Criterion’s future isn’t like its previous.
A sure technology of avid gamers – the older ones – will affiliate the British studio’s title with the white knuckle Ronin-car-chase-inspired racing of Burnout, with its chaotic destruction and punk rock soundtrack. It is the franchise that made the studio’s title, and for a interval the foyer of its Guildford workplaces had a sculpture of a automotive bursting by way of the wall to commemorate it. The racing experience was subsequently utilized to Want For Pace, each at Criterion and sister studio Ghost Video games, and Criterion delivered what’s at the moment the final recreation in the franchise, 2022’s Want for Pace Unbound.
Visiting the studio in its thirtieth yr, the sculpture is gone, and so are many of the individuals who led that period. VP Matt Webster left with different veterans and went on to launch Fuse Video games, which is quickly to launch the Burnout-infused podracing title Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Fiona Sperry and Alex Ward arrange Three Fields and shipped Wreckreation (Sperry now heads successor studio When Tides Flip, engaged on Wreckreation 2). There’s a new brand, a new group, and a new focus: As of 2023, the studio was formally introduced below the EA Leisure banner particularly to work on Battlefield.
At the time, it was mentioned that Criterion would additionally proceed to lead improvement on future Want for Pace video games – however that franchise is at the moment dormant, whereas Battlefield is driving a historic excessive after the large success of final yr’s Battlefield 6. Going from vehicles to fight appears massive shift, however studio management frames it as a continuation of a storied AAA legacy.
Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, producer Stefan Wittelsberger says that Battlefield is Criterion’s “focus”.
“We’re a Battlefield studio,” he says. “With Battlefield 6, we delivered some essential components inside the title collectively with our companions of EA Motive, Ripple Impact, and DICE. Criterion has established itself as a clear, vital pillar of Battlefield Studios as a entire, and Battlefield is our focus proper now. The weather round delighting gamers, all that heritage, all that experience, all that expertise, all that historical past, and our uniqueness on how we strategy recreation improvement as Criterion is mirrored itself in Battlefield 6.”
In fact, Battlefield 6 is not the first time that Criterion has labored on a Battlefield recreation. The studio contributed to earlier entries in the collection, together with 2018’s Battlefield 5 and 2020’s Battlefield 2042, though Rebecka Coutaz, VP and GM of Battlefield Studios Europe – a position the place she oversees each DICE and Criterion – says that the firm is now concerned in initiatives proper from the begin.
“The distinction this time round is that Criterion beforehand had been requested to come in, not at the finish, however once we had been nearing the finish on Battlefield,” she explains. “Now Criterion was requested to come in at the starting. So [it] might contribute with all the strengths that this group sits on already from the starting. The moment reward, the intensitivity, the adrenaline rush, the care about the gamers. These footprints had been already introduced in from the starting. Once you come in with that sort of footprint from the starting, you may have a a lot greater impression than you may have when you come in afterward in the manufacturing course of.”
With 4 studios contributing to one venture, it is generally laborious to get a sense – from the outdoors wanting in – as to who’s doing what. When it comes to Battlefield 6, Criterion’s Wittelsberger says that the studio was “closely concerned” in the recreation’s single-player, in explicit its final two missions.
“They had been broadly acclaimed and critically properly obtained,” he explains. “We additionally labored very carefully with our core methods, akin to destruction, the fight discipline, weapons, {hardware}, even automobile dealing with components. Criterion labored on a lot of this in Battlefield 6. What you see and what you play and the way the troopers behave and the way the automobiles behave, we had our hand in that. All of that comes with our experience, our heritage of what we introduced from all these years of expertise that our improvement group has. So working with Battlefield 6 proper now, it simply units us up for even grander issues.”
Burnout legacy
A sure set of avid gamers will all the time suppose of Criterion as the Burnout studio, regardless that that hasn’t been the case for a very long time. However though the studio is growing in a totally different realm now, its present management argues that the similar DNA that made its chaotic racing title a lot enjoyable remains to be current in its work at present.
“These issues are variety of the Criterion fingerprint,” director of operations Amy Pejic says. “The minute to minute really feel and gameplay, participant momentum, managed chaos, and spectacle. All these issues that you just’d really feel in Burnout nonetheless are a throughline and [have a] fingerprint in the issues that we ship now.”
She continues: “We want to create memorable moments that folks will speak about for years. It is genuinely pretty that folks nonetheless speak about Burnout. It clearly makes an impression and we want to proceed to ship these memorable moments. We want individuals to proceed to speak about the issues that we ship.”
Wittelsberger provides: “I imply, the spectacle of Battlefield 6’s eighth mission, Operation Ember Strike, had the SAM destruction, the really feel of the drone because it moved, the way it vibrated barely, and the way it dropped bombs. All these components, we performed with it, and we really want to proceed to drive that really feel, as a result of I feel it ties into our delight factor. How can we delight our gamers? How can we delight whoever experiences our craft? How can we evoke the feeling of awesomeness that we want to give to our participant base? That’s the fingerprint that I feel Amy’s referring to, and that’s simply a frequent denominator on how we strategy recreation improvement at the studio.”
Criterion did not abruptly change from Burnout to Battlefield. After 2008’s Burnout Paradise, the studio spent a whereas on the Want for Pace collection, earlier than contributing to Battlefield 5 in the kind of the Firestorm battle royale mode. And there is additionally a first-person shooter in Criterion’s dim and distant previous in the kind of the 2006 recreation Black.
“There’s been a entire array of work that has been shaping the group and has simply illustrated to the organisation as a entire at EA that we’re succesful of tackling a lot,” Wittelsberger says. “That simply consolidated itself as being half of Battlefield Studios. Once more, tying it barely again to the breadth of work that now we have to do in Battlefield, there’s simply a lot, and Criterion can ship on so many fronts.”
Studio development
The Criterion of at present is 164 individuals sturdy; that is a appreciable improve on the 30 members of employees at the studio again in 2017. The present employees are break up throughout two studios in Guildford and Wilmslow; whereas there’s no person who’s lasted the studio’s 30-year run, a quantity have performed greater than a decade, and the present crew has racked up expertise at AAA studios throughout Europe. The power in the constructing – admittedly curated for a press go to – is constructive, and the employees are upbeat about being half of a main launch. The outlook is rosy, too, a minimum of by present business requirements.
“We glance to develop based mostly on the demand of the venture,” Pejic says. “So it really depends upon the place you are at in that improvement cycle. When you’re a reside recreation, there most likely won’t be as a lot development. As we glance to the future, development would be depending on what it’s that is demanded of us. Strategically, we glance to develop the place it is sensible.”
Wittelsberger provides: “The expertise pool is rising. There’s new youngsters coming in. We want to get the best expertise concerned in our recreation improvement course of. We do outreach applications. We work with a lot of internships. There’s all the time a component of we want to maintain that movement refreshing, and we’re all the time in search of the brightest and the best. There’s all the time area for us to develop, particularly with those that carry a lot of that spark and that gameplay really feel and that magic – contemporary eyes, contemporary mindset, multicultural components. Creativity comes from all walks of life, and the extra you might have that pluralism in your views, I feel the higher merchandise you make, since you’re not simply segregated to a single view.”
Some would possibly take a look at the story of Criterion as a cautionary story; a studio that was identified for making distinctive, technologically superior and enjoyable video games being purchased by a large writer and subsequently being put to work on one of its massive franchises.
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However that does not seem to be the case. Studio management says that there’s enthusiasm and starvation inside the studio. (Whereas not a concrete metric, Pejic says that the “urge for food for swag” has elevated.)
“As we had been launching Battlefield 6, you could possibly really feel the real pleasure,” she explains. “And I feel as we proceed to look to the future, it appears like a group that is really enthusiastic about the place we’re headed.”
“It is all the time horrible while you hear somebody say, ‘Effectively, that is the means we have all the time performed it’ – that is normally the loss of life of good course of”
She continues: “We’re bringing in an increasing number of new expertise, particularly earlier-in-career-funnel expertise, interns and people who find themselves bringing a really distinctive perspective. There’s very a lot that historical past and that heritage with Criterion, and it nonetheless exhibits by way of, nevertheless it’s nice to begin to see this sort of contemporary eyes strategy. We want them to be in a position to problem the established order and the norm. I have been in recreation dev now for 20 years. It is all the time horrible while you hear somebody say, ‘Effectively, that is the means we have all the time performed it’ – that is normally the loss of life of good course of. We nonetheless respect that heritage, however bringing in individuals from totally different studios, totally different backgrounds, very early in profession, you could possibly begin to hear the conversations and people challenges, which is really good and really wholesome. It appears like a mix of outdated and new, which I feel is really nice for a studio to have.”
And Criterion’s company house owners have massive plans for the studio. In brief, the developer’s brightest days might be forward of it.
“We want to be a British powerhouse,” Coutaz says. “We have all the time been a studio outlined by steady evolution, and with us now as a Battlefield studio, I really want Criterion to be considered the best studio in the UK. That’s what we’re working in direction of.”