Posts Tagged ‘DICE’

EA’s foray into free-to-play, Battlefield Heroes now counts over 2 million registered players

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Late last week EA announced that their free-to-play, or Play4Free as EA likes to dub the genre, shooter Battlefield Heroes has officially topped the 2 million registered users milestone.

bf_heroes_fall_mapOfficially launched only three months ago, the third person shooter initially attracted over 1 million players in July, suggesting that overall game growth is slowing. A member of the successful Battlefield series, Battlefield Heroes comes out of Sweden based DICE studios. BFH is a sibling of another Battlefield title currently offered in a digital distribution only format, a more traditional rendering of the genre’s World War II action themes, Battlefield 1943.

Looking to not only hold on to these 2 million registered users, as well as draw in a completely new crowd, EA/DICE will be releasing a host of new content, as well as offering users the possibility to name the new content pack. Titled ‘Heroes of the Fall’ and set against the yellow, orange, and red shades of autumn, the new map will be focused on infantry fighting in close quarters of a village with intersecting canals. This new geography will funnel players to clashes at bridges and crossways, while also allowing stealthy players to use backstreets to launch flanking and rear attack maneuvers.

A new map isn’t the only thing being introduced to the popular free-to-play, as this content update will introduce an entirely new class to the game: the Gunner, as well as improvements and upgrades to the friends system. “Along with this new map, ‘Heroes of the Fall’ includes a slew of changes including upgrades of the Gunner class and improvements to the friends system,” said Ben Cousins, General Manager, Battlefield Heroes team. “We’ve also added a brand new ranking system for the game – players can earn cool new titles for their heroes as they play – showing everyone on the battlefield how dedicated they are.”

And sticking true to their already community heavy involvement and interaction, the folks at EA/DICE are offering users the chance to name the new map. While the development team will be selecting the name, this promotion seems like a great way to get the already engaged community even more involved.

There’s been no official word on updates to the in-game item shop, but given that Battlefield Heroes is primarily advertising and microtransaction purchases supported, I’d not be surprised to see updates to this aspect of the game as well. The new Gunner class will most certainly offer players a new way to play a game that they may or may not have already played a number of times, thereby giving the user a whole new class to customize.

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Stand and be counted Soldier – Battlefield Heroes goes open beta

Friday, June 26th, 2009

It’s been a long, and I do mean long, time coming, but it’s now official: No more beta keys needed to get in on the cartoonish Battlefield Heroes fun.  While EA chose to ignore the traditional press release route, the announcement was confirmed on the Battlefield Heroes forum, stating that the Security Layer is gone, no need for a beta key, and the NDA has been lifted.  W00t!

Battlefield Heroes Play NowEA’s quietly been letting more and more players in on the browser based, free-to-play fun for over a year now, and the lack of press release may suggest that EA learned a lesson or two from the Quake Live mad dash, people locked out, potential customer lost fiasco that occurred when the other popular free-to-play online title went live.

While we’ve covered the ongoing trials and tribulations of actually making it to public launch day, a quick refresher.  Battlefield Heroes is one of the growing number of free-to-play titles that NoCal gaming giant Electronic Arts has been slowly adding to their offerings.  Loosely based on DICE’s highly successful Battlefield series, this cartoonish fighter pits two opposing sides against each other, with a wide variety of fighting options.  Tanks, planes, heck, riding on plane wings, it’s all available.

The game is supported through in-game advertising and character customization microtransactions.  The ads appear only in pre-roll format, and the microtransactions are both reasonably priced and feature enough customizations to make even the staunchest of ‘I’m not paying for it’ microtransaction haters have a smile, and perhaps a click through to purchase.  Initially, EA and DICE reported that microtransaction items would only take the form of cosmetic upgrades, but it appears as though “convenience” items have now been added to the list of available goodies.  While I didn’t see anything that would provide an overwhelming boost in performance, it’s entirely possible that these items are there to help speed those along that either do not or can not play as long as other Battlefield Heroes players.

By opening the game slowly and fine-tuning this, that and the other firmly signals EA’s commitment to this project.  All too often in today’s free-to-play market, we see a title brought to market that may be fraught with bugs and serious design flaws, with developers intentions to address them and fix them as soon as possible.  EA/DICE have done this to some extent, by delaying the public opening by over a year, but at the same time, more or less letting anyone who wanted to play in the door with a wink, a nod, and a not-so-hard-to-obtain beta key.

Now that the doors are wide open, it’s time for the rest of us to sit back and see just how much appeal Battlefield Heroes has to the general populace.  That, and head shot a few n00bs in the process.  See ya on the Battlefield!

http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/

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Perry predicts cloud gaming, the rise of free-to-play, and the death of single player games

Friday, February 20th, 2009

This year’s DICE event which wraps up today in Las Vegas wouldn’t be complete without video games industry veteran David Perry’s take on the current state of play, and what he sees as ‘the next big thing’. We’ve covered some of Perry’s predictions in the past, but for those out there that don’t remember or know of David Perry, he’s the founder of Shiny Entertainment which was responsible for Earthworm Jim, and Messiah to name a few along with MDK, Wild 9 and Enter the Matrix.

Taking a page from his standard presentation playbook, Perry started out his DICE talk by showing some old marketing collateral from his first computer, the Sinclair ZX81, noting that at the time the mainstream consensus was that computers would be used solely as a productivity tool. “I, like everyone else, however, used it to make and play video games,” he said.

Looking forward, Perry notes how far and fast computing technology has progressed since its humble beginnings. Specifically, Perry speaks to increased storage space and read/write speeds. He foresees a future with unlimited storage media delivered via fast, ‘available everywhere’ wi-fi. Not limiting future options just to storage, Perry also predicts cloud processing, i.e. the end of in home owned single or multi-core processor platforms.

Driving this prediction, Perry explains that he’s been looking into technology that’s powered by remote storage and processing, thus removing the need for players to own powerful software or processing power. The end goal is to deliver the final rendered frames to gamers via Flash video.

“It’s like going back in time to when we had terminals instead of desktops.”

Speaking to distribution mediums, Perry didn’t waste any time aiming a canon at GameStop, who’s COO Dan DeMatteo recently stated that the era of full digital distribution is 12 to 17 years away. Perry’s thoughts consider this timeline ridiculous, and he’s quick to point out that much of the Asian market is largely dependent on digital distribution. And we all know how the Asian market is hurting in the video games department.

With perhaps his most startling statement of the day, Perry also sees the end of single-player games. Instead, he sees free-to-play, mulit-player online games as the absolute future, “I personally think the days of single-player games are numbered. Without question, our focus is entirely on multiplayer.”

Duly noted, Perry serves as Chief Creative Officer with Acclaim, a completely free-to-play, microtransactions based game developer/distributor, so it’s fair to say that his view might be slightly biased.

Using imagery of some of the greatest game designers of all time, Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima, Perry notes that Japan has turned out some of the best games and designers the world has ever seen, and asks, “would you be willing to bet China will never produce one of those names?”

A highly relevant question, as David warns that if and when this level of talent starts popping up in China or Korea, both areas where free-to-play is rapidly becoming the de facto business model, traditional game developers with traditional business models may find themselves on the outside looking in.

Summing up his presentation, Perry says, “The key trend is that we are going to be closer to our audience than ever before. We must listen to them at every step. … Your entire executive team must speak with them, not to them.”

Amen to that statement Mr. Perry. Got anything to say to us? We’re listening. Talk to fatfoogoo on twitter.

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Battlefield Heroes – Hold your fire! Until 2009

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Dice, the developers of the highly anticipated free-to-play title under the EA banner, Battlefield Heroes has recently announced that they’re putting the breaks on the official release date until 2009.

Dice Senior Producer James Salt posted to the games site (see below), citing backend issues as causing the snag.  The quick and dirty looks like this: While the frontend, the interface and gameplay that users experience is running quite well, beta tester feedback has been heard and applied, it’s all the backend features (up to 90% of the actual ‘game’) that aren’t quite up to par.  Rather than rush what could and should be a flagship model of the free-to-play industry to market, Dice/EA are making a wise decision by closing the doors and retooling the system.  The closed beta servers will have the plug pulled at 6pm CET, and will remain closed until further notice.

James Salts’ post:

Hello Heroes,

Been a looooong time since our last update. I want to apologise to you all for that.

So what have we been up to?

Well, the obvious answer is that we’ve been hard at work on the beta. To give you more detail, part of what makes Battlefield: Heroes unique is that it is equal parts game and website. On the game side, we’ve been listening to feedback from the lucky beta people, who have been a tremendous help to us in balancing the gameplay, squashing bugs and improving the overall quality of the game.

On to the other half of the Battlefield Heroes experience: the website.

We have also been working hard on the parts of the beta that aren’t the game. Sound weird? Let me try and explain: You know the old saying about icebergs being 10% above water, and 90% below? Heroes is a little like that. There’s the 10% game part you can see, and the hiding 90% is what we call the ‘backend’. The backend does a lot of things. From running the website’s features and looking after the items you have, to collecting the results from each Heroes game and matchmaking players into games.

We have received lots of great feedback from our beta testers. So much so that we are now ready to enter our next phase. On Friday evening (6pm CET) we will be closing down the current Closed Beta and moving our focus to polishing the backend. So for a while there will be no closed beta available to play. We expect to re-open the beta early next year.

A special thanks to all of our beta testers for your feedback on balance, polish and bug reports over the last few months. Your help has been invaluable to us.

The post has garnered over 800+ comments at the time of my writing this, with a majority of the feedback running towards the ‘Awww man…what’s up?  The game is great!” variety.  Naturally, there’s a smartass comment here and there, but meh…such is life.

This announcement is a bit of a double-edged sword for me personally.  Battlefield Heroes was the only title that I returned to play again on the second day at the Leipzig Games Convention, and I truly do enjoy the gameplay.  Tossing in the ‘it’s free’ factor only ups the ante.  On one hand I was planning on wasting a LOT of time over the upcoming holiday season with BH, but on the other…I’m a patient guy, I’d rather see DICE/EA close the doors, if only temporarily, to deliver something that’s truly going to blow the doors off the nay Sayers.

Here’s to you folks at Dice and EA.  A bold move that’s certainly not going to please all, but kudos to you for having the guts to hold fire until the product is just right.

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New updates on the Battlefield Heroes front

Friday, August 15th, 2008

EA demoed it’s cartoony entry to the free to play, microtransaction title Battlefield Heroes again yesterday at the EA Summer Showcase.

Lead by Swedish development firm DICE, Battlefield Heroes builds upon DICE’s successful Battlefield franchise.  After making a name for itself with Battlefield 1942, DICE moved on to tackle Battlefield Vietnam, created a futuristic offshoot, and successfully reinvented it for console play.

While Battlefield Heroes shares a number of traits with it’s predecessors, it also differs in a number of ways.  Obviously, first and foremost is the free to play, microtransaction based business model.  While the game will be supported primarily (for now) by in game, between battle, and website  advertisements.

The second departure stems from the overall graphics of the game.  Bucking the trend of ever more ‘realistic’ shooters, Battlefield Heroes play centers around a cartoony, ‘feel good’ design.  If Team Fortress 2 comes to mind, you’re on the right track.  However DICE’s Ben Cousins is quick to point out that, “Battlefield Heroes focuses on a mixture of vehicle and infantry combat in large, open environments.  We’ve also got a full MMO-style leveling-up and character-customization system. We’re also free to play, with really low system specs. We’re designed for a much more casual audience than Team Fortress. We’re third-person, and we’re really focused on a fun, easy-to-get-into, accessible gameplay. I’m a big fan of Team Fortress and have been playing it since the Quake version, but it’s still a pretty hardcore game. Heroes, with our matchmaking system, is much more focused on bringing a new audience in to shooters.  Everything else we’re doing is different. “

The third and biggest differentiator is the skill system.  Each class has several skills that are activated al la World of Warcraft.  Vehicle repairs, healing, shields, special attacks (think fiery bullets and repetitive grenade launches), etc. which are/were traditionally bound to items, are now activated at the click of a button.

When questioned about the entire microtransaction system, Cousins had quite a bit to say.  Gamespot.com recently interviewed Cousins:

GS: This microtransactions model hasn’t taken root yet in the West. What do you look at in terms of successful predecessors for the microtransactions model in the US? Yohoho Puzzle Pirates? Acclaim’s games?

BC: MapleStory is doing really well, and Puzzle Pirates is also doing well. I’ve been going to a microtransactions roundtable at each Game Developers Conference over the last few years, and there used to be maybe a few guys operating small businesses, small-scale role-playing games and that kind of thing. When I went this year, it was clear there were a large number of [successful developers].

I think it’s interesting Heroes is the first microtransactions-based game from a major publisher. So we appear to be breaking the ice and doing something cutting-edge, but there’s a good precedent in the West for reasonable success for a smaller-scale business. There’s an audience there and a demand for this sort of game, and we think we can bust it open with Heroes with a higher profile and the higher-quality game we’re offering.

GS: Is there anything to be gleaned from the fact that none of those successful microtransaction games you mentioned were action-oriented?

BC: There’s little precedent for action-oriented microtransaction games in the West, you’re right, but the predominant microtransactions genres in Korea and the Asian markets are action games like Special Force and Sudden Attack. Having studied the way they do it in Asia–we’re also developing a specific Battlefield game for the Korean market which is separate for Heroes–we’ve learned quite a lot about what you can do and can’t do with item sales in an action game.

While it may appear as a setback for EA and DICE that the release has been rolled back to ‘late 2008’ (we’re wagering on the Christmas Holiday season 2008), it looks like this story has a silver lining.  While Battlefield Heroes is currently in a closed beta, DICE sites that they have approx. 10,000 users testing the game right now, logging in an impressive 16,000 hours of gameplay.  Obviously, they’re doing something right.   Battlefield Heroes is a risky play for EA, and the extended buildup and hype may just prove to be a winning marketing and advertising strategy that others could learn from.  While EA and DICE take this time to iron out any potential wrinkles, they continue to drive the buzz mill with posts just like this one.

I for one am looking forward to seeing YOU on the Battlefield this Christmas.

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EA’s Free to Play Battlefield Heroes delayed

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

Sad to say fellow free to play fans, the long awaited Battlefield Heroes is off the radar for a summer launch.

Swedish development team DICE announced recently that they’re going to hold off on their ambitious summer 2008 release.  According to the Battlefield Heroes site, they’re now targeting a release date of  ‘Late 2008’.  Do I smell a Thanksgiving/Christmas release?

Battlefield Heroes is a colorful and playful extension of the popular first person shooter series that revolves around a cartoon look.  Battlefield Heroes serves as EA’s vehicle to test the treacherous waters of Free to play, ad-driven, micro transaction based gaming.  Heroes is a browser based version of the popular Battlefield universe.  The EA/DICE project has also been toned down and simplified adding a light-hearted, cartoonish take on combat in an attempt to induct a wider audience.

Battlefield Heroes remains one of the highest profile free to play games in the North American market.  Given the hype and profile, it’s a bit understandable that EA wants to iron out every conceivable wrinkle before unleashing the fun on the general public.  The closed beta started back in May, and DICE sites a number of beta tester information and comments that they want/need to address before the game goes live.  While this may be a setback for fanboys wanting their cartoony first person shooter, it’s better to have things right before releasing a sub standard product.  If EA manages to get this free to play title right, it very well may be the herald and benchmark for all free to play titles in the North American market.

To top off the ‘Just hold your horses’ announcement, I did a bit more checking around on the Battlefield Heroes site: Battlefield Heroes is currently being developed only for the Windows XP or Vista OS.  What about all the Mac players out there?

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