EA Exec Admits Battlefront May Lack Depth

[Brian Tams]

*facepalm*

Battlefront and Battlefront II were BOTH rated Teen, and managed to have four times the content and depth Battlefront EA could EVER have.
I'm sick of this "less is more" approach to video games. Your game can still be accessible with tons of content.

 

[VincentX3]

So, an 8-year-old could play with his father on the couch

I don't want to be that one guy but, maybe you shouldn't be giving shooters to an 8 year old.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, this statement makes even less sense, since playing "on the couch" with anyone would imply it has splitscreen, which I'm pretty sure it does not.

as well as a teenager or 20-year-old could play the game and enjoy it. It is more accessible."

The fuck?
What kind of teen or 20yr old doesn't know how to handle a shooter by now? It's not like shooters magically change from the standard point and shoot.

Be real, it's piss poor in depth because pretty graphics & milking everyone for more shit was just more viable.

 

[Something Amyss]

The game has a 3.5 from users of Metacritic, has been denounced by big critics like Angry Joe and TotalBiscuit, and is already showing signs of week sales, yet he sticks to the 13 million sales number?

Only one of those is relevant: signs of weak sales. Neither critic nor user scores have any apparent (and significant) bearing on game sales.

im glad i could play the beta and saw how quickly the game gets boring.
having way more fun with rainbow six siege. at least team play is required and it doesnt get boring since the objectives are never at the same place.

I find the additional game modes to be more fun, which is how friends roped me into buying it. This is not to say 10/10 GOTY, but I think EA may have shot themselves in the foot by locking play to two MP modes like that.

All I'm pointing out is this was the norm for many games back then...and they STILL sold like hotcakes for all kinds of age groups.

"Hotcakes" being an interesting idea in the mid-90s, what with it being a fraction of the market that we have today.

You don't say? I am so sick of these half-assed PR speak excuses that publishers love to trot out whenever they release a shallow or buggy or just bad game...it's never quite their fault you see, it's always something else that caused whatever happened

This seemed pretty straightforward to me: we wanted the game to sell better, so we made it for a broader audience.

 

[MiskWisk]

Please don't shoot me

Don't worry, we've got Sarlacc's for people like you.

OT: "May"
...
"May"

Does someone need to go buy this guy a dictionary? I don't think he understands what this word means.

What does really baffle me though is the fact that this did have a pretty much finished alpha that was so much better than what we got. What happened to it? Did they sacrifice it on the Alter Of Closed Developer's for the shiny graphics and sound design?

 

[eberhart]

That pic... the only thing missing is EA hiring Palpatine to explain "beneficial lack of depth" during a press conference. I might be even slightly more inclined to accept his excuses rather than those from "EA Exec".

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Maybe they will put a single player campaign in the game now.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

"Star Wars Battlefront is a first-person shooter, but it is [one of] the only teen-rated first-person shooters," Jorgensen said this week at the Nasdaq Investor Conference [http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/zcx7tr3t] in Europe. "We had designed it to be a much more accessible product to a wide age group."

"So, an 8-year-old could play with his father on the couch, as well as a teenager or 20-year-old could play the game and enjoy it. It is more accessible."

But if it's rated Teen, why does it need to be accessible to 8 year olds? There's a big cognitive difference between 8 and 13.

Also, freaking Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter was rated Teen. You can make a game that fits under that rating to appeal to a wide audience that still has depth and complexity that a player can appreciate. Sure, kids will play Battlefront for a bit but might have trouble with adults who master the game, but by that time you've already got their money. Surely EA didn't expect this game to last forever, and keep people engaged with the multiplayer past a month or so?

 

[The Salty Baron]

"for the hardcore, it may not have the depth that they wanted in the game."

....Hardcore? I don't think noticing the serious lack of content after 4 hours of gameplay, is for the "hardcore" only to notice.

Aweful character customisation, a serious lack of weapon choice and customisation, maps are already stale, the heroes are terribly designed and the initial unbalancing of the game is ridiculous (INITIAL IE - The start!)

Too many reviewers are giving it a damn pass because "It's star wars!" or "It looks pretty!", i'll admit, it runs smoothly and looks fantastic, but that is no excuse for this mess of a game, not even worth half of the price they are charging on release.

....But don't worry, by adding the cost of the initial game through DLC we'll get you more content to make it somewhat of a game!

This is a more watered down game than previous call of duty games, newer CoD games have much more content, this is from someone who's personal *opinion* is that call of duty is a stale game.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Are you saying that an 8 year old can't handle a game with depth? I think that's insulting to 8 year olds. Besides if you really wanted to appeal to a wide audience you'd include as many game modes as possible in order to appeal to just about anyone who'd want to play the game.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

For me, the game's lack of a story-mode is where the lack of depth lies. They could have at least gone the Titanfall route, even IF Titanfall's story was impossible to follow because bang bang, run run, kill kill, OMG GIANT ROBOT, which kind of distracts from the story. I mean sure, it's Star Wars, we all know the story, but come on... give us SOMETHING to work with. Even Battlefront II had a great story mode.

The various game-modes are just okay, with Supremacy being the only one worth revisiting, but it gets old fast. I rented it from GameFly and I'm glad I did that first. It's by no means a bad game, I needed a sci-fi multiplayer FPS in my life, and since Halo 5 sucked huge, hairy, dangly balls, Battlefront 3 is filling the gap for now... but it won't in the long term.

Don't worry guys, I'm sure more content will get patched in later... for a price. Since that's how modern multiplayer games work these days. Or just most games in general.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Oh fuck off Jorgenson, it's not "Hardcore" to want to play the modes available in the PS2 games - don't try to spin your inability to grasp the bleeding obvious (Maybe it's not such a good idea to take a long awaited sequel and then ensure it has LESS stuff then its decade old predecessor) as a kind-hearted attempt to ensure the whole family can get together to enjoy Star Wars.

God, I don't even ride the "DEATH TO EA!" bandwagon and this monumental stupidity ticked me off!

 

[WarpedMind]

Oh for fuck's sake.

"Child" and "Mental subnormal" are NOT synonyms you corporate knob-gobblers.

 

[Karadalis]

Accessible = Mcdonalds of gaming

Bland, forgettable and you feel bad having bought it afterwards.

Only that EAs fastfood comes at a 110 dollar menu if you want ALL whats in the kids menu...

 

[seiler88]

I would pay good money to get an inside look at how these quotes are created.

Now I think this is a call to create a better and more standardized language for reviews. Shockingly, I think I understand what caused this fiasco: For a long time we did say Depth=Complexity. If these execs just read the review tag lines (as I must assume) then they might have been fooled into thinking saying the game was too simple. Now if they, or had someone else, ever read the whole reviews then I have no idea what they were thinking. Unless they all failed reading comprehension.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I just wish it had better co-op and less reliance on pvp. Bot play is possibly more accessible than straight PVP. Not a whole lot of teaming up with another and having fun, rather you get other kids insulting their mothers, and crap.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I'm pretty sure an 8 year old would have been more impressed by ... I don't know... an epic story or piloting various vehicles instead of just running around the same maps zapping people.
Likewise, the father would probably have more of an epic time playing through a hard-fought campaign of galactic conquest.

This game will end up like Titanfall / Evolve pretty damn soon imo. How he thinks that this has anything to do with the hardcore, instead of actually impressing Star Wars fans is beyond me.

 

[Colt47]

I know everyone has probably bashed on this already ahead of me, but I can't stop rolling with laughter reading the title of the article and Jorgensons quoted statement. It's like looking at someone who was living under a rock suddenly see that they didn't develop a finished product by the preordained release date made by marketing, and trying desperately to say something factually accurate without coming off at the same time like he is chastising the very company he is working for. Note that he says "may not have" instead of "doesn't have". Gods help him if he has to comment on the pay to win camp poking at the fact the blaster in the collectors edition is the best gun in the game, with people who purchased that collectors edition having insane kill streaks with little or no effort.

Ah, the little things in life.

 

[MoltenSilver]

I'm getting real sick of these "Sorry 'hardcore gamers', we had to make it lack depth because of the filthy casuals, wink". Where to even start... for one it pours fuel on the fire of this faux factionalism of hardcore vs casual that corporations love to prey on. Next it implies that anyone who likes 'casual' games has the intellect of a squirrel who replaced its brain with a raisin (Simplicity and depth are not the same thing, you pukes! you can make something that is both simple and deep!), which in turn just plain shows the outright contempt EA has for its audience that they think this bland pointless hollow ill-thought-out game deserves to be sold to people who just want a decent Star Wars game. Then of course we have the false reassurance of "Sorry 'hardcore' gamers, this one isn't for you, but we totally promise to make something with real depth meant just for you next mumblemumbmelmumble. Remind me, pseudo-gambling that makes game play infuriating and and pay to win make something hardcore, right?"

To be blunt, reading at all between the lines here should offend every single person who has ever picked up a game, anything from Angry Birds to Baldur's Gate to whatever game this month has the title 'harder than Dark Souls!', just outright everyone should consider themselves insulted by this ludicrous PR talk. Even, or perhaps especially, children; children are underdeveloped, not stupid. This "it's ok to half-ass it because it's for kids, they can't even tell the difference between something good and bad" is abhorrent on so many levels, and I'm saying that as someone who hates kids!

 

[weirdee]

I think their teenager focus group was a literal twenty pound sack of potatoes.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

Being Accessible is fine. I even applaud it if it was deliberate.

"So, an 8-year-old could play with his father on the couch, as well as a teenager or 20-year-old could play the game and enjoy it. It is more accessible."

There is no argument to this (besides maybe parenting concerns, I mean an 8-year-old is not a teen). They made the game for an audience, and that audience is casual. I too noticed the T rating and thought that was very deliberate.

But I don't think that is the real problem with the game. The lack of content is the real issue. No Campaign, few maps, few game modes....Theses things are important for any audience and it shows a lack of dedication to deliver a good product.