Battlefield Heroes: Trailer, Evil?

There’s a trailer, folks:

The trailer is a bit lame, if you ask me, but it does explain the game concept fairly well. I laughed at the reference to these guys.

And there’s an article in Gamasutra where the designer talks all about it. Turns out there’s more to it than just buying customizable character bits, people – you can also buy power levelling. Here’s a quote from Ben Cousins, senior producer on Battlefield Heroes:

we think there are two areas where people would be interested [in buying things]. First is your customization items, to change the way your character looks. Maybe you want the gold helmet and a huge mustache, or something like that; maybe a monocle. Those will be micro-items.

The other thing is what we call convenience items: So let’s imagine that the two of us are playing the game, and you’re playing the game every night for four hours, you’re leveling up your guy really fast, but I’ve got like a wife and kids, and only play the game a couple evenings a week.

But I want to catch up with you, so maybe I’ll buy an item which gives me double the experience points for a couple of days. So I’m still playing the game, I’m still having to be skilled at the game, but I’m just leveling up my character slightly quicker. So those are the two categories.

Hmm. Powerlevelling for $$$? What do you say to that?

EA Microtransactions display worrying signs of Evil

We’ve posted about microtransactions before on Objective 514. That post spawned quite a bit of discussion. Most of you seemed cool with paying for stuff – snazzy hats, for instance – as long as the stuff you bought didn’t actually affect game performance.

Well, guess what – the barely-established taboo has already been broken. By EA, no less. Same guys who are bringing us the free-to-play, financed-through-microtransactions game Battlefield Heroes.  Now they’re taking one more step – charging for special, unlockable weapons in the upcoming release Bad Company. See the full story in Xbox 360 Fanboy magazine. Comment here!