E3 2016: EA Wants To Discover Next Rocket League
For Electronic Arts, though making money is important, making, and sometimes finding, great games is important too. That’s why they’re putting so much effort into their EA Originals initiative. Where they will seek out great indie games and bring them to consoles. Such as what happened with Rocket League.
“Would I want to be the guy that found Rocket League?” asked Söderlund. “Yes. Would I want that to be an EA property? Of course I would like to. That’s [the idea behind EA Originals]. For us to be able to find these people and help understand what they’re building and help push it to market. For us to find something else.
I was essentially a small indie developer myself,” Söderlund continued. “Battlefield 1942 was made by 14 people. It was, in today’s means, an indie game. Had I not had the proper support and funding for it, I wouldn’t be in this industry. So, for me it’s about finding not necessarily the next Battlefield, but finding the talent out there… That’s essentially [why we’re doing this]. Together with, frankly, to pay [the gaming industry] back. It’s so difficult to make games and run a small business, which it shouldn’t be. I believe that when we’re as big as we are, we need to be there. We need to be a part of supporting and nurturing the dev community. It’s that simple.”
Though EA won’t make money off of the Originals program at first, Soderlund notes that’s not the point, it’s about making games even better and supporting the developers that make them.