It was a long a troublesome road but over the course of many years Battlefield 2043 finally developed to a point of being considered serviceable by it's playerbase. (Some even called it good!) All it took was a total dissolution of player trust through an abominable support cycle that shed players with each misstep until only the already invested could stand to put up with it! Yeah, pretty sure for all their trials and tribulations that game didn't exactly end up 'growing the brand' at all, but at least the team conveyed their willingness to stick out through their mistakes and fix them. Just as they had already made clear with the whole Battlefront 2 debacle. Maybe at some point they can reach the point of not making the giant mistakes to begin with. That'd be some character development!
But by god, in order to learn the very first thing anyone must do is acknowledge where things went wrong and move on from there. So where exactly did 2043 go wrong? Well, launching unfinished wasn't exactly the greatest look in the world. Doubling down on the arcade-style flimsiness of progression, the surprise hero unit replacements to character classes that somewhat dissolved the identity of the otherwise grounded casual-simulator war game- the bugs, the lack of content. All really the symptoms present from the fact the game bought hard into the Live Service angle. Not that previous Battlefields didn't maintain support cycles before, but 2043 was the first to identify itself as a live service- and I think in pursuing that development cycle, things started falling apart.
The very concept of a Live Service is predicated around the idea that a development team can create a steady stream of revolving content that ties players to the evolving product over an extended period of time, during which they can slowly bleed the audience for all their worth through wear-down tactics. Strict Battle passes that demand constant attention, roadmaps that keep players expecting the next content drop, and regular blogposts all create the impression of a living community that players are involved with. It all sounds fine on paper but after years of this in action all I can see is the cynical and calculated nature of it all. Besides- we haven't yet confronted the logistics of how exactly one creates a content train in order to fuel these services.
You can't just make fresh content from scratch when the game is launched, the season model means you need the next polished batch of content within the first three months of launch else the antsy Live Service lovers will assume your entire development team was wiped out by an asteroid. So content that was original tipped to be in the finished game gets held back, and maybe plans are intentionally stretched out so what would have been a complete feeling full game now becomes a shell that is slowly stuffed over the course of the next year and a half. There is your prototypical Live Service life cycle and there, in a nutshell, is what happened with Battlefield 2043. And EA wants to do it all again.
Wants to. Remember that. It's not that they're just slipping down the same path to repeat it all again like a child revisiting their trauma unwittingly onto the world- they are proudly regurgitating their past mistakes on the belief that if they just do things the exact same way again- this time it will work! Pretty sure there's a quote about repeating the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome... that it's super smart! Professional fake human Andrew Wilson said as much in a bold headline that is doing the rounds. "Tremendous Live Service" were his exact words, as though the man were a malfunctioning mister handy robot who's corrupted language banks had erased the term 'pile of crap' and was forced to chuck in an alternative.
Actually- to be specific he said it would be "Another" tremendous live service, which I think is just the cherry on the top that too many are missing out in their coverage of this- because that says literally everything you could ever possibly need to know. They have learnt nothing from the past and consider the general disdain their last game still maintains, despite it's current well-enjoyed state, as a net win for the brand. As we've already established, learning from your mistakes requires acknowledging them, and I guess that must be a uniquely human trait considering that Wilson finds that concept utterly alien to him. How can anyone expect the next game to be better when this is the message they're putting out into the world?
It's also being called 'the largest Battlefield in history'. So get prepared for 3 maps at launch, all so ungainly huge that you can't hold a proper skirmish in any of them, and that being the sole justification for the comment. Gone are the days when you can expect a bevy of ultra detailed maps with giant level-loutions that would change the makeup of the map significantly if anyone took advantage of it- here are the days where Battlefield are lagging behind Warzone and wondering what they can do to get some of that sweet market share back. And don't even think about returning some of the complex and rewarding weapon mastery progression bars from the Battlefield 3 and 4 days- you'd be absolutely nuts to expect that to be considered 'growth' in this franchise.
All in all, EA seems to be in a race to try and win back their title as worst company in America, and although they have some stiff competition I'd say that with Andrew Wilson at the helm- anything is possible. (You go secure that sick L, Andy! You've earnt it, you little scamp, you!) And as for one of my favourite war franchises that can never catch a break? Well, I guess you had a good run for a few years there over a decade ago. That's probably why there are so many small scale indie games basing themselves off those years of the franchise and not the modern years. Funny how that is, isn't it? But who's shocked exactly? I sure ain't.
No comments:
Post a Comment