Jade Raymond is leaving EA Motive, the publisher announced today. Raymond joined EA in 2015 to establish Motive, which worked on the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 campaign. Samantha Ryan, senior vice president of EA Mobile, Maxis, and BioWare, will now oversee Motive studios in Montreal.
Raymond was the head of EA Motive since the studio’s founding in 2015. Before joining EA, she had spent nearly a decade at Ubisoft where she helped steer Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs, and other big franchises for the publisher. Motive was founded to specialize in action-adventure titles, and their first project was the Battlefront 2 campaign. Alongside that was their co-development of the Amy Hennig-led Star Wars video game from Visceral Games. When EA closed Visceral Games last year, EA Vancouver took over production for that game which has since been reworked.
EA’s Head of Communication John Reseburg put out a statement.
“Jade helped to build great teams, and our projects underway at Motive and other studios continue unchanged,” he said. “We’re appreciative of all her efforts, and we wish Jade all the best as she moves on to her next adventure.”
Raymond served as a producer on the original Assassin’s Creed in 2007. She went on to executive produce Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines, Watch Dogs, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. She has not announced where she is going after EA.
Ryan, who is taking on responsibilities at Motive, has been with EA since 2015 as well. She is the senior vice president of EA Mobile, Maxis, and BioWare studios. This move has her overseeing all of EA’s North American studios, sans Respawn Entertainment and EA Sports. Ryan previously worked at Warner Bros. Interactive, and Monolith Productions.
EA’s Motive Studios is now working on an unannounced Star Wars title. Last year’s Battlefront 2 brought a single-player campaign from Motive to the game. The DICE-developed Battlefront 2 multiplayer was maligned for its microtransactions, which led to months of protracted apologies and band-aid fixes to the game. Motive’s campaign started out well, but quickly devolved into a mediocre experience. Kim Swift (Portal, Quantum Conundrum) joined Motive at the beginning of 2017 as a design director.
Image Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Stringer / Getty Images
