Battlefield Heroes Will Have Only Two Maps - Initially
From Gamasutra comes this lengthy interview with Ben Cousins, the producer of the upcoming "free" Battlefield Heroes game. Amongst the tidbits included in the interview is the revelation that the game will initially "ship" with just two maps.
Quote:
So, it's interesting -- what I was thinking about is, you talked during your presentation about shipping with two maps, and that implies to me that you're planning to upgrade later -- I mean, obviously, the game is not going to persist on two maps.
BC: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we did is, we come to this from two angles. The first one is that in every Battlefield game, we bust our asses making 50 maps, and then within six months of the game being released, everyone's playing two maps. The two best maps. So, we just decided to make just the two best maps, and not the other kind of maps.
Have fun paying for every map past the first two!
Update: Ben Cousins was kind enough to set the record straight for us.
Quote:
...we have two maps to play at the open beta launch of the game later this year, and we already have another map quite far along in development which will be included in an update soon after launch.
We have no plans to charge people for maps. We want to keep the community of paying and free players together.
Just to re-iterate the business model here. We assume that 95% of Battlefield Heroes players never spend a penny on items. We will be delighted if 95% of players never spend any money on items. This is a free game, supported by advertising, with a small number of paying customers.
Last edited by bapenguin; 04-03-2008 at 05:41 AM..
Actually it's not a bad decision, especially for a more casual game.
Also it depends on how much the charge for additional maps. 10 bucks is instant fail. But a buck or two? That's not bad at all.
Problem: It's a horrid idea for the MAPS to be the "pay for" content. Anyone who played R6 vegas, or played Gears of War knows how much fun it is to try and search for servers playing the map pack maps. And never finding them. Always seemed to be that when only some part of the community had the maps... no one ever played those maps.
Get ready, the nickel and dime machine is shifting gears again. Hold onto your wallet!
Next they will charge for CoD-like perks.
"Want a gun with more than 1 clip of ammo? 800 MS points!"
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Actually it's not a bad decision, especially for a more casual game.
Also it depends on how much the charge for additional maps. 10 bucks is instant fail. But a buck or two? That's not bad at all.
And this, my friends, is part of the reason we're seeing more and more news like this. Do you really think they only created two maps? Do you think that the maps they release afterwards weren't already finished? You're enabling this sort of business practice.
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This game has gone from something that had a very polished video, and a maybe interesting game - to something I'm just going to pass altogether. There is enough games out there that I don't need to put up with all this stuff.
of course if I am wrong, i can just buy my way into the game too. So.. whichever.
My favorite quote, besides the one in the thread starter, is this:
Quote:
So we're launching with an infantry-focused map, and a vehicle-focused map, and if they want to play the infantry-focused map then we will continue to make infantry-focused maps. And, similarly, if they think of this as a vehicle-based game, then we'll make the maps which reinforce that feel. So it's down to the community to define what type of game this is, really.
Hey, it's all choice! We're doing this for you, the gamer! We don't have 6-8 maps premade and ready to upload on the day we publish for $5.00 each. We promise.
I have no problem if the maps added later will be free (at some point), but if they aren't, boo! I mean seriously, haven't they learned from the past? I for one never liked the BF exp's and especially booster packs, what they effectively did was shatter the community into 3 or 4 different, smaller games.
But yeah, otherwise the idea of 2 maps is fine by me, because he has a point. I'd rather have 2 throughout tested fun maps than 10 unbalanced ones. BF2 Wake says hi!
Maybe because it is not a fucking free game anymore, but a glorified demo. I knew when we heard about a free game from EA, it was too good to be true.
So? Even if it's a demo it's still free. I don't see people bitching about how the Army of Two demo that dropped the other day only contains a small amount of gameplay and then they force you to pay for the rest. You know why, because it's free.
I'm not sure if it's the micro-transactions or what, but for some reason people want to judge this game by a completely different standard than everything else on the market. Pay $60 at a retail chain and it's a-ok by everyone, but pay $60 in $2 increments online and suddenly it's an abomination, an offense to gamers everywhere. Did people honestly think that EA was going to have nothing to sell you here? Programmers don't work for free. Artists and designers still have to pay their bills and feed their families. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for the content.
So where exactly is the problem here? If you don't want to pay for the content you get a free game/demo out of it. If you don't mind paying for the content then it's no different than every other game on the market. Where is the problem here that everyone gets so up in arms about? Because I seriously don't see it.
