Wizard's Blog

Battlefield 1943 was released on Xbox Live Arcade yesterday (it comes out on the PlayStation Network today) and it puts a lot of other XBLA games to shame.

I'm getting a lot of hits from searches like "failed to connect to ea online", so here's something to help those people:

EA underestimated the demand for Battlefield 1943, so there aren't enough servers.  They're adding more, so just be patient and either keep trying to connect or wait a day or two.  In the meantime you can follow their twitter feed or go to their forums for news.

Continue reading ‘Battlefield 1943’ »

The new Battlefield: Bad Company maps I mentioned back in August have finally been released!

It took them a really long time to make them, which is why in a previous post I suggested that they should release less maps, more often.

I think it took them a bit too long to do this - while I was waiting for these maps to come out, I bought and finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and bought and played Saints Row 2.  If money had been less tight, I would have also bought and been playing Fable II and Far Cry 2.

You can see a little bump in the usage stats when the new maps were released, but I think it's too little too late:

Battlefield: Bad Company player graph with bump

On the up side, apparently they're working on Battlefield: Bad Company 2...

Image via Wikipedia

DICE have announced that we can vote on what Battlefield: Bad Company single player map will be converted to a Conquest map for the (free) map pack coming this fall.  The map pack will contain the two maps that get the most votes as well as two selected by DICE.

The maps up for vote are:

• Acta Non Verba - Nestled with small villages around streams, rivers, and heavy forest could make for a perfect covert style infantry map.
• Crash and Grab - This level with spread-out villages and industries in the lower mountains could lead to great light armor and infantry battles.
• Par for the course - With a golf course in the middle of this map, this map could offer a great mix of golf carts, tanks, and gunships!
• Ghost Town - Dense villages, dried up rivers and high bridges could lead to intense Heavy Armor and infantry fights that scar this once peaceful desert!
• Crossing over - Dipping hills and patches of open fields mixed into the eastern European woodlands could make for an intense Gunship and Heavy Armor all out warfare.
• Welcome to Bad Company - With open fields and small pockets of forest, this foothill map could make for a mix of Medium Armor and Jeep battles.

Voting is only open until September 2, so don't delay - vote today!

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• Rock the vote for Bad Company maps
• You choose Battlefield Bad Company Conquest maps
• The long tail for games - proof of improvement
• The long tail for games

I wrote a post about the long tail for games - how game developers should be paying more attention to how long people play their games, and trying to improve that by regularly releasing content.

Last week DICE released the first DLC for Battlefield: Bad Company (the Conquest game mode) and guess what - there was an uptick in the number of people playing the game.

Now if they could do that once a month they'd have people still playing next year.  And like I said in my previous post, it doesn't have to be anything as major as a new game mode - a new map would do.

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• The long tail for games

Battlefield: Bad Company soundtrack

The Battlefield: Bad Company soundtrack is available - I love the menu music (the jazzy piano one) but it's not on the soundtrack!?

Although I really enjoy the environment destruction in Battlefield: Bad Company, it is fairly scripted.  You can't dig too deep into the ground, you can't completely destroy any of the buildings and when you shoot an explosive at a wall it always breaks a hole a certain size in a certain position.

Red Faction: Guerilla is supposed to come out in January and it boasts proper destruction - you can take down whole buildings, and it uses real structural physics.

The only down side (for me) is that the surface of Mars isn't as much fun to play on as Earth.

Apparently there's a beta of Red Faction: Guerilla, but unfortunately I'm not in it

If you look at this graph of the number of players per day for Battlefield: Bad Company (from 360voice), there's an obvious trend - downwards.

Battlefield: Bad Company player graph

The same thing happens for all games - people buy the game, play it a while, something else comes out and they lose interest. In fact, in my whole life I think I've only ever played one game to completion (Crusader: No Remorse).

However if you look at the same graph for Call of Duty 4, the number of players goes back up again - several times.

Call of Duty 4 player graph

The difference is that the graph goes back up when they release new content.

When new content is released for Bad Company (the first one will probably be the Conquest game mode), people will remember that they enjoyed the game and haven't played it for a while and will come back.

I don't think game developers are doing enough to keep the attention of gamers.  Surely the long tail is in their interests - they can charge money for the new content, and with the model the way it is now they're only making money every couple of years when they release a new game.

My suggestion is to release one new map a month until the next game comes out.

Making a new map is a lot quicker, uses cheaper labour and requires less testing than adding a new weapon or game mode.  If you charged as little as $1 for an extra map and 100,000 people bought it, you've just paid several employee's wages for a whole year.

A month should be plenty of time to build and test a new map, and if you released a new map every month it would be enough to keep gamers reminded about your game.

Having problems with Battlefield 1943?  Try this post.

For the last few days I've been getting the error

Failed to connect to EA Online

every time I try to go into the multiplayer section of Battlefield: Bad Company. Continue reading ‘“Failed to connect to EA Online” (Battlefield: Bad Company)’ »

Image via WikipediaI have in the past had some less than pleasant experiences pre-ordering games from Amazon. Somehow I never learn.

Continue reading ‘Burned once more by Amazon pre-orders’ »

Image via Wikipedia

Holy pez, I just got an invite code for the Battlefield: Bad Company beta!

Can't wait to get home and give it a spin!