Gamasutra recently caught up with Ben Cousins, senior producer on Battlefield Heroes, and discovered just what corners had to be cut and what incentives offered to make Battlefield viable for the masses.
Battlefield Heroes is something of a departure for DICE, and for American gaming in general. It features the run and gun, hop-into-a-fighter-plane-then-commandeer-a-tank action the Battlefield series is famous for — but it doesn’t cost gamers a dime.
The entire game is paid for by microtransactions and advertisements… but the microtransactions are wholly optional and the advertisements aren’t present while you’re playing; they only appear at the Battlefield Heroes website and in the game’s menu. Sound familiar? It might if you’re a fan of titles from Nexon, a South Korean publisher responsible for MapleStory and KartRider and whose entire business model relies on microtransactions.
But this is Battlefield, a big-budget U.S. title repeatedly known to fetch $50 a pop. We can’t be getting all of that for free, right? Well, perhaps not. Here’s how Heroes balances its budget, and why it doesn’t matter.
‘Convenience’ items:
The other thing is what we call convenience items: So let’s imagine that the two of us are playing the game, and you’re playing the game every night for four hours, you’re leveling up your guy really fast, but I’ve got like a wife and kids, and only play the game a couple evenings a week.
But I want to catch up with you, so maybe I’ll buy an item which gives me double the experience points for a couple of days. So I’m still playing the game, I’m still having to be skilled at the game, but I’m just leveling up my character slightly quicker. So those are the two categories.
Only two maps now, more to come based on popularity:
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.
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.
But, lower system requirements means everyone gets to play — a shot in the arm for PC gaming!
We are targeting a new demographic, I think, and one of the key new demographics is going to be younger guys who maybe can’t afford the high-end PC, they can’t afford an Xbox 360, but they want to be playing a game that’s kind of like what their big brother plays.
Or maybe they’ve got a laptop for school, and it’s kind of low system spec. So we want to try to engage an audience that is frustrated because they don’t have access to gaming the same way that the rest of us do.
And if the game’s anything like this, an audience is all but guaranteed.
But, you know, Battlefield Heroes, when you’re in that game, and the sky’s blue, and everyone’s got a smile on their face, and they’re waving to each other whilst they gun each other down — it’s a really cool, almost kind of a subversive-feeling experience.
We’ll be nonchalantly waving — and gunning you down — come this summer.
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