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The Simultaneous Rise and Decline of Battlefield

Posted by Soulskill on from the profit-motive dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Ben Kuchera at Polygon recommends against buying the upcoming Battlefield Hardline first-person shooter. Not because it's bad — in fact, he doesn't really offer an opinion on how good the game is — but because it's time to stop incentivizing poor behavior from Electronic Arts and its Digital Illusions CE development studio. After EA acquired DICE, Battlefield game launches accelerated, and launch issues with each game were hand-waved away as unpredictable. The studio's principled stand against paid DLC evaporated in order to feed the ever-hungry beast of shareholder value. Kuchera says, "EA continues this because the Battlefield franchise is profitable; we as players have taught them that we'll buy anyway, and continue to support games that don't work at launch." He suggests avoiding pre-orders, and only buying the game if and when it's in a playable (and fun) state. "Every dollar that's spent on Hardline before the game comes out is a vote for things continuing down an anti-consumer path. If the game is a hit before its launch, that sends a message that we're OK with business as usual, and business as usual has become pretty terrible."

13 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Haha, nobody will do this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They'll keep buying the games as fast as EA pushes them out.

    1. Re:Haha, nobody will do this. by ZahrGnosis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I did it. I loved BF3, but I didn't pick up 4 and I won't be picking up Hardline because of EA. In addition to everything the original article mentions, most of which I agree with, one thing not mentioned in the original article is the pay-to-have-everything (which is not "Pay-to-win" only in a very strict sense, but that doesn't make it right).

      I don't mind these companies making money, but they do it at the expense of loyal customers, rather than in support of them... I don't think it's a good long-term practice, but that's just me. But it's definitely not nobody.

    2. Re:Haha, nobody will do this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nope, I opted out after my experience with BF3. Still haven't bought BF4 and don't plan to. Definitely won't bother with Hardline.

      The problem with all the paid map packs is that it fractures the player base and massively lowers the server populations. Even if you can afford everything, not everyone can. So the game quickly segments because not everyone is running the same maps. If you have the vanilla maps and back to karkand, you can play on vanilla servers and b2k servers. But you can't play on servers running the other map packs. And people who don't own B2K can't play with you when you're on a server that runs B2K maps. So no matter where you go, you don't have as many choices as if everyone was part of the same map-owning population.

      One other bad idea was introducing such an intense equipment/weapon grind in BF3, because even though it got me to play BF3 a lot more, it also soured me on the entire idea of playing the game going forward. Most of my memories of BF3 are of grinding out weapons on high ticket Metro Meatgrinder servers. In my memory, most of the game was dominated by grinding instead of playing. There was grinding in BF2, but it was a grand total of half a dozen weapons and everyone had them all pretty quickly. There weren't 20 different attachments for each weapon and 30 different subtly different assault rifles, etc. Maybe it made the gameplay less varied, but in BF2 people mostly just focused on playing the game instead of grinding unlocks. The medal grinding in BF2 didn't seem as big an annoyance.

    3. Re:Haha, nobody will do this. by Algae_94 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't mind these companies making money, but they do it at the expense of loyal customers, rather than in support of them... I don't think it's a good long-term practice, but that's just me.

      Funny thing is your average hard drug dealer does the same thing. They make money at the detriment of their loyal customers. They know they'll keep coming back because they are horribly addicted and have nothing else to do. If they eventually do lose a customer, they find a new crowd of young customers that haven't gone through the cycle as many times to get jaded.

  2. In other words, Don't Pay for Promises. by Thatto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pay for Value.

  3. Holy shit, this IS news for nerds by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Funny

    You say EA pumps out crap games and people buy them in droves anyways? Do tell.

  4. Warriors, unite! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been pirating their games for years. According to industry numbers, I've done millions of dollars in damage. If we all band together, we can bankrupt the company.

    Unless they're wholly full of shit about the piracy issue, and we all know that EA wouldn't lie to us.

    1. Re:Warriors, unite! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The main problem is that so many people confuse not gaining something with losing something.

  5. Re:Or Be an Adult by war4peace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Adults don't stop playing games. As a matter of fact, humans never stop playing games throughout their entire lives. Haven't you seen old men playing chess or backgammon? Football, soccer, even courting are all games. Even haggling is a game in a certain sense.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  6. Re:Doesn't matter... by Hsien-Ko · · Score: 4, Funny

    The non modern warfare game's you mention did not get a hi score in game informer. You say your a gamer and u have better first person shooter's... proof it

    I bet your not playing it on a xbox 360 which is 3 times more powerful then the current pc so you're argument is invalid.

    [/eternalseptember00]

  7. Re:"Inciting" by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 4, Informative

    This isn't true.

    Etymology of "incentive":

    Middle English, from Late Latin incentivum, from neuter of incentivus stimulating, from Latin, setting the tune, from incentus, past participle of incinere to play (a tune), from in- + canere to sing

    Etymology of "incite":

    Middle French inciter, from Latin incitare, from in- + citare to put in motion

    The two words come from completely different Latin roots and arrived in English from completely different sources.

  8. Re:Or Be an Adult by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old when we stop playing"

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  9. Valve can't count to three by tepples · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sure, Valve fairly consistently produces value. But what do you do once you complete the first two games in a particular franchise?