GDC 2010

With so many things to read on the GDC site, its hard to pick just one to talk about. The one thing I found that interested me the most however, was a talk about EA's success with Battlefield 1943. Using only 15 of the original developer of the franchise they were given the task to develop a game that was low cost and easy to develop. A game to fill the gap between the downtime of other titles from the developers.

The key top the game success was it simplicity. It was diluted that much that only the best things about the franchise were left. Mainly, the game play! Developers had key elements that they wanted to achieve for the game such as "make the game as long as resources last" and “simply revisit wake island” are just some examples. Perhaps the best outcome of the game, and one that perhaps benefited from its downloadable nature on consoles, was the fact that it was so easy to just pick up and play. There was no learning curve but it was difficult to master. There was no need for medics as health replenished over time and no need for ammo runs back to base and ammo replenished too. Vehicles were simplified to either be fast for transport of slow for seizing areas and defending. You were able to take the the sky's to give cover to your team-mates,but run the risk of being shot down by enemy flak cannons that were scattered around capture points. Everything made sense and was easy to understand, making it easy to concentrate on what really mattered... playing the game! Its a shame it never saw a release on the PC but it would have taken a hell of a lot more testing and developing to run on varied machines. I don't hate DICE for this as they created such a perfect piece to the battlefield puzzle, its a nice game to play now and again without having to take it to seriously. There's a valuable lesson to be learned from this, it just goes to show that there is always room for improvement and DICE have made a perfect example.