Battlefield Labs Is Taking Applicants To Help EA Playtest Its Next Battlefield Game

The Battlefield franchise has been a cornerstone of the first-person shooter genre for much of its history. Although lately it’s finding it difficult to compete amongst a flood of free-to-play, competitive online games. Even as one of its contemporaries, Call of Duty, continues to thrive. EA is hoping to turn the series’ fortunes around with the launch of Battlefield Labs.

The new initiative will involve the game’s biggest fans providing feedback on an early build of the game, which EA hopes will help it craft an experience that can succeed in the current live service space. Industry veteran Vince Zampella, who is the head of Respawn alongside being a GM for the EA Studios Organization is a big believer in this approach. Saying that “with us being pre-alpha, now is the time to test the experiences our teams have been building for our upcoming launch.”


Getting feedback earlier than ever isn’t the only change EA is making. Instead of leaving development solely to DICE, there will now be a group of studios working on this iteration of Battlefield. These include Ripple Effect, Motive, and Criterion alongside DICE, which will be known as Battlefield Studios. Moreover, EA has made the decision to bring back a single-player experience to be part of the package alongside the multiplayer component.

While this approach is a smart one on EA’s part, what it really needs to nail is a technically solid launch. The last Battlefield crashed and burned because it released in a terrible state, which made it impossible to build up its player base. If it’s not able to architect a good launch, then no amount of player feedback will save the next Battlefield. Hopefully the move to have several studios working on the project can address these issue and fans of the franchise will get to play a quality game, right from the get go.