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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 DLC Due Alongside Modern Warfare 2's as DICE Throws Gauntlet
by Chris Faylor, Mar 11, 2010 10:20am PSTWith Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward promising to cure the shooter's "mapathy" with some downloadable content on March 30, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 developer EA DICE has thrown down the gauntlet.
The same day, March 30, will see DICE release its second "VIP Map Pack" for Bad Company 2, it revealed in a blog post titled "how to avoid 'mapathy' without paying."
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Available as a free unlock to those that bought the game new, VIP Map Pack 2 will enable players to play Arica Harbor in Conquest Mode and Laguna Presa in Rush Mode. And unlike Modern Warfare 2's downloadable content, which is hitting Xbox 360 before PC and PlayStation 3, Bad Company 2's will hit all three platforms on the same day.
"We're dedicated to taking care of this product for a long time - helping you avoid "mapathy" without getting nickel-and-dimed," said DICE, explaining:
[New content] also plays a vital part in making sure you, the players get proper value for the money you've invested in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This is why these map packs are available at no extra cost, contradicting the industry standard and what our direct competitors are doing. Of course, it also helps avoid segmenting the community, making sure everyone can play together having the same maps available. There will be future paid downloadable content as well but these packs will focus on expanding other parts of the game experience rather than the selection of maps available for the basic game modes
Of course, that "free" part only applies to those with a new copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. As part of EA's fight against piracy and second-hand sales, new copies of the console editions come with a one-time use code to redeem the "VIP Membership" that delivers free content--second-hand players need to pay for VIP treatment, even though the maps are already on the game disc and simply unlocked by the download.
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I'm not crazy about paying for maps in the first place. As a player on the SUPERIOR platform, I've kind of grown up getting maps in patches for free. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but new maps always seemed kind of like an attempt by the company to keep interest up in their game and to increase it's longevity and possibly bring in more people. Now we get to pay the companies to do that. It seems kind of backwards to me. Without the map packs or other additions to the game, people would more quickly lose interest and go play something else, so it seems beneficial to release additional maps if the companies want players to keep playing their games (which I assume they want). Now the players pay to keep players playing.
I'm not really talking specifically about BFBC2, but multiplayer games in general. Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe after the initial sales, they could give a shit less how long people continue to play the multiplayer. But I almost feel like I'm paying the companies to do them a favor.
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GG DICE!!!
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"Of course, that "free" part only applies to those with a new copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2."
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Oh, I see what they did there. Clever. They're only HELPING me AVOID nickel and diming. So me buying your game is you 'helping' me, eh?
I just can't seem to bring myself to ever buy DLC. If it wasn't good enough for the full game, or even essential to the experience, why should I even bother? Is there any game out there that became that much more awesome because of DLC?
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Unless you can generate some randomness in maps that will keep them fresh at all time and give no advantage to the power gamers I dont see the point.
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Now if only they would use the frostbite engine to fix the whole Battlefield 2142 debaucle and turn a promising concept into a wickedly fun game to play. JETPACKS PPL!!
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Activision/Infinityward should learn from this. You money grubbing c***suckers.
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I dont have Modern Warfare 2 and I'm thinking about getting Bad Company 2 instead.
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Connect to a server:
The server says, "We're playing on this map, but you don't seem to have it. Here, let me *give you it* for the low, low price of wanting to play with us."
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Man, if they can realistically pull this off, over and over -- I'll buy new copies for all my games of any company.
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However, MW2 has been out for 5 months. It will be nearly 6 months by the time the new maps come out. This in my opinion is what DLC should be: New content made available when the old content - gets old. And it is worht paying for.
Activision have not taken the piss with DLC like most publishers who release DLC weeks after initial game release. Off the bat, I can think of the recent Aliens game as an offender.
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If EA/DICE is going to control the lifespan of the game by keeping a grip on how and when we can play, then they very least they can do is keep the game fresh with content.
On the PC, servers dont have to run it so you often get servers that will never run the extra maps, and servers that do run the extra maps empty out when they come on.
Wheras on the console, devs can update playlists and basically force you to buy their maps by limiting the playlists that dont contain the maps to the lesser played options.
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I joined the BC2 camp in this pseudo-battle between the two, it feels more like preference than any kind of hatred for how they handled their respective releases. One thing I can say is that I don't hear anything about how spectacular MW2 is, just that it could offend some people (airport scene) and that did well in the charts.
I don't think this news is anything to get giddy about but I do hope the formula is one for success. With that said I would definitely pay for an expansion pack or DLC for BC2, whatever the case may be.
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