”Looking at the open beta, for us at DICE it’s truly been a huge success,” said Gustavsson. ”We could have been better in how we messaged this to the community, what we were doing and why it’s not as polished as a final demo but there is a reason we called it a beta and not a demo.”
According to Gustavsson, the beta was merely to test server stress and examine player and score progression for gameplay balancing; ”This test was done so we would get as many eyes as possible on the game code to ensure a good release, and that means hammering the back end, seeing that the servers hold up, making sure we get all the telemetry we need, that all the hooks are working and also getting a good first take on the balancing of the game. What is the score progression? How are people doing?”
The beta was also used to test Electronic Arts’ Origin service and DICE’s answer to Battlelog; ”But of course also Origin and Battlelog, all of these things that we need to get ready for the final ship. So for us it’s been really useful and I would really say mission accomplished.” Gustavsson dismissed criticisms from players, adding, ”Once again, yes, there is a vocal community out there but I wouldn’t like to have it any other way. It’s dedication and passion when people speak up and there’s nothing wrong with passion.”
As for the single player campaign, Gustavsson beamed, ”Overall we definitely put a lot of love and passion into our single-player campaign. As a studio we’re still quite young in making single-player games; it’s not until Bad Company 1 that we started to do this and we’ve come a long way I would say. We’re extremely proud of the single-player campaign.” Gustavsson, however, avoided revealing what DICE might include to inspire gamer’s to play the campaign more than once: ”There is, of course, the possibility of replaying difficulties and so on but we haven’t added any extra carrots to keep you in there. We think the package of single-player, co-op experience and multiplayer is a really good start.”
Battlefield 3 will be released on 25th October for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
