DICE GM: EA gets "too much crap for not being innovative"

DICE general manger Karl Magnus Troedsson thinks fans give Electronics Arts too much flak for not being innovative. In an interview with Gamasutra, Troedsson shot down the idea that DICE never gets to experiment anymore.

"There are those examples that have gone into big products that people don't really know about, but they actually came from smaller, other, more innovative test experiments inside of DICE," Troedsson told Gamasutra. "In the background of everything, we run a business, of course. But with the success we have had, there are opportunities. It's quite easy for us to explain to upper management that, "We want to do this. We want to try this out.""

"And EA is actually very prone to try out new things, and I have to say that sometimes I think we get too much crap for not being innovative. We do release new IPs, and we do take care of IPs that have been out there. And perhaps not so successful, but we try to get new things out there as well," he added.

Troedsson also clarified what he believes innovation is.

"Innovation is something that actually changes something for the better, renews something -- and I think we do that all the time. But some of them are big and some of them are small, and some people disagree, saying, "That's not an innovation!" and it's like, "No, maybe not for you, but for the people playing the game it's a big thing," he said.

"But it comes down to, the longer a product has been running, the more you need to challenge yourself to actually do something innovative. At the same time, as I mentioned before, as well, it needs to be the right level of innovation. You need a couple of them and then you feel like, "This is really, really good", and, "This is going to be interesting", perhaps, for both our core audience, but also hopefully attract new players into being interested in playing the franchise."