Vince Zampella Passed Away

Vince Zampella sadly passed away this last Sunday in a car accident.

I am at the time of writing those lines a Respawn employee, studio that Vince Zampella cofounded.

I learnt the news on Monday, while walking in Venice with a group of friends made-up of ex-Respawn people. Therefor, we all knew the man in-person. Everyone was in disbelief. Vince had an aura and respect from his peer that you do not find commonly. He was very accessible and gentle with people in the day-to-day and loved by the ensemble of the studio.

Roughly 6 years ago, I got headhunted by 2 companies at the same time: Respawn and Naughty Dogs. Maybe for some it is crazy, but it was never really a choice in my mind, Respawn was the clear winner just to get a chance to work with so many legends of the industry. Vince of course was among them and I have no regrets of this choice.

I do not have much public stories to share. But I will always remember the first 2 weeks of my employment there. I fixed a very hard bug on Apex Legends (hit registration stuff) that was breaking completely the live game. It took me roughly 5 days to find the issue and fix it in a codebase I did not know. The pressure from the community was high. Vince was speaking to people, reassuring them and I had the trust of my hierarchy as a newbie to fix it. And they thanked me at the end. In my experience, it is rare studio head engages directly with the community and their ICs (independant contributor aka not leads). That reflects on the tone and culture that he created with others at Respawn. It is certainly why I am still over there.

My thoughts to his family and the ones left behind.

In Vince’s games, up to TitanFall 2, AI would pick-up randomly dev names from a list. Most AI names from your childhoods are certainly real people.