DICE: "Give Away A Lot Of The Maps For Free"

18 Mar 2010 at 12:21:27 by Tim McDonald

DICE executive producer Karl Magnus Troedsson has told IGN that giving away maps for free is better in the long run.

Speaking to IGN, the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 man elaborated on DICE's vision for DLC, and why the team is confident in its opinions.

"I would dare say we have a lot of opinion based on the fact that we've been making multiplayer games for so long. Already in 1942 and Battlefield 2 we had a lot of different booster packs," said Troedsson. "One of the very clear lessons we learned from that is that the more booster packs people have to pay for, all you do is actually segment the community."

"If you don't have this map, you can't play with me," Troedsson elaborated. "If I don't have that map, I can't play with you. Team play is very important for us... this is something that we felt that it is probably better to give away a lot of the maps for free, and then perhaps we can have some more paid DLC in the future that is not focusing on that."

This is, of course, tied into the VIP program which requires users to buy the game new. Those who get the game used to have to purchase it at what some would consider a high price. "We hope they would like the game so much they would invest in the code," commented Troedsson.

It's also possible that this paid DLC we'll see in the future might well be single-player related. "We haven't planned any DLC that comes with the actual story itself, but we won't rule it out. The good thing about having a post-launch campaign that we have - that we plan to take care of the product for a long time - is that we can be reactive to what people think," mused Troedsson. "But obviously, creating single-player missions is a much bigger thing than creating additional multiplayer maps."

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was awesome and we're looking forward to whatever DLC we see.

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