Battlefield 3 producer leaves DICE to join Angry Birds studio Rovio

By: Muhammad Qasim Hassan

  |   September 3rd, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Employees jumping ships is not an usual sight in corporate sector since the doors of opportunities are continuously opening and closing, demanding for some bold decisions to be made without losing too much time.

However, the news of Battlefield 3 producer Patrick Liu’s departure from DICE to Rovio has indeed taken many by surprise as they struggle to understand the motivation behind this decision.

Liu had been with the Electronic Arts-owned studio for the past five years where he got to work on a number of high-profile titles, which included Battlefield: Bad Company, Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honour’s multiplayer component.

Nearly all of the aforementioned games went on to earn both critical as well as commercial success, making the balance sheets of EA extremely impressive. The most-recent instalment in the Battlefield franchise released last year is still the main competitor of Activision’s latest Call of Duty game, with both the first-person shooters having their own massive and solid fan-base.

EA also has a number of DLC in the pipeline, planning to release them in the coming months to keep the Battlefield 3 experience enjoyable and fresh for fans.

With the life-cycle of the latest Battlefield game far from over, the departure of one of the main man behind the game came off as a bit of a surprise.

Ending his commitments at DICE, Liu has taken on the role of creative director at Rovio Studio. The announcement was made the studio’s general manager Stockholm Oskar Burman through the social micro-blogging website Twitter.

Rovio has become one of the most prominent developers in mobile gaming space because of their strategy-puzzle video game Angry Birds. The game has gone on to become a colossal hit and is more often than not the first game that is normally downloaded upcoming purchasing a smartphone. The simplicity of the game, along with the subtle humour and lovable [and hateful] characters make an excellent backdrop for what is intended to be an entertainment package for people of all ages. The game helped removed the notion that gaming requires a lot of skills and practice and therefore helped both publishers and studios to realise that there is a huge market of casual gamers that has remained untapped for years.

There is no arguing with the fact that Angry Birds is an entertaining game and that Rovio is a studio full of extremely talented developers and creative team. However, it still does little to explain why Liu, who had such a powerful role in DICE, would leave an AAA games studio to work for a company that primarily focuses on developing games for smartphones.

There are some speculations about Liu making the move because of being offered a better salary package from Rovio, though it has not been confirmed as yet.