Focusing on the PC is the future
APR 8, 2011
Patrick Bach, like a lot of the DICE team who are present at today's EA showcase in London, is looking as pleased as punch this morning. And why wouldn't he be? Battlefield 3 looks absolutely storming from what we've seen of it so far, with the kind of trendsetting level of visuals and audio that separated Crysis from the pack four years ago, so the DICE senior producer has reason to be just a wee bit enthusiastic.
The PC's evolved along plenty since Crysis days, but we're still playing on the same consoles as we were back in 2007. We ask Patrick about how the balance between PC and consoles has affected development of the latest Battlefield, and also about how the studio has learnt from the single-player experience it crafted in the Bad Company series. Oh, and we vainly inquire about Mirror's Edge.
You've been talking a lot about how Battlefield 3 is optimized for PC. Is PC the lead platform?
Yes, which is of course a challenge as we're [also] releasing it on the consoles. The interesting part of that is since we are developing for high-end PC features and really pushing it on the PC, we are actually learning a lot about the consoles. A lot of people think that we've hit the roof on the consoles because they're five years old but we're actually finding out a lot of things that you can do on the consoles that haven't been done before. To us, we're increasing what is possible on the consoles because we're aiming higher than the consoles. Usually you look at last year's games and try to the same but better, but since we're aiming way higher than the console specs we're actually finding new ways to get more out of them with the rendering engine and the animation engine and streaming technology and stuff like that. So it's really exciting to see what we can get out of the consoles.
Do you think that's going against where the industry's going? The audience share is much larger on consoles and a lot of traditional PC-based franchises are leading on consoles. Do you think that there's some risk in not leading on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3?
Yes, there is a risk, of course there's always a risk. I think the biggest risk is that people get scared is because it's not the sane choice when it comes to economy. We are game developers and we don't really care about that. If we make a good game we think that someone will be able to sell it. If we want to play it then other people want to play it. So us doing this is not based on a sane monetary decision, it's actually based on us being desperate to move gaming forward and you can't do that by trying to mimic the last game, no matter if it's your own or if it's the competition. We want to build the best possible Battlefield game. When we started design on Battlefield 3 we actually came up with all these cool things.
Again, we don't want to build Battlefield 2, we want to build a new game, so some people get upset because it's not a copy of the old game. It's like "But no, it's supposed to be new, it's new stuff. You can play the old game, that's fine - it's really cheap actually!" So when we started to design Battlefield 3 we said "Oh, we need to do this, we need to do that." We want it to feel more realistic, to be a more physical experience, immerse the player even further into the world. We want to keep the core pillars of what Battlefield is so don't screw with the sport [aspect]. We try to see Battlefield as a sport. We have a rule set that works - the whole rock, paper, scissors thing, so don't screw with that. And then we were done with that and then we realized, "OK, we can't build this, we don't have the technology to build this!" It's so much more than what we've seen before, and looking at other engines it's like no, no you can't build Battlefield games with engines other than our own because we have so many components, scale, big and small destructions, vehicles, 64 players and stuff like that. So we actually had to spend some time building the core of the engine before we actually started building the game, which was a bit frustrating because you want to be able to start Day 1 but we couldn't. So we have been building the engine for almost three years before even starting to build the game. We saw it as...if we do this now based on today's technology we can actually build on that for the future. We've seen what so many console generations and PC s have shown in the past so we know what you need, what kind of core technology you need to build games for the future. It's things like the streaming technologies, the DX11 features - if you don't start now you'll behind in a year or two. So we've actually worked very close with the DX team to set the bar on what we want and what we need for the future.
AMD said something recently about Direct X holding the PC back a bit. Is that your experience or do you find Direct X is still as useful as it ever was?
I think it's really useful. I am not working with rendering technologies myself, I'm not a rendering programmer, but I've not heard any complaints from our rendering team like it's holding them back. I think if you didn't follow the DX rule set you could probably squeeze something more out of it, but that's always the case with very specific hardware. If you didn't go through Windows or MAC OS you could probably have a more powerful experience. But the reason you have the DX there is because it's the standard. It's easy to scale it to more PC setups. If we removed it we would have a harder time scaling to different platforms and different PC configurations. I'm not too sure about this since I'm not working with it myself, but there's so much you can do with DX10 and DX11 that people still haven't even done, so there's still a lot to explore in that area. So I'm not too scared about the limitations right now.
Crytek has just released Crysis 2 and they've placed a lot of emphasis on how they've led development or at least separately for PC to give the PC the best sort of experience. EA Games President Frank Gibeau has also been talking about the PC as the way of the future. If Battlefield 3 is as successful as it looks like it's going to be, do you feel this could generate a switch towards using the PC as a lead platform rather than the consoles?
Oh yes, definitely. I think the reason why we and hopefully Crytek - I don't know if that's their kind of thinking - but because the consoles are so old now, honestly they're really old, the next generation of consoles, whenever they show up, will be based on what the PC's doing. It's always been like that. You look at what PC's doing and when you release you're probably 20% better than the best PC on the market just because you can ignore a lot of the operating systems and all the limitations of being a flexible platform. You just do your thing and probably sell epic hardware. The problem is that of course two years later and the PC's ahead. Like today we're three years past since the PCs came on par with the consoles and now the PC's so much more powerful. So to us, focusing on the PC is focusing on the future. Scaling it back to the consoles? We know how to do that. We want to create the same experience on the consoles but that doesn't mean from a technology perspective you'll get the same full-on hardware experience because the PC has more RAM, more CPU, more GPU. You can't beat that, it's impossible. Scaling that down, dumbing that down for PCs - that's just sad.
With regards some of the other large-scale shooters out there - we've just had Homefront, for example - we're seeing a lot of first-person shooters with traditionally smaller multiplayers expand into larger-scale multiplayer. If you take that and combine it with the fact that you have this community so attached to Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2, what are the challenges in going, "Well look, here's a new Battlefield game, and we're going to convince you to pick it up"?
Ooh, maybe we're not strategic enough at DICE because we might not think about that enough, to be honest. I think since we are building a Battlefield game, and with Battlefield 2 being a Battlefield game and Bad Company 2 being a Battlefield game , then take the best from both of these and imagine us having that in the back of our heads when we build Battlefield 3. We don't want to build a bad game. People will just have to trust us on that! We want to build the best possible Battlefield game and we'll take the components that we think will [let us] do that. In some cases, people will keep playing Battlefield 2 for any reason because we're not building the same game. Some people will keep playing Bad Company 2 because of other reasons. Our goal is of course to make sure that Battlefield 3 is so much better than both of them that you won't have a reason not to play it, and marrying those two communities would be amazing if we could do it. Of course, getting more people interested in the game would create a bigger community, and a bigger community in a way creates better games because you get more feedback, more telemetry on how things are moving along in the game and that helps us make better choices for the future. We are collecting telemetry from all our games and making sure Battlefield 3 is well balanced. Even though people are complaining we know that the game is balanced. People complain a lot about specific guns or specific classes in Bad Company 2, but when we look at the data it's like sorry man, it's actually working. You feel like you're losing but you're actually winning.
DICE General Manager Karl Magnus Troedsson has mentioned that Battlefield 3 isn't the only thing you're working on at the moment. I'm not going to ask you what it is since I know you're not going to answer that, but is it something that's brand new?
I can't answer that (laughs). We have more than Battlefield in the studio, that's for sure. Not everyone... a lot of people are working on Battlefield 3 but we have quite a few people working on stuff.
And... do you have any more clarity on the Mirror's Edge situation?
You said you wouldn't ask me about that! (laughs) We love Mirror's Edge, but that's all I can say.
We had to ask, sorry! Back to Battlefield 3: can you beat Modern Warfare 3, you know, if the game's released in November...?
If you're talking about sales I think that's other people than me to figure that one out. If you're talking about quality, I would argue that last year we probably had the best first-person shooter. Looking at Metacritic and Game Rankings and stuff like that we had the better game according to reviewers and consumers, but that's not enough, is it? There are other factors if you want to sell copies, there's marketing, there's the social behaviour of people, there are big communities playing other games. We think we have a more attractive game than the competition, not only the one you mentioned, but in general, and that there's no reason to not play Battlefield.
It's a more personal experience. You can create your own path through the multiplayer, finding your way of playing - it's not twitch skill only. That's a part of it, but not the whole thing. That's the beauty of Battlefield. Depending on your mood, you can play in different ways, so it's not only your personality but your mood. "Today I want to play more like this" So you find a map, you pick your kit, you add your specializations, and then go out and do you whatever you want to do. And it's not only about shooting people in the head, it's about helping your team, being more strategic, working together. You don't have to fire a single shot and you can still win the round, which is I think is a very attractive part of a first-person shooter. And then you have the whole vehicle focus, so you have some people who are like "I'm a pilot, that's what I do. I pilot helicopters and I do that really well so I'm helping the team by being the best possible pilot." That's a layer that most other shooters don't have. Then we want to be the best FPS... shooter (laughs) as well. So the whole aiming, shooting through the gun experience needs to be perfect. We've done this for quite some time. DICE has been building this game through every iteration so this is not a new studio building Battlefield. This is the same core group of people that have been working since 1942.
You're a studio that very much focuses on a multiplayer experience, but you've built in single-player over time. Randy Pitchford of Gearbox said recently that a lot of publishers and developers tend to shoehorn in multiplayer experiences because they think that's what people want. Do you feel that that's becoming the case in the games industry?
Yes, yes I do. I do think it's sad at times when someone shoehorns in multiplayer in a super-clear single-player game and it comes out bad and becomes more of a back-of-the-box feature. But then again a lot of people do think that "Now that I've finished the single-player game, I want the next step of this experience . I like this world, I like this universe, what more can I do in it?" So from that aspect a good multiplayer in a good game is great, that's something that adds a lot of value. Like you said, if it turns into shoehorning then it's always bad. But we've been building multiplayer for some time so we don't have to shoehorn in multiplayer at least!
But do you have the reverse problem? For example, we've just given Homefront quite a negative review because we thought its single-player was lacking and ill thought out. Because you've been such a multiplayer-focused studio, there's the possibility of the reverse occurring. Is that something that you've learnt to deal with at DICE with recent Battlefields in which you've introduced single-player?
Yeah, I think the reason we wanted to have single-player is not because we're trying to shoehorn it in, but because we think that the multiplayer experience has so much depth when it comes to how versatile it is, all the strategic elements, all the shooting. It feels like you have this epic core that you could potentially do whatever you wanted with. There is a lot of people in the industry who really love single-player, they only play single-player and they want to build the best first-person single-player game. So we have this game called Battlefield that already has all the tools - the toolbox is huge. So we can pick and choose and create a narrative around that and build what we think is a great single-player. We are getting better and better. Bad Company: not so good, but decent. Bad Company 2: much better. And now we know, we've been building the single-player for some time now.
So would you say it's easier to do the reverse? It's easier to superimpose a single-player onto a multiplayer game rather than superimpose a multiplayer onto a single-player game?
Yeah. I think the challenges are that a single-player game that's very tailored around the narrative in the single-player experience then you might not have balanced systems because you're building it based on that experience. So when you pull it apart and place it in a sandbox environment it's often quite broken. Since we're doing the opposite we [already] have a very balanced toolkit. When we put that into single-player we don't have to do anything. It's more what do we want it to be about, what gadgets, what vehicles, what weapons do we want to use and what story do we want to tell. The whole shooting and driving and flying experience, we already have, so we don't have to create that. We want it to be more or less a tutorial for the multiplayer. So when you play it through you've tried everything out once and you don't feel uncomfortable going into the multiplayer. A lot of people are scared to go online and want a tutorial before they go online. Well, play the single-player, it's a great tutorial. It's the longest tutorial you'll ever play in your life!
Barring Final Fantasy XIII, maybe. Many thanks for your time, Patrick.
My pleasure.
By Sinan Kubba
