Interestingly enough, Battlefield 4 might be the best shooter of the year at the same time it’s also one of the most unpolished. Its issues with severe crashing and progress loss have caused gamers to fire at its developer, DICE, but it may not be the right company to yell at.
A departed gameplay designer of DICE has arrived to defend his former place of work from the mass backlash it’s been receiving. On Twitter he’s posted a series of replies to upset gamers, a few of which are the following:
It is getting better, but too much is broken and needs fixing. Not enough time to fix it all 🙁
Outcry over a retweet, response: I support the devs at DICE fully and acknowledge their hard work and efforts. Problem is higher than devs!
Thing is – for consumers, it doesn’t matter where the problem lies. But yup, corporate level and dev takes a hit 🙁
He might not point his finger directly, but it’s clear he’s talking about EA. EA is, after all, in charge of funding and development at DICE. It gets to choose when a game is published, and has a choice to give extra time for development, which it didn’t in the case of Battlefield 4 and dozens of other games.
Rushing products out the door isn’t something new for EA, either. As one user perfectly argued on NeoGAF, EA’s entire line-up in 2013 has been controversial in one way or another. SimCity‘s disastrous launch is one example, as is Dead Space 3‘s self-destruction. Battlefield 4 was just the holiday finale for what seems to be a cruel ongoing joke.
Thankfully, EA has a chance to prove it’s a company that values consumers with its upcoming releases of Star Wars Battlefront and Mirror’s Edge 2. There’s a lot riding on these two releases alone so hopefully the developers are given the time they require.
