Dropping the entry barriers

I was reading my copy of Games for Windows magazine this afternoon when a very interesting article on the upcoming Battlefield Heroes caught my eye.   It wasn’t the famous Battlefield name that caught my eye nor was it the shiny and beautiful TF2 cartoon graphics they’ll be sporting.  I was drawn in by words “Free to Play”.  My first reaction was an audible “huh?”.  Haven’t all BF games been free to play?  I’m used to seeing those words in conjunction with a wanna-be MMO like Guild Wars.  Not with Battlefield.  The rest of the article surprised me more.  Well played marketing, well played.

After reading the first few paragraphs I had to go back and read them again, and again, and eventually I had read these first few paragraphs at least a dozen times.  DICE is set on challenging the very assumptions about what constitutes a proper PC game.  They have decided to take their next Battlefield game on an entirely different approach from what was, at least what I thought, a clearly laid out line of progression.  Ben Cousins, Senior Producer, has turned his focus to South Korea saying, “One of our contacts out in Korea believes that there’s a hardcore gamer in everybody.  What they do is work to drop the entry barriers, to give everyone the opportunity to discover the gamer within them.”.  Therein lies DICE’s plan for the future of PC gaming.

DICE has decided to make Battlefield Heroes completely free.  Download the game and play.  You know what I’m about to say next.  They’re going to make their money by appealing to everyone on the planet.  But how do they do that?  Why, RMT of course! … Go ahead.  Commence throwing up.  I’ll wait for you to get back before continuing.  Feel better?  I know how you must be feeling.  I lost my lunch over it too.  RMT in a Battlefield game … is there anything else so heinous in all this world?  There goes the entire production value on the best FPS series of games ever.  My mind raced to all these extremes and more.  However, I kept reading and I’m glad I did.

When I was finally able to put aside my complete hatred for the business model approach to gaming and continue reading the article I found a few interesting details.  DICE plans to further drop the entry barriers for PC gaming by making BF Heroes run on almost every PC capable of being powered up – 1ghz cpu, 512 ram, 64mb video card, and only 500mb hd space…  They just described my Mom’s Word Processing machine… They continue to go on about how they are making the game more user friendly.  Players won’t die immediately from being shot because they’ll have a lot more health.  They are introducing abilities like incendiary bullets and other tactics that won’t force the player to totally rely upon precise aim, smaller maps, intelligent spawns on smaller maps, third person, and vehicles for everyone.  The article in GFW says that many readers will assume this is “dumbing it down” – I have no comment *vigorously nods his head up and down*

The reasoning, or perhaps mask, for these major gameplay changes is that DICE feels BF has always been about larger than life over the top gameplay -  Ramming planes, exploding jeeps, and other “Crazy cool” things.  I’m torn.  I agree that those things have all been “crazy cool” but I’m not willing to accept that the only way to keep them that way is to dumb down gameplay.  DICE claims that they will be capable of maintaining the spirit of Battlefield even though in my opinion they are turning their backs on everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve.

There are a few GOOD things that DICE has planned.  Right now they’re calling it a “metagame” but it’s basically a detailed persistent stat tracker.  It’s a map – players fight for territorial possession and contribute to their nation’s domination by participating in everyday play.  You align yourself with one faction, play, and your points are added to the nation you played for – an interesting concept. The cartoon graphics are also something I consider a good change.  I love the TF2 look and I think that it can be used to keep the game looking good and running on different types of rigs.  There’s also the squad system ala CoD4 and the map designs.  These are all good thing.

Then there’s the issues I’m hesitant about.  Players earn “money” in this “metagame” campaign.  DICE says that money will be the ultimate motivation and not the world conquest.  “Money” buys stuff.  Characters are wholly customizable.  The cash gets you eye patches, badges, hats, boots, helmets, goggles, belts, gloves, yada yada.  They want this “money” to help everyone look different and feel unique.  AHA!  I saw it coming a mile away.  Here is where the RMT comes in …

Apparently they plan to make most of their money from convenience items.  In the Asian model most people buy potions and little things that make the game easier and, imagine that, convenient.  Real currency will be exchanged for experience boosts in BF Heroes.  Experience is, presumably, needed to use many items and unlock the goods (Think Call of Duty 4 and BF2142 here).  They want the average joe with a full time job to feel he can keep up and play with the guy that devotes 15 hours a day.  The next bit of info shocked me though. Perhaps Ben Cousins isn’t an idiot like I was starting to think.  Ben Cousins wants BF Heroes to remain a meritocracy.  “Skills, not bills, unlock the loot.” he says.   The system is being set up so that 95% of the players will never spend a penny.

A lot of neat ideas.  A lot of stupid ones.  This ‘new way of thinking’ could be the end for DICE.  They have a lot of guts going this route.  I expect production value to drop an incomprehensible amount.  I expect the game to look like Dungeon Runner with a big nasty ugly ad on top.  I hope that you shock me DICE.  If I can give you anything right now it’s my faith that you have never let me down yet.  Surprise me and make the game feel like TF2 with planes, not like Maple Story with bazookas.