Zampella is ‘OK with Call of Duty being big’; discusses why Titanfall is a multiplayer-only game

GamesIndustry International spoke with Vince Zampella at E3, and they talked about why Respawn decided on making an MP only game with Titanfall as well as the reason behind being on Xbox only (and PC).

“For us, we’re a small startup studio,” Zampella said. “We’re 60-some developers. So for us to be able to focus on one platform [helps]. For us it was really helpful to focus on the core game and what’s fun. It’s scoped more adequately to what we have the power to do as a start-up studio.”

Zampella went on to talk about why Titanfall is a multiplayer-only game:

“We make these single-player missions that take up all the focus of the studio, that take a huge team six months to make, and players run through it in 8 minutes,” Zampella said. “And how many people finish the single-player game? It’s a small percentage. It’s like, everyone plays through the first level, but 5 percent of people finish the game. Really, you split the team. They’re two different games. They’re balanced differently, they’re scoped differently. But people spend hundreds of hours in the multiplayer experience versus ‘as little time as possible rushing to the end’ [in single-player]. So why do all the resources go there? To us it made sense to put it here. Now everybody sees all those resources, and multiplayer is better. For us it made sense.”

Vince Zampella also said he was proud at how big Call of Duty has become and he’s ‘OK’ with that.

“Honestly, we’re not shipping the same time as them,” Zampella said. “We’re going for something different. We’re not gunning for Call of Duty. We’re doing our thing. The important thing is to make sure what we’re doing is fun. I’m OK with Call of Duty being big. I helped create it, so I’m proud to see it’s something so big that it goes beyond me.”

SOURCE: GamesIndustry