Tag Archives: EA Games Studio Showcase

Speaking to videogaming247, DICE producer Jamie Keen has said that the EA developer was taken aback by the fierce reaction to plans to charge for weapons in Battlefield: Bad Company, but that listening to the community is paramount for those working on the franchise.

“We were slightly surprised by the strength of the reaction,” he said.

“Charged downloadable content is becoming more prevalent throughout gaming, but it’s important for us to be able to react to people’s wishes and desires. There was a very strong reaction to it.

“For a game like Battlefield, where we’ve had a very strong online presence, and traditionally we’ve had very strong communications with the community, it’s important for us to be able to react to people. And yeah, we have to listen to people.”

Keen added, by way of explanation as to why the idea of charging for certain weapons had been included, that the concept was essentially a test.

“The beta was an opportunity for us to try out a few different bits and pieces and see how people react to it, and that was one of things we wanted to see,” he said. “One of the things that cropped up was the reaction to [charging for weapons].”

Following a turnaround on the issue, Keen said he was pleased at the way the community has reacted to EA’s decision to make all the weapons in Bad Company free.

“I felt that people were pleased that we were reacting in that kind of way, and that’s good,” he said.

“I think it sets a tenor with the kind of relationship we want to strike with people. We don’t want to come across as some sort of ivory tower company that doesn’t listen to people and what they’re after.

“Making sure that the community is being involved in that sort of way and making sure that it’s being listened to and feels as though it’s being listened to is very, very important to us.”

For the full interview with Jamie, hit the play button below.

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Speaking to GI at the EA Games Studio Showcase in London last week, Valve’s Doug Lombardi revealed that Portal was offered to Microsoft for inclusion on XBLA, but was knocked back.

“We’d love to do that. Right now it’s something we’d love to do. I’d love to sell Portal on Xbox live,” said Lombardi. “[But] the platform holders aren’t doing that right now. There’s a size limit and all kinds of other things.

“We’ve asked them, we said we were open to it. So it’s a decision for the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to [allow].”

More through the link.

Speaking to videogaming247 at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning associate producer Josh Drescher said the MMO could have shipped a year ago had Mythic not been acquired by EA.

“We certainly could have shipped the game a year ago and we probably would have done fine in the market, but one of the benefits that came with being acquired by EA was more time and more resources, and the opportunity to do things the way in our hearts we really wanted to do it, and to not be constrained by the limitations that an independent developer is going to face,” he said.

“When you’re out on your own in the wilderness developing a game, and you look at your time-line and you go, ‘On this date the money runs out and the game needs to be out the door or the lights get shut off,’ that’s a daunting sort of thing. We operated that way for a decade or more. We now have the opportunity of continuing to sort of try to stay as close as possible to a schedule, but if we can see real value in extending the development process, we now have that option. It’s been very helpful to us.”

The game has been repeatedly delayed, most recently at the end of March.

Warhammer Online was looking peachy keen at yesterday’s event, and is heading for an autumn release. To listen to the full interview with Josh, hit the play button below.

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Speaking to videogaming247 at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, BioWare head Ray Muzyka said that the developer’s as yet unnamed MMO will be “most compelling” gaming “experience ever delivered,” assuming the development team achieves its targets.

“I think the idea of emotion and narrative in an online game, combined with the best of breed features in MMOs … You know, we have great respect for all the MMOs out there, so it’s not disrespectful at all in our development process; instead it’s kind of how to do we innovate, how do we add, how do we augment what’s already great and make it even better and amazing,” he said.

“And I think the idea of narrative and emotion and characters that are really compelling and interacting in a way that works and is compatible with the social interaction at the same time, so it’s like moving together through a shared story: I think that idea is incredibly compelling.

“And if you combine that with progression, exploration, customization and combat, which are the staples of current MMOs… with another pillar of story, and put it all in a social context, I think you have something that could be an incredibly rich and maybe the most compelling experience ever delivered. That’s our goal.”

BioWare has put no date on its MMO as yet, and has never spoken of its identity. Rumours have constantly pointed to a Star Wars game, but no one knows for sure.

Unsurprisingly for BioWare, though, it sounds as though the bar has been set very high. Hopefully we’ll get more on this sooner rather than later.

You can listen to the full interview with Ray by hitting the play button below.

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Speaking to videogaming247 at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, BioWare boss Ray Muzyka revealed that the mega-studio has plenty of in-development games left to talk about.

“We have seven project teams in development,” he said. “There’s a lot of other stuff as well. There’s a lot of stuff we haven’t talked about yet.”

Currently, BioWare has Mass Effect PC, Dragon Age, the mysterious MMO and DS RPG Sonic Chronicles in the public domain, which means, using our amazing maths skills, that the company has three completely unrevealed titles in the works.

Update: Oh yeah. There’s Mass Effect 2 as well.

You can listen to the full interview with Ray by hitting the play button below.

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Speaking to videogaming247 at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, BioWare boss Ray Muzyka said the studio was “happy” and “proud” of the sexual content of Mass Effect, saying its inclusion was tasteful and showed the RPG was an innovator in the field of games as an emergent art form.

“It’s the same content, just in higher resolution,” he said of the alien sex scene in the PC version of Mass Effect. “So it looks really good, right? We’re happy and we’re proud of the content that’s in the game. We think it’s appropriate for the rating the game has – it’s a ‘mature’ rated game. It’s tasteful and it’s not gratuitous. It’s actually adult-themed content of relationships, mature relationships that are very realistically depicted and actually very appropriate as well, and very emotionally impactful.”

Muzyka added: “I think in many ways the fact that people want to talk about the relationships in the game is a good thing. It shows that games are an art form. It shows that Mass Effect is an innovator in that emergent art form that games are. We’re proud to be in that space, because that’s what we do: we tell great stories and we make compelling characters and we deliver an emotional experience.”

The 360 version of Mass Effect was the game at the centre of the Fox News “SeXbox” scandal, in which author Cooper Lawrence appeared on the network and said a few things she probably shouldn’t have.

You can listen to the full interview with Ray by hitting the play button below.

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Speaking to videogaming247 at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka said that the lessons learnt from the “digital acting” in Mass Effect are most definitely crafting the much-anticipated swords and sorcery RPG, Dragon Age, set for PC release in 2009.

“Dragon Age is like BioWare’s bread and butter,” he said. “It’s appealing to the sweet spot of all the great games people love from the past, like Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights: this aspirational fantasy fulfillment. People that play Mass Effect are also going to love Dragon Age, but there may be a bit of overlap, and there may be some people that flit from one to the other, and that’s all good: they have different needs and tastes. But we’re certainly taking the things we’ve learnt from digital actors and emotionally compelling narrative, things like that, and we’re trying to apply that back to Dragon Age.”

Muzyka, presenting the PC version of Mass Effect at the event, said that it was a “studio mission” to make each of BioWare’s games better than the last, and that Dragon Age will be no exception.

“Every game we develop we build on a strong foundation from the past, and we’re also simultaneously trying to do new things,” he said. “We’re also considerate that every game has a slightly different demographic or audience target.

“But the way we tell the story may be different as well, and that’s because it’s a different game, it’s a different IP, we have different writers and a different aesthetic. We have a portfolio map: we’re not trying to make clones of the same game over and over. Instead what we’re trying to do is innovate, every game better than the last, each one aimed at a different audience.”

You can listen to the full interview with Ray by hitting the play button below.

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Speaking at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, EA DICE confirmed in a presentation that an invitation-only closed beta sign-up will begin for Battlefield Heroes on May 6.

You can hear streaming audio of the entire presentation right here.

Speaking at yesterday’s EA Games Studio Showcase in London, EA DICE confirmed that Conquest mode will be made available as DLC for the game after it ships in June.

No specific date was given for the mode’s release other than “soon” after the game ships.

You can hear streaming audio of the entire presentation here.

Speaking at the EA Games Studio Showcase in London yesterday, Valve’s Doug Lombardi confirmed that there won’t be a new Portal this year.

“In typical Valve tradition, it won’t be Portal with different colours,” he said, speaking to Eurogamer. “I think that when you hit something like that, you have two choices: you can quickly replicate it and stick it out there – do the opportunistic thing and cash in on it; or you can do the crazy thing like we did after Half-Life was so successful and go off and try and say, ‘Okay, that was revolutionary, so its successor has to be equally as revolutionary.’

“That’s the spirit I think we’re approaching it in,” he added. “You won’t see a new Portal at retail this Christmas because of that. That’s the trade off. People want more, but we don’t want to give them more of the same right away because that would just be boring.”

More through the link.

EA showed off free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes today at its spring showcase in London, revealing a ton of stuff about character customisation, close beta dates, micro-transactions and more.

You can listen to the full presentation below.

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For our one-on-one interview will Ben Cousins, the DICE game’s executive producer, hit the play button below.

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The PC version of Mass Effect looks amazing. EA showed the game off at its spring showcase today in London, the presentation being handled by BioWare boss Ray Muzyka himself.

Muzyka showed the alien sex scene, bare ass and all. For streaming audio of the entire presentation, hit the play button below.

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For our one-on-one interview with Ray, covering plenty of detail on “the best game” Bioware has ever made, Sonic Chronicles, Dragon Age and being bought by EA, hit the play button below.

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Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was shown off in a presentation in London this afternoon, and the action title is looking very sweet. Apparently the ethic for the title is, “Can I? Yes! I can!” As you do.

For streaming audio of the full presentation, including hearing senior producer Jonathan Zamkoff being shot in the ass for the sake of a sound effect, hit the play button below.

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Battlefield: Bad Company is out of beta and looking fine. EA showed the shooter off at its spring showcase in London today, giving plenty of reasons why killing people in the virtual face is still a good thing.

For streaming audio of the full presentation, hit the play button below.

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For our one-on-one interview with producer Jamie Keen – including a long chat in the cash-for-weapons debacle – hit the play button below.

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Valve’s zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead, was shown off today at EA’s spring showcase in London in stellar form.

For streaming audio of the entire presentation, hit the play button below. Loads of info in there on the “AI director”, ten new weapons, persistent ranking and more.

Update: We’ve edited off the EA bit at the front.

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EA showed a brand new presentation of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning at its spring showcase in London today. Apparently you’re going to be “fighting all the time.” Which is nice.

For streaming audio of the entire presentation, hit the play button below.

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For our one-on-one interview with Josh Drescher, the EA Mythic MMO’s associate producer, just hit the big button.

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