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DICE Talks with IGN on Bad Company 2
A pretty good interview with DICE over at IGN:
I recently caught up with Karl Magnus Troedsson, Executive Producer at DICE for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, to chat about how the development process went on DICE's latest hit videogame and what the group has in store for the future. Among other things, we talked about the server issues Bad Company 2's multiplayer suffered from near launch, just how popular the game has been, and the friendly competition currently raging with Modern Warfare 2.
Troedsson was eager to let everyone know just how popular the multiplayer game has become in just a few short weeks. In the 24 hours prior to our discussion, 4 million game hours had been logged in the multiplayer game -- and that is not counting time spent sitting in lobbies. To date, over 10 billion points have been won in the multiplayer game and 40 million weapon and gear items have been unlocked.
That popularity hasn't come without its share of problems, however. Server issues have plagued the launch of Bad Company 2, as they did with the launch of Battlefield 1943 last summer. Troedsson told IGN that it wasn't a matter of underestimating the popularity -- at least not this time. <!--more-->
"1943, we were very surprised over the amount of people that actually liked the game and purchased it. It was an experiment for us. It was the first time that we did an arcade game, it was the first time that we did a game of that kind of price range. In this case, we did a lot of our homework. We had a PC beta, we had a PS3 beta, a 360 demo and these kinds of things coming out. In the end, there's been so much interest in the multiplayer that even though we had the server capacity for it -- the actual server slots so to say -- we have had other systems in the background actually break down. The case that we had in 1943 that it was mostly due to the game service collapsing, that hasn't always been the case here. It's more about other systems that can't always keep up with it. That's why we're still here in the office. We're very, very dedicated to fixing the problems as soon as they come up and I want to reassure people that we are on this and we are fixing the problems one after another."
I spoke with Troedsson at length about the single-player campaign and the evolution Bad Company has gone through for this latest sequel. "In Bad Company 1, we worked really, really hard just to get the innovation in there. It was the first game [in which] we really launched Battlefield on consoles, on PS3 and 360, and that took a lot of our time just getting the destruction and everything in there... When we started building Bad Company 2, we tried to do it the other way around. We looked at the innovation we had and we tried to figure out how we can make the most out of this without breaking our backs trying to invent the wheel all over."
That included making changes in the name of accessibility and storytelling mechanics. "Battlefield has always gone a little bit our own way, but at the same time we also talk a lot about accessibility here. We wanted to reach as many people as possible with this product, and that's one of the reasons we added single-player to this in the first place. We wanted to invite more people into the Battlefield universe. We also felt that a couple of the game mechanics that we had in Bad Company 1, like the stab yourself in the heart to get health back, were a bit too complex mechanics-wise. We felt that it's better to follow the industry standard and use more common systems."
"The guys that built it, the single-player guys, they had a very strong idea that they wanted to create something that is more in line with what a movie does. It should be easier to follow, there should be a clear dramatic curve that makes you feel like you have highs and lows and these kinds of things... They wanted to incorporate a lot of these classic elements that we think are needed to create an interesting story."
If you've made it through to the end of Bad Company 2, you may have found that the ending left room open for much, much more. I asked Troedsson if this would come in a Bad Company 3 title, or if we could expect it to be in the form of a downloadable add-on. "We haven't planned any DLC that comes with the actual story itself, but we won't rule it out. The good thing about having a post-launch campaign that we have -- that we plan to take care of the product for a long time -- is that we can be reactive to what people think. But obviously, creating single-player missions is a much bigger thing than creating additional multiplayer maps."
The team at DICE is "definitely" committed to supporting Bad Company 2 for what they describe as a long time. This naturally led to a conversation about the pros and cons of doing downloadable map packs at a price, versus the Bad Company 2 VIP program where those that purchase the game new automatically get certain pieces of downloadable content for free. "I would dare say we have a lot of opinion based on the fact that we've been making multiplayer games for so long. Already in 1942 and Battlefield 2 we had a lot of different booster packs. One of the very clear lessons that we learned from that is that the more booster packs people have to pay for, all you do is actually segment the community. If you don't have this map, you can't play with me. If I don't have that map, I can't play with you. Team play is very important for us... this is something that we felt that it is probably better to give away a lot of the maps for free, and then perhaps we can have some more paid DLC in the future that is not focusing on that."
Of course, those that buy the game used or happen to borrow it from a friend will have to buy into the VIP program at a substantial cost. I asked Troedsson if he worried some of the more casual gamers would feel left out or taken advantage of if they came into that situation blindly. "We hope they would like the game so much they would invest in the code."
The talk turned next to the specific work DICE did to make the PC version stand out, and whether we would ever see machinima tools similar to what is found in Uncharted 2 or Halo 3. "The PC crowd is a crowd that we feel very special about, because this is where Battlefield was born. We're going to take a look at the whole product both on PC and the console, but perhaps even more on PC because we can do more stuff there and see what tools we can release. I agree with you that any kind of movie-making tool is very powerful, but it's also quite a lot of intricate work to get that to function with the engine. I won't promise anything, but it's on the plate for looking into."
"The PC crowd is definitely more tech-savvy and have more clear ideas on how they want multiplayer to work -- server browser being one of them, they don't want to just be matchmaked in the background. When we talked about this, there were a lot of people worried in production that we would just create a port of the 360 version and have it running on PC. I hope people now agree that we haven't done that. We spent a lot of time working on the UI, the menu, all of these kinds of things, to get it to attract more of the clear PC crowd that we have. Definitely, it takes more effort but it's worth it in the end."
Back in December, the head of EA John Riccitiello, hailed Bad Company 2 as the best chance the publisher had to take back the first-person shooter genre from Activision. DICE sees it more as a healthy competition between talented developers. "We as a studio in little Sweden up in northern Europe, we are pretty competitive about it. We always want to make the best game possible and the way that we usually do that is we look at the best selling or the highest quality, or we look at the other competitors that are doing really well and we say, 'Let's beat them.' It gives us something to chase after, of course we see it as a healthy competition because we have a lot of respect for the other game companies that are making great games out there. It's about doing all you can to create the best product."
And on the fact that both Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 will be getting map pack updates on the same day, March 30? "It's a complete coincidence!" Troedsson exclaimed with a laugh.
So what are your thoughts on the interview? Support for the game for a "long time" sounds pretty interesting. You think other things may come out for Bad Company 2 to help promote its growth? Does the success of the game validate the hard work DICE has put into it?
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I recently caught up with Karl Magnus Troedsson, Executive Producer at DICE for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, to chat about how the development process went on DICE's latest hit videogame and what the group has in store for the future. Among other things, we talked about the server issues Bad Company 2's multiplayer suffered from near launch, just how popular the game has been, and the friendly competition currently raging with Modern Warfare 2.
Troedsson was eager to let everyone know just how popular the multiplayer game has become in just a few short weeks. In the 24 hours prior to our discussion, 4 million game hours had been logged in the multiplayer game -- and that is not counting time spent sitting in lobbies. To date, over 10 billion points have been won in the multiplayer game and 40 million weapon and gear items have been unlocked.
That popularity hasn't come without its share of problems, however. Server issues have plagued the launch of Bad Company 2, as they did with the launch of Battlefield 1943 last summer. Troedsson told IGN that it wasn't a matter of underestimating the popularity -- at least not this time. <!--more-->
"1943, we were very surprised over the amount of people that actually liked the game and purchased it. It was an experiment for us. It was the first time that we did an arcade game, it was the first time that we did a game of that kind of price range. In this case, we did a lot of our homework. We had a PC beta, we had a PS3 beta, a 360 demo and these kinds of things coming out. In the end, there's been so much interest in the multiplayer that even though we had the server capacity for it -- the actual server slots so to say -- we have had other systems in the background actually break down. The case that we had in 1943 that it was mostly due to the game service collapsing, that hasn't always been the case here. It's more about other systems that can't always keep up with it. That's why we're still here in the office. We're very, very dedicated to fixing the problems as soon as they come up and I want to reassure people that we are on this and we are fixing the problems one after another."
I spoke with Troedsson at length about the single-player campaign and the evolution Bad Company has gone through for this latest sequel. "In Bad Company 1, we worked really, really hard just to get the innovation in there. It was the first game [in which] we really launched Battlefield on consoles, on PS3 and 360, and that took a lot of our time just getting the destruction and everything in there... When we started building Bad Company 2, we tried to do it the other way around. We looked at the innovation we had and we tried to figure out how we can make the most out of this without breaking our backs trying to invent the wheel all over."
That included making changes in the name of accessibility and storytelling mechanics. "Battlefield has always gone a little bit our own way, but at the same time we also talk a lot about accessibility here. We wanted to reach as many people as possible with this product, and that's one of the reasons we added single-player to this in the first place. We wanted to invite more people into the Battlefield universe. We also felt that a couple of the game mechanics that we had in Bad Company 1, like the stab yourself in the heart to get health back, were a bit too complex mechanics-wise. We felt that it's better to follow the industry standard and use more common systems."
"The guys that built it, the single-player guys, they had a very strong idea that they wanted to create something that is more in line with what a movie does. It should be easier to follow, there should be a clear dramatic curve that makes you feel like you have highs and lows and these kinds of things... They wanted to incorporate a lot of these classic elements that we think are needed to create an interesting story."
If you've made it through to the end of Bad Company 2, you may have found that the ending left room open for much, much more. I asked Troedsson if this would come in a Bad Company 3 title, or if we could expect it to be in the form of a downloadable add-on. "We haven't planned any DLC that comes with the actual story itself, but we won't rule it out. The good thing about having a post-launch campaign that we have -- that we plan to take care of the product for a long time -- is that we can be reactive to what people think. But obviously, creating single-player missions is a much bigger thing than creating additional multiplayer maps."
The team at DICE is "definitely" committed to supporting Bad Company 2 for what they describe as a long time. This naturally led to a conversation about the pros and cons of doing downloadable map packs at a price, versus the Bad Company 2 VIP program where those that purchase the game new automatically get certain pieces of downloadable content for free. "I would dare say we have a lot of opinion based on the fact that we've been making multiplayer games for so long. Already in 1942 and Battlefield 2 we had a lot of different booster packs. One of the very clear lessons that we learned from that is that the more booster packs people have to pay for, all you do is actually segment the community. If you don't have this map, you can't play with me. If I don't have that map, I can't play with you. Team play is very important for us... this is something that we felt that it is probably better to give away a lot of the maps for free, and then perhaps we can have some more paid DLC in the future that is not focusing on that."
Of course, those that buy the game used or happen to borrow it from a friend will have to buy into the VIP program at a substantial cost. I asked Troedsson if he worried some of the more casual gamers would feel left out or taken advantage of if they came into that situation blindly. "We hope they would like the game so much they would invest in the code."
The talk turned next to the specific work DICE did to make the PC version stand out, and whether we would ever see machinima tools similar to what is found in Uncharted 2 or Halo 3. "The PC crowd is a crowd that we feel very special about, because this is where Battlefield was born. We're going to take a look at the whole product both on PC and the console, but perhaps even more on PC because we can do more stuff there and see what tools we can release. I agree with you that any kind of movie-making tool is very powerful, but it's also quite a lot of intricate work to get that to function with the engine. I won't promise anything, but it's on the plate for looking into."
"The PC crowd is definitely more tech-savvy and have more clear ideas on how they want multiplayer to work -- server browser being one of them, they don't want to just be matchmaked in the background. When we talked about this, there were a lot of people worried in production that we would just create a port of the 360 version and have it running on PC. I hope people now agree that we haven't done that. We spent a lot of time working on the UI, the menu, all of these kinds of things, to get it to attract more of the clear PC crowd that we have. Definitely, it takes more effort but it's worth it in the end."
Back in December, the head of EA John Riccitiello, hailed Bad Company 2 as the best chance the publisher had to take back the first-person shooter genre from Activision. DICE sees it more as a healthy competition between talented developers. "We as a studio in little Sweden up in northern Europe, we are pretty competitive about it. We always want to make the best game possible and the way that we usually do that is we look at the best selling or the highest quality, or we look at the other competitors that are doing really well and we say, 'Let's beat them.' It gives us something to chase after, of course we see it as a healthy competition because we have a lot of respect for the other game companies that are making great games out there. It's about doing all you can to create the best product."
And on the fact that both Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 will be getting map pack updates on the same day, March 30? "It's a complete coincidence!" Troedsson exclaimed with a laugh.
So what are your thoughts on the interview? Support for the game for a "long time" sounds pretty interesting. You think other things may come out for Bad Company 2 to help promote its growth? Does the success of the game validate the hard work DICE has put into it?
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