According to online reports,
The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth RTS design director Dustin Browder is leaving Electronic Arts to join Blizzard as a senior designer.
Browder has been with Electronic Arts since before the closure of famed real-time strategy developer Westwood Studios, and has worked on games such as
Red Alert 2 and
Command & Conquer: Generals.
He will leave the company on March 9th and will work at Blizzard’s Irvine, California office under Rob Pardo – who has worked extensively on the
WarCraft franchise. Browder has indicated to consumer game site GameSpy that he does not know what game he will be working on at Blizzard, but when asked whether it could be
WarCraft IV or
StarCraft II, he answered gleefully: "I hope so."
What this means for the future of the
Command & Conquer/
Red Alert franchise is unclear, with producer Mark Skaggs currently enjoying a leave of absence to spend time with his family, but it seems likely that Electronic Arts would want to continue such a formerly top-selling brand in some form.
