According to EA president Frank Gibeau, “Does that (no single player at launch) mean it’s not going to have single-player? No, that’s something we’ve obviously heard loud and clear that is important to people.”
Gibeau claims that the entire point of free-to-play is to cater to gamer wishes.
“The beauty of free-to-play, is that we can adjust and adapt to what we’re hearing as opposed to, ‘I’m sorry, it’s two months from ship and it is what it is.’ It’s a very different model because you don’t have to build as much. You build in response to your audience,” he explained.
“We started with, ‘How do we build a triple-A Command & Conquer experience?’” he added. “Is the best way to go to market, premium or is the best way to go to market, free-to-play? We’re like, ‘We’ll get the biggest market with free-to-play and we can evolve it over time based on what we see happening inside the service.”
In essence, Gibeau states that free-to-play costs cheaper because the developer only needs to build a part of the game and add on new features later. ”When you build a premium game you have to go way in the hole, in terms of spending out a lot of money building a certain experience and then putting it out there to see how people respond,” he stated.
One thing is clear - a single player only Command & Conquer: Generals 2 would have never been made under Gibeau’s policy.
Command & Conquer: Generals 2 will be developed by BioWare Victory with the Frostbite 2.0 engine. It’s due for a 2013 release.
