Battlefield Dev Thinks Its Competition Is Getting Lazy

[Logan Westbrook]

Battlefield Dev Thinks Its Competition Is Getting Lazy

Developers have to occasionally take a leap and try something new, says DICE's general manager.

EA DICE's Karl-Magnus Troedsson, says that his company's competition will have a fight on its hands when Battlefield 3 comes out in the fall. He said that other developers and publishers were getting lazy in the way they made games, and that might be their undoing.

Troedsson said that DICE's competitors were using the same engine, not to mention the same structure, for all the games they brought out. He said that DICE wanted to tell a story with more dramatic twists and turns to it with Battlefield 3, rather than a consistently high-tempo game that was about filling the air with lead for a few hours. He thought that every now and then, studios had to take a leap of faith and try something new, and he said that he hadn't seen that in a long time. He added that Battlefield 3's rivals should watch out, because DICE was coming for them.

It's a little strange to think of a Battlefield game - or at least one that doesn't have "Bad Company" in the title - having dramatic twists at all, but a strong single player campaign is never an unwelcome addition to a game. Exactly how much good having a strong story will do Battlefield 3 against its rivals is debatable, however. After all, It's not hard to figure out that when Troedsson says "competitors," he's mainly talking about Activision and Call of Duty.

It's remiss to suggest that CoD's campaigns plays no part in the success of the series, but it's also true that a big part of the series' success is down to the strength of its online play. Unseating one of the best-selling series of all time is going to be no small feat, but DICE is hardly a slouch in the multiplayer department. Battlefield 3 comes out for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC later this year.

Source: CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/293153/news/dice-our-competitors-are-getting-lazy-were-coming-for-them/]












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[Autofaux]

Well, nobody assumed annualising franchises ensure their quality..

 

[Armored Prayer]

I wouldn't call the CoD series and developers lazy, just enslaved by a greater evil forced to make what they say very cheaply.

Its a shame really, I bet the developers would love to see some change to CoD.

 

[Woodsey]

Battlefield will be the thing to take it over, and they're right, they are lazy.

Its all well and good shitting out more perks and a small new feature each year (then charging for the last game's maps) though it seems, because people keep falling for it.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

It's funny that this guy is saying something about "laziness" when it comes to single-player campaign while being part of DICE.

The campaigns in both Bad Company games are the definition of "lazy". And I don't mean in cutscenes, but in gameplay and game design.

 

[The Hairminator]

Boasting and being too sure in themselves are never good signs in game developers- just look at Peter Molyneux, always overshooting. But perhaps there is something to it. Anyway, in a battlefield game I would see a single player campaign as unnecessary data on my disk at worst, and a nice bonus to my multiplayer game at best. As long as the MP holds the same standard that I have come to expect from DICE I won't get disappointed with this attitude.

Feels pretty good.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I guess EA's other game Medal of Honor doesn't count as competition...ROFL god i could not type that with a straight face XD

Look DICE thanks for the Single player mission which will no doubt only last 4-5 hours, BUT all i care about when it comes to Battlefield is the MULTIPLAYER. if you give me the options i had when i played BF1942 all those many years ago, you will have my undying love, just like Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware. Otherwise, you can talk all the shit you want, the proof of the pudding is in the eating!

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

i really hope the single player is good for BF3, played BF2 to death so i dont see how they can go wrong in the multiplayer. Although he's wrong about 1 thing, the cod games have changed, because they've stopped bothering with the good single player

 

[GeorgW]

Fuckin' A!
I have such high hopes for this and such confidence in DICE it's hard to express.
Lets say it like this, if BF3 outsells the new CoD I will throw a party, and if it's good I will go to the DICE lead designer and thank him in person. If it's bad I will still greet him in person, but in a less friendly way.

 

[The Hairminator]

Also, it would be nice to see a new IP, or even Mirror's Edge 2 being done with the new Frostbite 3 Engine. Sadly, though, if EA gets to decide, they will have DICE making new battlefields until no one will buy them.

 

[DelphiSantano]

Good luck to them, even if their game is better (which I personally believe it will be, looking at the difference in quality between DICE's game and Treyarch's), they still have to compete with the beast that is Activision.
Saying that, it would be nice for Treyarch to be unseated and to at least put some effort into making a half-decent game off their own backs.

 

[Wicky_42]

If they start going on about the 'story', I hope they do better than Homefront in that regard. I've watched the first 5 levels or so on youtube, and it's just fucking CoD with occasional 'oooh, mass graves!' or 'won't someone think of the children?!' moments at the beginning and end of the action sequences. I am disappoint that they went on about it so much but it's not integral to the game play - just a standard touch of window dressing like in every other game.

Lets see if Dice can back up their words with a new way to tell the story through gameplay, rather than fact-dumps and the such like at the end of the level.

 

[Ajna]

The campaigns in both Bad Company games are the definition of "lazy".

No they aren't. This is:

(adj) Lazy: moving slowly and gently [http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=lazy]

Without being a smartass: I don't think the campaigns were lazy. I wouldn't really say they were "innovative" (though the auto-injector-thing method of healing in the first BC was pretty interesting), but they certainly weren't "lazy". I enjoyed myself throughly, and even if the level design itself wasn't outrageously unique, the way the levels played out made me not care. Particularly in the second BC game, every moment involving a vehicle made my pulse pound, and me actually care what happened. In a "lazy" game, I don't care who wins and who dies. E.G.: Black Ops. I couldn't tell the difference between the characters, so when they died, I didn't even know if it was good or bad for a few moments. Wheras in BC 1/2, the characters (at least in The Squad) are very well characterized. Even Marlow, the player character, who almost never talks, is given enough personality that it would have emotional impact if he died (canonically, not through inability on the player's part). Imagine if Sweetwater died. Same for Haggard and Redford. The fact that I (and presumably, you) can remember their names shows that the story is different from most of the CoD games.

I can't see for a moment the Battlefield series as being "lazy". I'm sorry.

 

[Iron Mal]

I'm sorry but I find it hard to take a statement like that seriously from Dice when I'm pretty certain that the thought that went into Bad Company 2 was 'Modern Warfare stole our thunder! Let's steal it back!'.

Call of Duty games have been derivitive before but I believe it would be far from the truth to say the games are lazy, a lot of work and polish goes into those games after all (hence all the spectacular set pieces).

 

[ryai458]

Nobody plays Battlefield for singleplayer, DICE should concentrate on what they are okay at and work on multiplayer more, it needs some work to compete with COD and crysis 2.

 

[Baresark]

He is right, they are lazy. They won't even fix the technical issues in the software, CoD is done (no one thinks they are talking about anyone else, right?).

The multiplayer is so much better on Battlefield games, way deeper. They have never had a good campaign though. I would be happy to see a strong campaign. The ONLY good part of Modern Warfare 2 was in fact the campaign.

Also, don't waste your time with big set pieces. This is not a bad element of a game, but are useless when it comes to actual gameplay. You shouldn't sell software based on this concept, but a, "wow, that is really cool", is always nice to have surprise you in a game.

 

[Rednog]

I'm still curious as to why people compare CoD with Battlefield so much. CoD has and is about a player vs player gunfight in an relatively small map. Battlefield is about classes, vehicles, and large maps. They play very differently and I don't see how or why one person can say one is better than the other. Hell I personally thought Battlefield was fine, but I'm not a fan of vehicles nor classes so I go and play the CoD games.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

No they aren't. This is:

(adj) Lazy: moving slowly and gently [http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=lazy]

Black Ops has the pacing of a rocket. Therefore, not lazy.

By this definition.

E.G.: Black Ops. I couldn't tell the difference between the characters, so when they died, I didn't even know if it was good or bad for a few moments.

Well, then you simply weren't paying attention. It explains itself and its characters pretty well, except for Mason.

Wheras in BC 1/2, the characters (at least in The Squad) are very well characterized. Even Marlow, the player character, who almost never talks, is given enough personality that it would have emotional impact if he died (canonically, not through inability on the player's part).

Debatable.

Imagine if Sweetwater died. Same for Haggard and Redford. The fact that I (and presumably, you) can remember their names shows that the story is different from most of the CoD games.

I would be sad. I like the characters in Bad Company, probably the only thing I REALLY like about the series.

But, here, you assumed I don't remember the characters in CoD games. I do. I even remember little details about their characters. And, you know what? They're just as one-dimensional as the Bad Company crew. They just don't take a minute to talk between missions about random shit.

But that's not what this is about. The lazy thing about the BC campaigns is the gameplay, the horribly bland level design, the enemy placement, the trial-and-error sections.

And, most importantly, I'd rather play through Black Ops twice in the time it took me to finish the campaign in BC2. And four times through MW2.

EDIT: Oh, and what does the BC2 campaign end on? Where have I seen that twist before?

 

[RobCoxxy]

Dem's fightin' werds!

Come on DICE, do me proud.

 

[qbanknight]

Them fighting words DICE. Actually won't mind if Battlefield 3 is pretty damn awesome