What to learn from Battlefield 1943

In case you haven't been following the performance of Battlefield 1943 from DICE (published by EA), the download-only game seems to have been a huge success in terms of sales.

It is very rare that I applaud EA on this blog for anything, but this time they've done good. I've told numerous times in my writings that a game does not need to follow the "all bells and whistles for $60+" approach in order to be commercially successful. Kudos to DICE for figuring out all the value added components of their game that matter to their customers, and stripping everything else away, including retail units. The result is a no-frills game for $15, which happens to sell faster than hot cakes.

Strangely, being sold on Live Arcade at that price point makes it a quite frill-full game. Instead of a lackluster game trying to compete with the likes of Call of Duty (much like BF: Bad Company tried to do at the regular price point), being a great game for the $15 price point is a much better differentiation strategy.

The question is, though; can it be repeated? It is important to understand that such low price might not have been possible if the developers had to design the maps from scratch, or if they had to develop the Frostbite engine for the first time, or if they didn't have a pretty familiar set of game mechanics refined many times in the previous iterations of their franchise. Speaking of the franchise, it is also worth considering what the outcome would be if they did not have the Battlefield brand behind the game. Would it still perform well? Would the brand name of DICE be enough?

All in all, I am pleased to see EA trying different approaches for a game's value offering, and I'm hoping their success with this title will encourage them to experiment more and perhaps answer some of the questions above in doing so.
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Co-production, digital distribution, and the future of video game publishing

The inspiration for this post comes from a developer interview on GamesIndustry.biz. The interview talks about the co-production method of development, which involves multiple studios coming together to complement each other with their respective core competencies. The benefits are the distribution of risk and greater accessibility to talent in various fields. Daniel Kozlov sees this collaboration method as the future of game development. The interview made me think of what this could mean from a greater perspective.

Publishers in the video games industry have three main roles to play in the value chain:

• Marketing of titles
• Distribution of titles
• Technological support for development

Look at that list and try to imagine what it will look like in the future. Most people agree that digital delivery of titles is the future, which would make physical distribution of CDs and DVDs obsolete. So, cross distribution off your list, as it doesn't take much muscle to put a title on an online server for digital distribution on demand.

Now back to that interview with Kozlov, it seems to me that co-production could also lower reliance on publishers for technological support. So that bullet on the list becomes much less certain, if not crossed off altogether.

What remains is marketing. In my blog I have discussed examples of great marketing that does not necessarily involve million dollar budgets. Viral advertising and word-of-mouth are tactics employed very successfully by some independent developers.

The question is, will there be enough room in the value chain of the future, to justify the existence of publishers as we know them today? Or will publishing be reduced to involve only the console manufacturers like Microsoft, who would merely enforce platform standard compliance and make titles available on Live? On the other side, is it too far fetched to imagine production studios becoming their own publishers?
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