Superstar video game producer Jade Raymond has left Star Wars Battlefront II studio EA Motive. For those unfamiliar, Raymond came to prominence at Ubisoft, where she was producer for the Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs series. She eventually made the jump to EA, founding Motive Studios, which developed the single-player campaign for Star Wars Battlefront II.
EA hasn’t provided any details about Raymond’s departure, instead choosing to focus on her replacement. Motive will now be headed up by Maxis and BioWare vice president Samantha Ryan…
“Samantha is known for driving creative design and supporting game teams so they can bring their visions to life. She is a deeply experienced game-maker with a gameography that spans from The Sims to Batman: Arkham City to No One Lives Forever to the highly-anticipated Anthem. With this change, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Electronic Arts. In her time with us, Jade helped to build great teams, and our projects underway at Motive and other studios continue unchanged. We’re appreciative of all of her efforts, and we wish Jade all the best as she moves on to her next adventure.”
Raymond’s departure comes as a surprise, as EA seemed to be investing heavily in Motive – the studio recently opened a Vancouver branch, and the original Motive Montreal is working on two separate projects. Could Raymond’s departure have something to do with the cancellation of Amy Hennig’s Visceral Games Star Wars title? Raymond also headed up Visceral Games and was said to be fairly heavily involved in their Star Wars game, so maybe she was unhappy about it being chopped. Or not! At this point we really don’t know.
It will be interesting to see where Raymond ends up. Will she go back to Ubisoft? Or join Amy Hennig at her new independent studio? Or maybe start her own thing? Given her track record, her next project will certainly be one to keep an eye on.
