Dice takes a swing at Black Ops 2 – Video Games Update
Dice claims that Modern-day first person shooters (FPS) are getting stale and gamers will soon get bored and move on to other games.
Dice is the developer behind Electronic Arts’ Battlefield games and their latest game Battlefield 3, which came out in 2011, ironically is a modern-day first person shooter.
Dice general manager Karl Magnus takes a cheap shot at the futuristic setting that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will take place in by saying that just changing the era of the game is not innovation but a thematic change.
The company is partly correct as gamers are bored with the modern shooters as the market has become completely saturated. After the huge success of Call of Duty Modern Warfare games, every first person shooter developer has been trying to make their own
Modern military shooter just so they can get a slice of the ‘massive holiday sales’ pie.
Dice aren’t ones to talk about innovation since apart from their ‘free running’ game Mirror’s Edge that came out in 2008; all that they have been doing is copying Call of Duty in their own Military shooter series Battlefield. Even the cover art of Battlefield
3 is heavily inspired by that of COD.
Electronic Arts (EA) has been furiously trying to capture the Call of Duty audience as EA has got not one but two modern-day military franchises, Medal of Honour and Battlefield. With the somewhat successful launch of Battlefield 3, EA and Dice are probably
worried that the new COD game will change FPS trends thus damaging their current Battlefield game and the upcoming Medal of Honour Warfighter.
This is worrying news for Dice as they just announced the subscription based paid Battlefield 3 premium service which will bring DLC maps and game modes for its members throughout 2012. The service will fail if the popular trend changes from Modern to Futuristic
shooters.
The change of era from modern to futuristic was a smart move by Treyarch, the developers of Black Ops, as now not only can they differentiate themselves from every other shooter but they can also target Halo’s Sci-fi audience.
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