Ben Cousins

Keynote: Scenes from the Battlefield: The Present and Future of Core and Casual

Each year during a game-development related conference I learn a new marketing term. This year was not different: I now know more about how marketers categorize me. According to Ben Cousins, I am a “frustrated restricted”. Not sure I like it. Okay, enough with the rant (and more about that later).

Maybe you know Ben Cousins because he was some kind of musician when he was younger. But it’s probably not the case (unless he’s your son, of course). You may know him because he worked on a bunch of famous games (and during that time, as he said, he was playing the different flavor of the “Battlefield” games). Or you may know him because he took over the role of producing the Battlefield product line (no less than 5 (or is it 6? I can’t remember) games are currently in production).

If Ben decided to speak of the Battlefield franchise, it’s not to tell us how formidable the games are. That’s ok, we’re pretty sure that the next installement will be great and stunning and so on. Instead of advertising the classical AAA game, Ben Cousins decided to speak about a small casual Battlefield-based game which is currently in closed beta: Battlefield Heroes. This game has many distinctive features:

• First, it’s cartoony and fun.
• Second, it targets tha casual game audience – simplified controls, automatic match-making and so on.
• Last but not least, it’s a PC game. More important, it’s a free to download, free to play PC game.

Figure 1: screenshot from Battlefield Heroes by EA DICE

A bit of explaination is probably required at this step. The model of free to download, free to play PC games is not new: a number of titles have already been developed for the American and the European market (Dungeon Runner by NC Soft is one example). But as of today, the main market for this kind of game is Korea – and that’s where the head of EA DICE went when they decided to test this business model.

Of course, the game publisher is still interested in making money from these games. To do that, you have to balance the cost and the revenue. According to Ben Cousins, the very specific needs of Battlefield Heroes drove the complete development of the title.

The first thing to get right is to get a large audience – the largest possible. In order to succeed in this area, you’d better not require high end machines: the game has to run smoothly on low end PCs. The development team chose to give the game a cartoonish look-and-feel, which still allows beautiful graphics but at a low cost (low-poly models, simplified textures and so on).

Once you get the audience, you have to keep it. Speaking of that audience, you already know how the marketers call it: the “frustrated restricted”. I am one of them, so let me explain: frustrated, because we want to play. Restricted because we don’t have the time to play. This sounds a bit less aggressive than without any explaination, doesn’t it? To be even more neutral, let’s call this audience “casual players”.

Since you want these casual players to come, you’d better not require them to have überhaxor skillz because they don’t have the time to get to that level. Therefore, the game has to be simple – controling the character is to be as easy as it seems – and fun. Since it is still an online game, you must find a way to find the perfect opponent for each player. If you’ve just started to play the game, there is nothing more frustrating than playing against a 13 y.o. boy who has been collecting frags for years at Counterstrike and who constantly kills you in the first 30 seconds of the match. In order to alleviate this issue, EA DICE developped a specific match-making system that ensures you’ll get an opponent who roughly has the same skill level as you. This should guarantee that the game will remain fun whatever your level is.

At some point, you also need to get some money. When the game will be launched, you’ll be able to buy a few customization items for your character. More will be added later when the developers have a better understanding of what the players like and dislike. The development team will also be responsible for fixing the game flaws once they are identified (of course, they will also fix problems during development, then during the closed beta and the open beta; but as Ben stated, the real work will only begin once the game is really published).

As I already said, the game is currently in closed beta. This phase will be followed by an open beta, then by the final launch itself. EA DICE decided to not advertise the game aggressively, citing YouTube and a few other major internet websites – who remembers their launch day? Instead, Ben Cousins prefers to rely on some informal internet buzz.

This is where the talk about Battlefield Heroes ends and where the conclusion (which took the form of a rapid market analysis) begins. Ben Cousins explained to us that PC gaming is not a dead market – it’s a changing market. He thinks that simple, simple online PC games will eventually dominate that segment because they are cheap and convenient (at this point he did a strange comparison between AAA games vs. PC web games and Cinema vs. Television).

To be honest, I hope that PC web games will spread. I also hope that we’ll still get AAA titles.

Now, let’s point to the game annoucement video.

Hope you’ll like it as much as we did!

Frank Hauselmann