The development of Star Wars games helps EA secure top talents

Electronic Arts holds the rights to make Star Wars games and like many would have guessed, a lot of developers and artists want a piece of the Star Wars cake.

Like a wise man once said "A man's gotta know his limitations" and Disney knew their's so Disney made a ten year deal with EA which gave EA the rights to make Star Wars games, and the video game industry is as hyped about Star Wars as the rest of the world is. The Star Wars hype has even given the EA owned companies like Respawn, BioWare, Visceral, and others an edge when it comes to requiting personnel for their project since there's so many who wants to work on and with Star Wars. If this year's E3 is anything to go by then there will be a steady stream of Star wars games coming in the future such as a third person action adventure game by Respawn in 2018.

In a lengthy interview with GamesIndustry.biz the global publishing boss for EA, Laura Miele, talked about the partnership with Disney and how " phenomenal" it has been.

"Star Wars has been a phenomenal business partnership for us. It truly has – and I think in ways that we didn't even anticipate when we originally signed the deal. […]. The thing that has been so fulfilling and rewarding to us is that not only do we feel an obligation to this franchise and brand because we love it so much and we're such fans ourselves, but it was actually incredibly rewarding for our employees and our staff. They wanted to work on it. It actually helped us draw great talent into the company."

That's not just fancy talk, EA has managed to pull some of the big name of the gaming industry to them with the lure of Star Wars. They got Jade Raymond who has worked as producer and executive producer on several Ubisoft games, the God of War III game director Stig Asmussen, and Naughty Dog's Amy Hennig are just a few of the great talents that EA has managed to pull to them thanks to Star Wars. Miele took Jade Raymond as an example on how EA themselves will keep growing after Star Wars thanks to talents like her.

"[Raymond's] incredibly experienced and [known] for her action and story and character development and she's influencing even other games that we have in our portfolio as well. Star Wars is not the only game that she's probably going to work on at some point. She's definitely going to look at new IP and she also can help us with other IP."

"So we're really proud of how this panned out. [Battlefront] is one of the best selling Star Wars games in the history of all Star Wars games and that's our first one… We're just getting started. So we feel like we have a great road ahead of us in this franchise."

With the possibility of working with Star Wars EA might be able to help the gaming industry grow since the competition for the few jobs available is fierce and competition breeds excellence.