Q&A: Lars Gustavsson DICE on online gaming
- December 28, 2006 13:21 PM PST
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GamePro recently sat down with Battlefield: Bad Company Lead Designer, Lars Gustavsson, to talk about EA, DICE, and the state of online gaming.
For more on the state of online gaming, check out GamePro's 7 Ways to Save Online Gaming with extensive interviews from the industry's leading developers in online gaming including Bungie, Insomniac, Treyarch, and DICE.
GamePro: What do you think are the biggest problems plaguing online console games today?
Lars Gustavsson: Online gaming on consoles still has quite some way to go before it's up to the standards of the PC equivalent, but there's loads of issues that plague the PC online community that we luckily don't have to deal with on the consoles.
GP: Most online shooters take the standard deathmatch/team deathmatch/CTF approach. Is coming up with more interesting game modes a must for online shooters?
GUSTAVSSON: Unimaginative gameplay definetly haunts many online console shooters today. I feel that the console community deserves something new and challenging when it comes to game modes but most games still offer up the same modes that were on the top list many years ago on the PC. There's nothing wrong with a good round of CTF but the console gamers of today range from casual gamers to real hardcores, so why not give them all something new and fresh?
GP: How can developers make online games more accessible?
GUSTAVSSON: Having worked on both PC and Console titles, I think that the biggest challenge in making online games accessible is matchmaking. Consoles have made huge leaps in making it easier for gamers to get online and find games via simplified menues, etc but it's still difficult to get matched against players of a similar skill level. Many gamers are afraid that they are going to get beaten up as soon as they go online, which I can totally relate to. I love driving games, but don't go online to play Project Gotham Racing 2 since I haven't played that much and know I'd get killed - so I just stick to games that I'm really, really good at, like Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. Bridging this gap is a huge area of focus at DICE, and while there isn't a silver bullet to fix the issue, it's something we're hard at work on.
GP: How important is someone's first online experience with a game? Will a bad first experience discourage someone from coming back online to play that game, or from playing online games in general?
GUSTAVSSON: Given that we've been doing Battlefield games for quite some time now, we are quite familiar with the fear of newcomers going online for the first time. Battlefield has always had something for everyone to play so if you're new and fresh, a static AA-gun might be just the thing for you until you've learned how to handle the helicopters. Giving the player a good introduction to the game so that they feel competitive once they go online is key, but also to matchmake them properly so that they don't have to meet the hardcore gamers to start with. Getting beaten up badly the first time can definitely make people stay away and be much harder to win back.
GP: In many online games, players drop out of team games. Are there ways to encourage/reward more sportsman-like conduct?
GUSTAVSSON: We work hard to battle unsportsmanlike conduct. After some time watching gamers, you realize that people often only care about their own progress which means that they'll switch team from a loosing team to a winning one as soon as it looks like they will loose. We build our systems with this assumption nowadays to help make sure people focus on playing as a team, not because they necessarily want to help others, but because they want as high score as possible. The medic class in Battlefield 2 is a typical example where, back in BF1942, people only used the medic bag to heal themselves, then suddenly once we started to reward players for healing others, it turned out to be one of the most popular kits of them all. Now everyone wants to be Florence Nightingale! The same goes for people switching teams. If they switch team in the last minute, don't give them points that they earned on the other team - and deny them the bonus for winning the round. Hard but fair!
GP: Moving forward, how can developers deal with abusive/offensive team-speak?
GUSTAVSSON: My personal solution so far has been to channel communications so that you pick the ones you want to talk to and disregard the rest, like the squad dynamic in Battlefield 2. Being on a full server with everyone hearing everyone is chaos and demoralizing. It's something we constantly look into and will keep on doing.
GP: What is the online game of the future like, 10 years down the road?
GUSTAVSSON: I think that online gaming will be what you play and what we call "singleplayer" today will just be intricate solutions that turn your online gaming into the tight and cinematic experience that we are used to offline. The game industry hasn't stopped its evolution and we can still do a lot to improve many areas like storytelling, animations and how we play games overall.
GP: What kind of steps is EA taking to keep future projects cheat and hack-free?
GUSTAVSSON: We learn on a daily basis and build a bigger and bigger understanding for how to prevent cheating at the same time as we get more and more connections that we join up with, turning this into a serious key area. It's tedious and costs money that we would like to spend on making even better games but we cannot let a few rotten eggs ruin the experience for the others, so it will always be a focus at EA and DICE.
GP: In many online console games, beginners can get matched up with more experience players, resulting in unbalanced and often frustrating play. Are there ways developers can solve this problem?
GUSTAVSSON: A good matchmaking system can definitely turn this around. Let the new ones get acquainted with the game before it turns into more of a competition, and then when you are ready, take on the hardcore. Once again, online gaming has a long way to go but the future looks bright to say the least!! Dare to go online and a new world of gaming will open up!
