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Marketing did a fine job with Battlefield: Bad Company, and moving forward they’ve got their work cut out for them with Battlefield Heroes. DICE executive producer Ben Cousins gave some insight into the market they’ll be targeting with Heroes, which they call the “frustrated restricteds.”

“So who is Battlefield Heroes for? The marketing guys love to come up with snappy titles for market segments. The market segment they came up with for us was ‘frustrated restricteds’ – people who really want to play full games, and aspire to be gamers,” Cousins said during his keynote at GDC Paris, reports GI.biz.

“But they’re restricted in some way, and this makes them frustrated. Maybe they’re restricted by money, time or skill?

“For example, a 15 year-old boy who can’t afford a PS3 – he’s desperate to play Call of Duty, but can’t afford the console. Maybe a 30-35 year-old guy who is a new dad, who used to play games, but is restricted by time. Or maybe a new gamer who loves the idea of playing games but heard that all people who play multiplayer games are really skilled.”

I hardly fit into any of those categories, and I’m still interested in playing Heroes. And I’m hardly the only one who fits that bill, so won’t all of us self-proclaimed hardcore gamers throw off the curve for the people Cousins is referring to? It’ll be interesting to see how DICE handles that aspect of the matchmaking process.

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The console-exclusive Battlefield: Bad Company was released this week, and PC owners are waiting for the free-to-play Battlefield Heroes as I write this. As if that weren’t enough, DICE executive producer Ben Cousins confirmed at GDC Paris yesterday that there are five Battlefield games in development — although you won’t be seeing them all released worldwide.

The first, of course, is Battlefield Heroes, but you already know all about that. One of the remaining Battlefield titles is a collaboration with Neowiz which will be targeting the market in Korea. Electronic Arts holds a 19% stake in Neowiz, which is the company that operates FIFA Online in Korea.

“Since the start of this year I’ve been working as executive producer for the entire Battlefield franchise - we’ve got five titles in development at the moment, which is probably more than you expect,” Cousins said at the conference.

He wasn’t particularly forthcoming with details on the other games, but hopefully one of them is a true Battlefield 3. 2142 was fun, but it certainly wasn’t a major advancement for the series.

via GamesIndustry.biz

If you’re looking to get in on the early action with the cartoony, free-to-play Battlefield Heroes, now’s your time to act. Beta registration has opened, and while the official Heroes website seems to be down at the moment, the sign-up page for the beta is still working and can be found by going here.

I know I’m personally very excited to try out DICE’s radically different Battlefield game as a longtime fan of the series. From what Shawn Elliott has said over at 1UP, though, it sounds like there might be some balance issues with the game’s hardcore players having an advantage with all of the unlocked abilities.

You can check out 1UP’s impressions of the game here.

The free-to-play Battlefield Heroes model is a new one in this hemisphere, at least with a major franchise like Battlefield. Companies have blamed piracy more and more for the reasons for more heavily enforcing DRM and shifting to console development. And it impacted the way Battlefield Heroes‘ model came about, but not in the way you’d think.

You might remember this trailer I posted about in late February that made a quip about downloading the game on BitTorrent. Speaking with DICE executive producer Ben Cousins, GI.biz asked about the joke and if piracy had any effect on Heroes.

If you look at Korea - and really the idea for Battlefield Heroes came from a business trip to South Korea that a couple of guys had a few years ago - Korea and China are markets which are basically killed by piracy on the console side and on the PC side.

As a result this free-to-play model kind of came because people were used to not paying for their games because they were pirating them.

The companies started offering them for free and started monetizing it with micro-transactions. I don’t know whether DICE has been driven by piracy in our games - it’s certainly a problem but we do quite well anyway. It was more the case that the business model itself originally came from piracy back in the old days.

In that movie [the Battlefield Heroes trailer]…I think it’s important - I wrote the script for that movie - that we address the fact the piracy exists and there’s no point in hiding under the carpet or just sweeping it under the carpet.

Piracy is out there and the industry needs to find ways of dealing with it, and one of the ways is free-to-play games.

I’m so excited to get my hands on Heroes. Everything about it fascinates me, from the business model to the gameplay. And you can’t go wrong with something that’s free.

I hate the “PC gaming is dead” discussion as much as anyone, save for maybe Jeff Green, so I do enjoy seeing the counterarguments that just slap proponents of “PC gaming is dead” square in the face.

Cue Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, who has stated that the PC gaming market has in fact been growing for several years, even if the retail numbers don’t reflect that.

“I certainly recognize that the box-side [retail] of PC is soft. It’s been soft for some time,” Riccitiello said during a conference call Q&A with analysts.

“Frankly, if it were not for The Sims and World of Warcraft PC box sales, it’d be a pretty dismal sector.”

While that might be the case, it won’t stop EA from supporting the PC and its many new(er) revenue streams, such as online subscriptions.

“One thing EA tries to look at is the total business that’s represented by PC game software. And we’re seeing a growth business there. In fact, it’s been growing for several years.

“It’s just been categorized wrongly by looking simply at the box-side of the equation.”

Certainly the most interesting experiment of EA’s in the PC gaming space is Battlefield Heroes. You don’t really expect a major publisher that is mainly concerned with their bottom line to take a risk like they are with Heroes, but if it works out, it could signal a major change in the industry.

via Next Gen

EA has unveiled a new trailer for Battlefield Heroes that shows just how you’ll be able to craft your own goofy, animated avatar for the game. Since the game’s certainly not going for realism that leaves the character customization options fairly open. You can craft a peg-legged pirate, an Old West bandito, a villain from the silent film era, and just about anything else you can imagine, from the looks of it. It’s almost a little sad how this completely free game already looks more interesting than Battlefield: Bad Company.

The Team Fortress 2-styled, free-to-play Battlefield game, Battlefield Heroes, is set to begin beta testing on May 6, according to Eurogamer. Registration will be conducted on the game’s official website, so keep an eye out for updates on that.

In case you missed any of our previous coverage, Battlefield Heroes is entirely free to play and will run primarily off of advertisements – although there will be no ads in the game itself. With a cartoony look and streamlined gameplay and low system requirements, EA is hoping to reach a broader audience with what is clearly a radical change for Battlefield on a number of levels. This isn’t, however, Battlefield 3, so diehard fans don’t need to worry – that’s still coming, even if EA isn’t talking about it right now.

As much as I like blowing up environments, I’m looking forward to Heroes much more than I am Bad Company. Luckily for me, I’ll be able to roll from the Bad Company beta right into Heroes, although I’m not exactly sure what will fill the gap between now and Heroes’ release in Q3 2008.

The upcoming free-to-play Battlefield game will be launching with only two maps when the beta launches later this year, but DICE has every intention of supplying plenty more – and they’ll be free.

Speaking with Gamasutra, Battlefield Heroes senior producer Ben Cousins talked about a lot of decisions made with the game, including the decision to launch with only two maps – when series vets are used to seeing upwards of a dozen.

So, it’s interesting — what I was thinking about is, you talked during your presentation about shipping with two maps, and that implies to me that you’re planning to upgrade later — I mean, obviously, the game is not going to persist on two maps.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we did is, we come to this from two angles. The first one is that in every Battlefield game, we bust our asses making 50 maps, and then within six months of the game being released, everyone’s playing two maps. The two best maps. So, we just decided to make just the two best maps, and not the other kind of maps.

I understand the rationale, even if I don’t care for the way he made his explanation. 50 maps is quite an exaggeration when talking about Battlefield, and saying they’ll build the two best maps assumes they know exactly which maps the community will best respond to.

And being the cynical bunch of gamers most people are, many people assumed that EA would simply charge for any and all future maps. However, Evil Avatar posted an update from Ben Cousins addressing that claim with an assurance that it simply isn’t the case.

…we have two maps to play at the open beta launch of the game later this year, and we already have another map quite far along in development which will be included in an update soon after launch.

We have no plans to charge people for maps. We want to keep the community of paying and free players together.

Just to re-iterate the business model here. We assume that 95% of Battlefield Heroes players never spend a penny on items. We will be delighted if 95% of players never spend any money on items. This is a free game, supported by advertising, with a small number of paying customers.

I’m glad to hear they’re planning on delivering free maps, as I’m very optimistic about the game’s potential. Let’s just hope Cousins is right and they make the two best maps right off the bat.

Skeptical over how Battlefield Heroes, the free ad-based Battlefield game releasing later this year, is going to turn out? Perfectly understandable. Maybe a teaser trailer – with some gameplay footage – will ease your worries and let you see what the game looks like in action and the attitude the game has.

It definitely seems like the vibe of Team Fortress 2 is what they’re going for here. There are even a few wisecracks from the fast talking narrator. I liked how they threw in that hint of the old Battlefield 1942 music that always gives goosebumps to fans of the series.

There are a handful of new screenshots for Battlefield: Bad Company up on FileFront, and they look simply awesome. Particle effects and shadows look particularly impressive in the screenshots, so I can only imagine what the final product will look like in motion.

In typical Battlefield fashion, there are guns, explosions, boats and trucks to be seen. So if Battlefield Heroes isn’t up your alley or you’re just excited for a new, more traditional style Battlefield game, these screens will have you very excited for Bad Company.

View the rest of the screenshots here.

EA has stated that the company will now be offering a free shooting game titled Battlefield Heroes - this will be the Electronic Art’s first web-based title to be supported only by advertising sales.

Featuring cartoon-style graphics, Battlefield Heroes will allow players to customize both the characters and plot strategy and will match players with equal abilities when going up against another opponent. Promising to be simpler than the previous installments, the target gaming session will last approximately 10 to 15 minutes and will be released sometime this summer.

While this is not EA’s first foray into the free online gaming realm, it is indeed its first game to be solely funded by advertisements. This new version of Battlefield Heroes is part of a strategy to not only gain new players but to also fuel EA’s growth with online ad revenue.

For more on EA’s foray into free online games, click on the links above. You can also check out the March issue of Games For Windows for a look inside Battlefield Heroes when it hits newsstands.

Via: Press Release