AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Vince Zampella, cocreator of the wildly popular Call of Duty video game franchise, has died. The 55-year-old helped create a new generation of loyal gamers. NPR's Alana Wise reports.
ALANA WISE, BYLINE: The video game developer and a passenger were killed in a Los Angeles car crash on Sunday, according to local news reports. Zampella was best known for his work on the megahit Call of Duty games, a first-person shooter series that has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide since its 2003 debut. But his decades-long resume saw him influence some of the most popular games of all time.
STEPHEN TOTILO: Vince Zampella was one of the most successful game developers in the history of the game industry.
WISE: Stephen Totilo is a journalist, gaming expert and founder of the Game File newsletter.
TOTILO: Vince Zampella was seen as somebody who had a Midas touch when it came to video games.
WISE: Zampella's early mark on the gaming industry came with the Call of Duty series, but he and a cofounder were ousted from the company back in the game's development. Totilo says that was the first proof of Zampella's fortitude as a leader, when much of his team followed him out the door to launch Respawn Entertainment studio.
TOTILO: Vince and some of his cofounders were fired. They wound up out of a job. But pretty soon, a lot of Infinity Ward came over with them, showing the loyalty that Vince had been able to engender, and they started a new studio.
WISE: From there, Totilo says Zampella and his team hit the ground running.
TOTILO: And pretty soon were making hits of their own, without Activision's backing and soon enough with rival Electronic Arts' interests. And EA would soon buy them and kind of the rest is history.
WISE: Since then, Zampella had overseen the development of big-budget games such as Apex Legends and the popular Star Wars Jedi series.
TOTILO: Anybody who plays Call of Duty, Battlefield, Apex Legends - and we're talking about tens of millions of people around the world - are playing work that would not have existed without Vince Zampella and the teams that he put together.
WISE: But Totilo says that the gaming icon will also have a lasting influence on future game creators.
TOTILO: When you look at how his peers are honoring him this week, you see an influence that I think will live on for a long time in just what a successful and inspiring leader he was.
WISE: Tributes from across the industry poured in after Zampella's death. On the social media of Apex Legends, the game left a simple tribute - rest easy, Vince. Thank you.
Alana Wise, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.