders, like Lars Gustavsson, who is the creative director of the studio. , senior producers such as Andreas Morell and Ryan McArthur, who increased. So first we organized it and then we had to adapt it [Battlefield] organization. It was organized to send a game, and you know that live is not the same as sending a game. So we studied the organization, the structure, the responsibility, the development processes, and so on. And of course, including our Ripple Effect friends, who work very closely with us on Battlefield 2042. “
He continues: “When we sent Battlefield 2042, we took a step back and together with all the studios … DICE, EA Gothenburg, Criterion, which is now in Need for Speed, and Ripple Effect. We took a step back and we look at what worked and then looked at what didn’t work Why did we end up in a situation like this and how do we fix it?
“This analysis took us a couple of months, and now we’re fixing it. We’re reorganizing, restructuring, improving processes, adapting them to make these monster games that we’re doing in co-development … and also working on the model. “So much learning and the team is really behind me. They’re really looking forward to changing. They couldn’t leave it as it was. So everyone is super motivated and we’ve made a lot of changes in the last five or six. It is far from perfect and we still have a lot to learn, but we are integrating everything we have learned so far. “
Fixing Battlefield 2042 is DICE’s main goal right now
Nor is it just a matter of learning from themselves. Coutaz says working with Vince Zampella and EA’s broader organization brings some of that valuable Apex Legends experience to the team.
“On a personal level, being able to work with people like Vince and Byron [Beede, Ripple Effect] and Marcus [Lehto, Seattle studio] and Alex [Seropian, Industrial Toys], is very inspiring. In fact, I felt very intimidated at my first meeting with Vince, being a great personality in the industry. They work with us … if not daily, weekly. So they are playing, reviewing, challenging, sometimes they ask us very hard and very good questions. And being in Vince’s organization also gives us access to the Apex team. And being able to share best practices with this great team helps us grow, repeat, be creative and understand. “
When it comes to the specific changes Coutaz has made, he talks about adding new tools and processes. He says the new structure is designed to be light and agile. All the things she admits sound like “trendy words,” but there needs to be a “very clear chain of command when we play games, and it has to be very flat and lean so that our creators can feel empowered.”
“They can innovate, be creative, take risks, but fail quickly, and to be able to fail quickly we have to iterate and then play this game. We’ve also worked hard on that.”
All this change, while trying to fix a disappointing game, is enough for any studio to do it at its best. But it’s all happening while video game studios are still learning to adapt to this new world of remote, hybrid work. DICE has adopted it, but like most developers, it is still learning how to make it work effectively.
“We want DICE to be the number one first-person shooter in Europe and one of the world’s powers.”
“[All game developers] I had to be super creative and innovative to be able to adapt to that, “he says.” Today we are hybrids and that’s how we want to be in the future. Of course, we are learning every day about things … like when a person is in Zoom and then you have two more in the meeting room, these things that we are adapting and learning. [about] every day in this hybrid model. But we are full of that. And the beauty of it is that we can recruit experts from all over the world. People who have a passion for Battlefield but didn’t really want to move to Europe or really didn’t want to move to Sweden can work for us now. “
One positive thing about the hybrid way of working is that there is less division between DICE and its co-developers, with everyone working remotely on the same project.
“It also forces us to be much more structured, because the mandates need to be clear, the roles and responsibilities need to be clear and the communication needs to be clear. Around the coffee maker they can’t be resolved.”
During my chat with Coutaz I couldn’t help but admire the images behind her from the Mirror’s Edge comics. DICE may be best known for Battlefield, but has also worked on other projects from time to time. With all the Battlefield conversations, are more unusual projects like Mirror’s Edge in the background right now?
“Totally,” she says definitively. “We’re just focusing on Battlefield 2042. There’s no time for anything else and that’s what we want to do. In three years, we want to be the power of first-person shooters that DICE deserves to be, and that’s what it’s going to look like. “.
She concludes, “I want the team to be very proud of Battlefield 2042. That’s what they’re chasing and they have a heart and a passion for. We want to be very, very proud of DICE. We want DICE to be the number one place for them. “First-person shooter games in Europe and one of the world’s powers. It’s a fabulous team. We’ll do magic together.”