David Goldfarb, who worked at the EA-owned development house DICE as the lead designer of Battlefield Bad Company 2 and lead single-player designer on Battlefield 3, has left the Swedish mega-studio.


"It was time to move on for me," Goldfarb told Kotaku. But should Battlefield fans be concerned? "Fans have nothing to worry about."

An EA rep did not respond to a request for comment. If/when they do, it'll be added here.


Changeover at or near the top of a major gaming franchise is not unusual. The chief architects of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare were notoriously relieved of duty in 2010. That same year, the lead creator in charge of the couple-hundred people making Assassin's Creed games left that series after its first three hit console installments. Both series have continued under different creative leadership, for better or worse, depending on your taste in the subsequent games.

Battlefield 3 was EA's answer to Activision's Call of Duty juggernaut. The game is being expanded through multiple pieces of downloadable content this year, but won't see a new iteration in 2012, as EA's next Medal of Honor does the anti-CoD honors this year.

Goldfarb isn't sure where he'll land next, but he has been blogging about working on a film script, or maybe a novel he's drafted on and off since the late '90s: "Today and yesterday I worked on cleaning up and reframing chapter 1 and 2. Mostly what this was was coming to grips with the old style of the book, which is this thing a friend of mine called 'Biblepunk' for lack of a better word. Or Old Testament noir. Anyway. It's weird, and it's especially weird revisiting it as a writer and being like, how the hell am I going to get myself back in that creative headspace again."


Good luck, Goldfarb. Some of us would enjoy some Old Testament noir.

CORRECTION: This story originally ID'd Goldfarb as the lead game designer of Battlefield 3 and Bad Company 2. While he had the overall lead role on BC2, he was the lead on the single-player portion of BF3. Apologies for any confusion.