In a new interview with GamesRadar, EA DICE senior producer Ryan McArthur discussed the painful road Battlefield 2042 trod, from its failed launch in 2021, to its slow but certain road to redemption, that takes us to where the game is today.
Before we move forward with the interview, it seems important to point out what was not brought up by McArthur or the interviewer. Rumors had swirled that Battlefield 2042 had a troubled development.
Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming had revealed at various ports, that the project was poorly managed and employees were fearful of their jobs. He had also shared from insiders that the game was originally chasing the battle royale trend, and this is why they shifted from the franchise’s conventions to make specialists, as well as the Hazard Zone.
Knowing this, it isn’t easy to read McArthur’s description of how the team themselves took the feedback. As he put it; “Initially, it was harsh. What was coming back was tough to hear. Players were unhappy, but we knew that the disappointment came from a good place – they love this franchise.
So a lot of this process was saying to the team, ‘let’s take the harsh feedback, let’s see where they’re at, and really understand what we missed.'”
As we had noted in our title, McArthur had stated that “Players were expecting a great game from us and we didn’t deliver on that initially… it’s been tiring, exhausting, and super rewarding.”
McArthur was willing to talk about how they won the fans back, and they simply had to take it season by season. Season 1 still turned out quite poorly, but Season 2 was better. DICE saw an influx of new players coming in by Season 3, and this was where they won the fans back until today.
DICE also made some key changes that do seem to have been for the best. They removed the Hazard Zone mode, which DICE noted was getting poor reception anyway, and focused on polishing other modes.
Their possibly most controversial change was reverting from Specialists back to a class based system. As McArthur explained it, the players simply did not understand that Specialists were supposed to replace classes, and what role each Specialist had. While Specialists had personalities and made for recognizable characters, DICE made the call to ultimately go back to what players were familiar with.
From seeing how fans have reacted, it seems that DICE made the right calls this time around. Maybe it will also make fans hopeful for the coming of the next Battlefield.
