DICE Halting Future Projects Until Battlefield 4 Is Stable
Better late than never?
Like Battlefield 3 before it, Battlefield 4's launch hasn't exactly been graceful. If our baseline metric for grace is a lithe, ethereally beautiful swan, then BF4 thus far has been said swan getting squashed into a writhing mass of meaty chunks by a thousand levolutions. Bugs, glitches, crashes - you name it, BF4 has grappled with it on PC and consoles. DICE, unsurprisingly, is aware that its flagship shootyblam has issues, and has - in the wake of new issues stemming from the China Rising DLC pack - dedicated its full developmental force to making the game, you know, work.
An EA rep made the startlingly all-encompassing statement to IGN, explaining:
"[We are] not moving onto future projects or expansions until we sort out all the issues with Battlefield 4. We know we still have a ways to go with fixing the game – it is absolutely our #1 priority. The team at DICE is working non-stop to update the game."
"We know many of our players are frustrated, and we feel your pain. We will not stop until this is right."
When questioned about how this will affect Mirror's Edge 2 and Star Wars Battlefront specifically, the rep was a bit cagier, but reiterated that the team currently has all hands on deck for the sole purpose of fixing Battlefield.
Which is a bit outrageous, really. I mean, I absolutely appreciate the sentiment (the state of the game is inexcusable, but better late than never), but upwards of 300 people on bug fixes? Really? I find that notion difficult to swallow. Generally speaking, that's not how game development works. At some point, globbing handfuls of people onto a project like it's some kind of macaroni art monstrosity becomes highly inefficient. Dev teams are made up of many people in many roles. Bug squashing is only a single part of the process - albeit an extremely important one.
I've reached out to EA for clarification on that point, which issues DICE is targeting first, and a few other specifics. I'll post an update as soon as I hear anything back.