Sweden as a gaming country has a high value, in an international perspective. We have many great development studios, an international digital distribution platform (Gamersgate) and lots of great e-gamers in online games like Counter-Strike and WoW. But especially when it comes to development, we’ve got a good reputation. With studios like Grin, Starbreeze, Avalanche, Massive and maybe the biggest, DICE. Its been quiet from them now a while, the only big thing is some news of Battlefield: Bad Company.
But now they really show how much they have in their pipeline. Battlefield Heroes, Mirror´s Edge and the one mentioned above. DICE recently released 2 screenshots of Mirror’s Edge, which have created a great buzz of the game. I read about the game in Edge Magazine a few mouth ago, so it isn’t really big news.
Battlefield Heroes on the other hand is really interesting, no for the cartoony 3rd person gameplay, but rather the business model of Ad-driven free game. Its been tested before, for example Far Cry. I downloaded the ad-version, but it didn’t work so I trashed it.
But this Battlefield game is a brand new game of a “old” and successful franchise, and a part of a new EA concept called Play 4 Free. The basic idea is to make games more appealing towards the mass-market, easy to start playing and a graphical style that people recognize (read Pixar and Team Fortress 2-style). Many podcast I’ve listened to last week commented on that fact, that it feels like a rip-off on Team Fortress 2. I can understand that, but I don’t think it’s a big deal! Other developers should have taking after the TF2 style eventually. And this Battlefield game isn’t even a FPS, rather a 3rd person shooter. So its like a combination of Team Fortress 2 and Warhawk, Awsome!
As mentioned earlier, the big thing with this game is the free, Ads- and microtransaction business model. Microtransaction is the big model in Asia, but haven’t really worked here. So this should be interesting. And this Ads revenue model… what I’ve heard (somewhere I don’t remember the source), its not like 
In-Game advertisement. But rather between games and in the meny or was it on the website where you download the game? Something like that. For that model to work I sure hope they really thing about who they sell Ad-space to, so they make sense and is relevant for the visitors.
Also I get the feeling that Battlefield Bad Company is more focused on the singleplayer experience and Battlefield Heroes more like complement for the multiplayer part. Battlefield BC sure look nice and all, but maybe not the most optimized for smooth online multiplayer for a mass market that don’t have new computers. Heroes feels more planed to work for basically everybody. But I don’t really know all of EA and Dice plans, I’m just speculating.
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