DICE LA: From the Ashes of Medal of Honor

With Medal of Honor on indefinite hiatus, numerous senior members of developer Danger Close have migrated over to Electronic Arts’ other Los Angeles studio, the newly announced DICE LA. “Most others,” the publisher tells IGN, “have moved on from EA.”

When asked if Danger Close would continue making games, or if it still had employees at all, a representative repeated the earlier sentiment:  Some are at DICE LA, and the majority left EA.

As DICE LA sets up shop in Danger Close’s backyard, using its own ex-employees to get itself off the ground, it has hungry eyes for other local talent.

“I would not say that we’re going to poach competitors,” DICE LA studio manager Frederick Loving tells IGN. “What I want to say is that we’re definitely looking at the rockstar game developers we know are in the Los Angeles area. That’s part of us being here: We know this town has so much talent. We want that talent.”

It’s not fair to say DICE LA is replacing Danger Close because the studio doesn’t even want to be considered its own entity. Not yet, at least. “It is DICE, it’s just in a different geographical location,” Loving says. “We are part of everything DICE does…We are an extra floor in Stockholm conveniently located in Los Angeles.” Loving uses this analogy more than five times during our conversation.

When asked how bringing DICE to the United States would affect the development of Battlefield 4, Loving says, “I don’t think that’s going to influence what the game is.” Loving returns to his recurring argument.

“We are an expansion of DICE.”

The small but growing studio, which presently aims to hire just 60 employees, operates accordingly. When one team goes home for the night, their international partner will continue where they left off.

DICE Los Angeles is not the studio most might have expected. The easiest assumption is that the team will rotate in as the off-year Battlefield developer. “That’s not something we do in Stockholm, different years for different installments,” Loving says.

One of those things is the development of mobile games in addition to Frostbite Engine 3, things the studio is hiring for but not speaking about. “We will of course be looking at all aspects of Frostbite and what it can bring to the table for Battlefield, but I won’t say anything more specific than that today.”

Everything surrounding the new studio is vague. “We are DICE” is about the only thing that’s certain – the only out-of-place variable is that they’re building it from the remains of Danger Close.

Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor at IGN. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.