Electronic Arts said yesterday that it has no plans to add more to Star Wars: Squadrons. Anything is possible, but creative director Ian Frazier reiterated that EA considers it a “self-contained” game, finished and complete. Today, Motive general manager Patrick Klaus followed up on that a bit with an update—a very vague, unspecific update—on what the studio is looking at getting up to next.
“In addition to Star Wars: Squadrons, we’re also working on several unannounced projects. Innovation is tough, but it’s also exciting and energizing,” Klaus said. “With our new mission, we’re trying a lot of things and testing many ideas which you can’t get attached to, as iteration and experimentation are healthy and a key to finding something great.”
That “new mission,” which is the focus of the update, is “to empower players to create, experiment, live and share their own unique stories,” Klaus said. “To reach this goal, we’re encouraging innovation and calculated risk-taking in our approach to game development. We put significant emphasis on creating a safe space through our practices and culture to offer our teams the freedom, autonomy, and time to innovate where it matters.”
He also extolled the virtues of the current Motive team, saying that there are “no superstar creators with big egos” at the studio, and that his goal is to “nurture it by investing in diversity and inclusion to push boundaries, and continue to get better every day.”
It’s kind of an odd status report for a studio that just released what we called “a worthy heir to the classic X-Wing vs TIE Fighter,” but the reassertion of Motive’s goals and aspirations could be intended to draw a line under the studio’s pre-Squadrons history. EA Motive was founded in 2015 with high-profile Ubisoft producer Jade Raymond at the wheel, and Portal designer Kim Swift joined up a couple years later as design director. But EA’s Star Wars troubles, which included the closure of Visceral Games and the Star Wars Battlefront 2 loot box fiasco, seemed to derail it all: Raymond left the studio in 2018, before it had released a single game, and Swift followed a year later.
“Make no mistake, we’re not perfect. We must course correct occasionally, we have a lot to learn and a lot to prove—and that’s OK,” he said. “We need to be humble and embrace this. We are ONE team, always, through the good days and the bad days. We’ll never compromise on this.”
That statement only makes us more curious about what was going on at Motive before Squadrons. For now, if you’re new to Star Wars: Squadrons, we can help you get a good start with our very handy guides to VR setup, crossplay, drifting (I guess you can do that in Star Wars now), and, most important of all, how to make the Gonk droid dance.