Dice hasn’t managed to maintain its Battlefield and Battlefront games in the long term for years. There are conceptual problems behind this.
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What is the difference between Battlefield 2042 and Call of Duty Vanguard? Well, we could think of a few things, but the most important thing is: While Battlefield fans have to wait until summer for the first season, CoD Vanguard and Warzone are already getting new content on a regular basis. They’re not all great (there’s some resentment about the new W arzone map Caldera), but at least the care is right.
The same applies to Battlefield 2042 as to Age of Empires 4, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite and other prominent games: there is no replenishment, the number of players is increasing.
You think that’s not a problem, you can deal with the existing content and solo campaigns? True, but at the same time more and more people are migrating to other, better maintained games. We live in the age of service games. What is not cherished withers – there are plenty of alternatives out there. And then there will be no new solo campaigns.
In the podcast, Micha, Dimi and Phil talk about this service game crisis – and the infamy of the service term itself, which is often associated with microtransactions, loot boxes and battle passes.
However, the problem of bad service games is not monetization – it suffers from the concept beforehand. Some games wanted too much, but forgot their own strengths (Battlefield 2042), others just ignored the community features that made a predecessor great (Age of Empires 4). And most of them simply lack the necessary depth of play.
Speaking of community: In many cases it would help to involve the fans better so that they keep the game alive. You just have to look at Minecraft. Or just Age of Empires 2.
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