DICE chief Rebecka Coutaz interview: How EA’s Battlefield studio is improving quality and culture
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Rebecka Coutaz has a big job ahead of her as the new vice president and general manager of DICE, the Stockholm, Sweden-based studio that has worked on Electronic Arts‘ big franchises such as Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, and Mirror’s Edge.
The studio has just turned 30 years old and it has been presiding over Battlefield shooter games for two decades. But the studio has gone through a painful period of bug fixes and apologies to its Battlefield fans for the sorry state that it shipped Battlefield 2042 in when it launched the game in October and November 2021. Battlefield fans said the game was virtually unplayable, and even I encountered bugs like landing in pool of water underneath the battlefield in a multiplayer match. I would have put the game on the list of my favorite games of the year, were it not for the bugs that I encountered.
That happened even though there were a total of five studios working on the Battlefield franchise, including the racing game studio Codemasters. The company underestimated how hard it would be to ship a game when the teams could not come together because of COVID-19.
Still, they got it done, and Coutaz is helping to figure out where DICE goes now. Coutaz replaced Oskar Gabrielson, general manager of DICE, in December, while the Battlefield group (which also includes Ripple Effect Studios and Industrial Toys) is now overseen by Byron Beede, general manager of Battlefield, and Vince Zampella, head of Respawn and senior vice president and group general manager at EA. And even with all of its resources, EA is
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