Former lead designer of Battlefield, David Goldfarb, has joined the Starbreeze owned developer, Overkill Software. Starbreeze is a relatively new studio based out of Stockholm, Sweden. The studio is currently working on Payday 2, as well as a yet to be announced project. Both will involve Goldfarb as he works alongside the creative director for the projects, Ulf Andersson.
During an interview with Develop, Goldfarb noted that he chose to work with Starbreeze because currently it is “the best fit for (him)”, and that “they have a really interesting history and a lot of games I really like.”
Notable Starbreeze games include The Darkness series, The Chronicles of Riddick, Syndicate and Enclave.
Goldfarb also sees working with a smaller company—in comparison to DICE—as a breath of fresh air. “I’ve worked on these huge games, and that was great,” says Goldfarb, “but I really wanted to work on smaller, tighter, and more intimate projects that are more gameplay driven, and I saw the opportunity to do that here.”
Goldfarb holds no resentment towards DICE, however. Though he admits there were “”a lot of different reasons” for his departure, he notes that he feels “very fortunate to have worked at the studio with those guys and a lot of amazing people… I worked on four games and sometimes you just feel like you want to do something else.”
Goldfarb stated, “making big projects is really exhausting…I just wanted to get to closer to things that I love and (Starbreeze) was a great match for me.”
Goldfarb has received praise from his new coworker Ulf Andersson who said, “I’ve recruited and fired a lot of game designers in my day, and I’ve never met anybody who’s at the skill level that David is.”
Andersson also added that he is “looking forward to this to see if we can make something really cool together.”
(Via Computer and Video Games)