EA's Patrick Soderlund talks Anthem, loot boxes, and women in Battlefield

It's been over a decade since Electronic Arts bought Battlefield developer DICE and with it, acquired former DICE chief Patrick Söderlund.

Since then, Söderlund has moved up through the ranks, working in various leadership roles and now, after an executive reshuffle this year, to a new position as chief design officer for the company.

At E3 this week in L.A., Söderlund explained the broad creative strategies at EA, giving us a rare birds-eye view of the motivations that drive EA as a game publisher. (Edited for clarity and length.)

How does the ideation process and greenlighting work within EA?

It's a very stringent process. We have what we call a game development framework where for the first gate, which we call Gate 0, there's like a manual of what you need to do. So you have to get a brief together, you have to do a company build. There's a framework around what you need to accomplish to get the first gate.

Then, there's a discussion between basically myself, [chief studios officer] Laura [Miele], and [chief marketing officer] Chris Bruzzo. The three of us have kind of a joint greenlight committee where we say, "listen, this makes sense" and then approve the gate. The first gate is like the concept gate. The second gate becomes more evolving the concept and preparing for production. Then we approve the gates one by one. So it's a staggered system where we let the teams run very independently, I would say, and then they present and we talk and we give directional guidance.

Then they go into full greenlight, which is  when you go into production. When you go into production, then you make the game, but there are two or three gates prior to production.

How many years for EA does it average between the concept and the production?

It all depends. You can imagine the FIFA games. They go through the first two or three gates in weeks because they make a game every year. If you make a new IP like Anthem, your first three gates may take you two years. So it depends.

So can you give a little background, since you bring up Anthem, how that started? It's Bioware so you already have this big brand in Mass Effect. How did they convince you, "Okay we're going to do a space, sci-fi thing, but it's not going to be Mass Effect?" 

I've been fortunate enough to be involved in Anthem from the start of it...BioWare is a developer  that's been known to have an ability to create new IP. They've done it multiple times successfully. This came from them as, "We want to build a different game. We want to build a different type of game and we believe that warrants a new IP." So we said, "okay." And Casey [Hudson, BioWare general manager] started working on it. And then after, I would say, about a year or so into Anthem, Casey decided to go to Microsoft for a while.

Obviously he came back. It's been a fun journey. The game, obviously, from what was initially pitched versus what we have today, of course it will diverge a little bit and it will change over time but it's pretty much what Casey's vision was from the beginning.

And we just believe that it's a way for BioWare to build a more contemporary game. It's a way for BioWare to take the essence of what makes a BioWare game great -- the lore, the characters, the stories and the choices that BioWare is known for -- but to put it into a more relevant, contemporary game design that is online-focused with more players and a game that, when it launches, is live over time. That was the vision for Anthem and what BioWare wanted to build. It was a relatively straightforward process. The first time we showed it to the executive team and the board, everyone said, "this is incredible." It was one of the easiest projects I've seen to get greenlit. 

Going to the external stuff, why is it important for EA to get these smaller projects from external teams?

You mean the Originals program? For me, it's a way for us to do a couple things. One is, it's a way for us to get in contact with developers and products that we probably normally wouldn't get in contact with.

If you look at Connie from Jo-Mei showing Sea of Solitude, that's a game I don't know would have seen the day of light if it wasn't for us picking it up. It's a game that's her personal story. It's a game that focuses on emotion and loneliness, a lot of things that are relevant in today's world in a way that I think is important. So that's one side.

Finding these developers with these ideas that we believe should be put in front of players and give them proper funding, proper support, and proper marketing effort. You see us popping Sea of Solitude next to FIFA and Battlefield on stage. That's the beauty of that program. We've done that consistently.

The second thing I think it is is it's a way for us to show the world that EA cares and that it's a way for us to give back. I came from a development background. I started my own development studio many years ago in apartment with five people late at night drinking Jolt cola and I know how difficult that was. If we would have come into contact with a program like Originals, that would've changed everything we did at the time.

So it's a way for EA to give back to the community and to show people that we care about the industry and we want to nurture and bring forth new ideas and developers. I think the third one is, I actually think it's something that can hopefully help the EA reputation and the EA brand, which I also think it's important. You'll see a lot of people inside of EA being incredibly proud of the Originals program. That's an important thing for them. I hope that people on the outside can see it as something positive.

So as someone who helps define the EA brand, that kind of softens the image. We're not just the big huge...

Because we're not. You'll find inside of EA that it's a company full of a lot of passionate, smart, intelligent people who care deeply and sometimes, it pains me to see that doesn't shine through all the time. That's on us as a company to fix, but if you come inside the company and you view the people, you can see that it's full of people who want to do the right thing.

Do you feel like there's this, a friend of mine called it a "hatred tax," that just because EA's been around for a long time, it's successful, that there have been missteps, as the company has admitted...Do you think you catch an unfair amount of flack from fans and media?

Yes and no, I would say.  I think yes of course we feel that way. We get frustrated because, to your point, there's a hatred tax. At the same time, perception is 9/10 of reality. If people feel something and say something, we need to listen to them. And that probably means we have done something wrong. It could have been in how we communicated, it could have been in what we've done. It would be arrogant and probably not particularly long-term, with a long-term view, if we decided, "Well that's hatred. We don't care about that." We need to care about it. And we can feel that way maybe for a split second but we can't listen to that. We have to be accountable and understand that again, perception is 9/10 of reality.