Longtime game developer Rich Vogel has left the studio he founded five years back to join Certain Affinity as the company’s new vice president of technology and services. With this, Vogel departs his role as president and executive producer at Bethesda’s BattleCry Studios.
His new position places him in charge of Certain Affinity’s shared services and tasks him with assembling the developer’s newly established live services team, something his storied career with MMORPG development has no doubt prepared him for.
Vogel himself has been at the forefront of development for a number of influential titles throughout the years, including the early massively multiplayer online game Ultima Online. In the years since, Vogel served as executive producer for the MMO title Star Wars: Galaxies and a number of its expansions, co-founded BioWare Austin, and was the executive producer on Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Prior to joining Certain Affinity, Vogel was the president of BattleCry Studios, an outfit he founded shortly after leaving BioWare Austin in 2012. The studio had been working on a free to play MMO called BattleCry initially, but silently pivoted to work alongside id Software on 2016's Doom and its first two DLC releases.