“It’s sad,” says DICE executive producer Patrick Bach.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Bach opened up about the situation, saying people are worried for all the wrong reasons, and that they’ll continue to support Battlefield 3 long after BF4 is released. Bach, it seems, has been hurt by all the rage coming from his company’s own fans.
People tend to forget we built three other Battlefield games in between Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 3. That’s a natural reaction. People then think we won’t support Battlefield 3, even though we have the Premium version, people know we’re working on future expansion packs and we’ve been very open in explaining what we are doing.
We heard that before with Battlefield 2. It was like, oh, you stopped supporting games! No, we’re working like hell, but we haven’t announced it yet. We have now announced we are putting a lot of effort into supporting Battlefield 3 and still we get reactions like this. I think it’s just sad. We are dedicated to supporting Battlefield 3. People seem to be worried for all the wrong reasons.
Knowing we are working on more than Battlefield 3 might upset some people, but still people want something awesome in the future, and that takes time. We are better than ever when it comes to supporting our game, because we have more people doing more things that are even more adapted to what the community wants combined with what we want and trying to make the best possible post-launch experience for everyone, including ourselves.
And of course we want to make sure we don’t end in a, oh it’ll take six years for the next big Battlefield to come out situation.
On the bright side, DICE has been buoyed by the success of Battlefield 3, a triumph that’s caused EA to support the developer without reservations.
We are much better today than we were before. Part of it is based on the success of Battlefield. We can afford to have more people to work on these things, and EA is supporting us doing this. They are really happy.
That’s based on the fact that if you make a great game the rest will figure itself out. It’s worse when you make a bad game. You still need to make your money. Everyone is supporting us in how do we make a better game? To us this is a very natural thing.
And then, when it’s announced…. yeah, what can I say? I’m really sorry some people feel we’re not doing the right thing. But, honestly this is something good for everyone.
Finally, after being on the market for almost a year, Bach revealed that he’s now pleased with the game, that it’s reached to a point where only minor tweaks will be implemented.
We’re still tweaking stuff and we’re still finding out new things that aren’t perfect. But in general, this was the game we tried to build, and if that was right or wrong that’s up to the consumer to judge. Battlefield 3, the brain goes, like, what will it be? This is it. This is the game we wanted to build. And we and apparently 15 million other people are quite happy with it. So personally I’m super proud of the game.”
Battlefield 3 was released last October for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, and has moved over 15 million units to date.
