DICE: BF Heroes "Already Released"

There's a Ben
Cousins Q&A on GamesIndustry.biz talking with the executive producer on
Battlefield Heroes about DICE's subscription-free MMO shooter. Topics
include how they've scaled battles back to 16 players (they will look at
expanding this to 64 over time), what they've learned from beta testing,
appealing to less hardcore players, and more. Most interesting is a bit they

highlight in a separate post about the game's release plans, as Ben says
that there is not going to be a dramatic launch of the game one day, but rather
the closed beta will continue to expand to the point that "every hardcore gamer
in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to - it would just
be within a closed beta so that we can control the size of it to a degree." To
that end, he takes issue with the idea that the game is delayed from its summer
release, saying "Actually, we're in the closed beta already, so the game is
already out and you can't delay a game that's already been released and already
been played by people." He describes social networking features to be added over the course of the beta,
and on whether the game will miss out on not having a big splashy "release," he
calls Heroes "a modern web product" in the vein of Facebook or Wikipedia, which
did not have big launch moments, saying "These things grow over time and become
enormous by the network effect rather than having to rely on traditional
marketing methods, where obviously you bank of all your money in a particular
three-week period and try and get in front of everybody. We've got the luxury of
using the internet to spread the word about it - not relying on that critical
period of communication about the game."


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