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How EA Built Battlefield Heroes To Be Free

Posted by Soulskill on from the free-as-in-beer dept.

The Development Director for EA's upcoming free-to-play action game, Battlefield Heroes, spoke with Gamasutra at the Austin Game Developers Conference about creating the game under an abnormal business model (abnormal for EA, anyway). He spoke about using the "Scrum" development model, and how the web platform was the most difficult part to create. Gamespy has written some initial impressions, and Joystiq has a basic description of the game.

3 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Abnormal? by crossmr · · Score: 2, Informative

    EA is trying to sound like they're doing something special.
    A couple years ago they bought a 20% stake in a Korean company called Neowiz. They've been making an entire business (not just one game) out this kind of a model for years.
    What did EA do?
    Copy it.
    Yes. Brilliant, let's heap attention on their shrewd business ability to buy a big stake in a company and then copy their product to another market.

    Let's also know forget that EA isn't the first company to do this in the US either (http://www.aeriagames.com/) has been set up for a couple years, though I think its just a US front for a Korean company. Perfect World US (international) just launched as well which functions on the same business model.

  2. Free Sounds Good.... by WiiVault · · Score: 1, Informative

    But I learned long ago that EA will milk its customers until they can barely stand it. Spore DRM, yearly rehashes and abusive ads make me concerned.

    1. Re:Free Sounds Good.... by eebra82 · · Score: 4, Informative

      But I learned long ago that EA will milk its customers until they can barely stand it. Spore DRM, yearly rehashes and abusive ads make me concerned.

      I'm not a big fan of EA myself, but blaming EA for wanting to make money - or milk its customers like you call it - is kind of silly since every company wants to maximize their winnings per customer.

      Complaining about Spore DRM is one thing, but refusing to buy the game is far more effective if you want to make your point. If we stop buying DRM bloated games, they will have to adapt. If a lot of people buy Spore anyway, they will just release bogus statements about how much they care about us and keep doing it in future titles.

      --
      Full Tilt