DICE Admits That Battlefield 4 Damaged Player Trust

In case you didn’t notice, Battlefield 4 didn’t exactly have the smoothest launch. Now DICE LA producer David Sirland has admitted those initial issues have damaged player trust, and that future iterations will have to work to earn that trust back.

“I can absolutely say that we lost [player] trust in the game’s launch and the early parts of the year,” explained Sirland in an interview with Gamespot. “We still probably have a lot of players who won’t trust us to deliver a stable launch or a stable game. I don’t want to say anything because I want to do. I want them to look at what we’re doing and what we are going to do and that would be my answer. I think we have to do things to get them to trust us, not say things to get them to trust us. Show by doing.”

According to Sirland, the issues at launch surprised DICE, because beta testing was smooth, but the end result of Battlefield 4’s issues was a change of process at DICE, meaning that getting the game out earlier and testing it more extensively is paramount. This seems to be part of a sweeping change across EA as a whole, which makes sense, not just in terms of Battlefield 4’s failings, but the Sim City debacle also. EA seems to have learned some harsh lessons.

Battlefield Hardline is seemingly the first to benefit from these lessons learnt, with beta testings taking place as early as June this year. Considering the game won’t be out until 2015, that’s pretty early. Even the fact that EA delayed the game into next year, you would think, is a good sign of a publisher and a developer taking an “it’ll be ready when it’s ready” mentality.

Hopefully that mentality will filter its way into the final product.

Battlefield 4’s Rocky Launch “Absolutely” Damaged Player Trust, Producer Says [GameSpot]


The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


33 responses to “DICE Admits That Battlefield 4 Damaged Player Trust”