GamesBeat: How did you come to decide on doing another Mirror’s Edge?
Troedsson: DICE has an outspoken strategy of not just building Battlefield games. We do this because we love making games and because we’ve been building Battlefield games a long time. We want to build other games as well. We have people that have been in the studio since the first Battlefield game came out. Some of them want to move over and do something else, and then it’s really good to have other titles for them. We’re very passionate about the Mirror’s Edge franchise, the world, and especially the main heroine, Faith. Bringing this franchise back to life feels like a very natural thing for us to do, and now is a very appropriate time, with Frostbite 3 available and with new consoles coming. We’re not saying when it’s coming out, but we are working on it, and that’s something we’re glad to finally be able to announce.
GamesBeat: Battlefront has had a long history under other developers. What made sense about doing that game?
Troedsson: That decision was also born out of pure passion, I would say. When the opportunity came up, we sat down with the senior people and talked about it. The basic conclusion was that we really want to do this. It might sound weird, but a lot of us are just Star Wars nerds. We grew up with the first movies. We passionately wanted to be part of building something like this. It came to us quite naturally.
GamesBeat: You have some very interesting people as resources. There’s the Danger Close people and the former Lucas people. Are you interested in some of these people as potential contributors?
Troedsson: We’re not targeting them specifically. We’re always looking for great game developers. We’re definitely out there with a big sign saying, “We’re hiring.” A lot of the people from Danger Close, we’ve hired them into the DICE L.A. studio. We’re out there trying to hire even more people. If they come from an old Lucas studio or some other company, that’s less important than them being really passionate about making games and good at game development.
If you take the DICE L.A. studio as an example, it’s quite important that we build the studio based on core values like what we’ve had at DICE before. We strive to always build quality games with innovative new features. The umbrella over it all is the fact that we’re passionate about making games. That’s why we’re in this business. Money matters as well. That hopefully comes out of it in the end. But we believe that good products and happy consumers come first. If you do that right, then you’ll make money as well.
GamesBeat: How do you feel about adding on projects like mobile games or mobile companion products? Things that could be online or free-to-play. You have a lot of places you could take these franchises.
Troedsson: Oh, absolutely. We have done in the past. We have free-to-play games in the franchise. We’ve also tried making smaller titles, like for Xbox Live Arcade. If you’re asking specifically about mobile, we’re definitely very interested there. You probably saw the press conference where I was standing on stage with a tablet, demoing what we call the Commander mode. That’s one way for us to make the Battlefield experience bigger, this connected experience that we have. Battlefield has always been an online game, so it comes very naturally for us to connect other devices into it.
This is one aspect of the next generation of gaming that’s really interesting. We know that people are not just sitting on their couch playing with their console. They usually have a second screen or even a third screen next to them. We’re looking into how we can make the best use of that. The Commander app is one example.
We also have our Battlelog app, which we’re making much more directly connected to the game this time around. Naturally, you can take part in Battlelog in your client, especially on the consoles, but you can also have it on a separate tablet if you want to. Not only will it receive information but it will also push information into the game. While you’re playing and waiting to spawn, you could select a new server, point at the server, click, and it changes on your Xbox or whatever it is.
GamesBeat: At this point, what stage is Battlefield at? Is it pretty close to being done?
Troedsson: It’s in that typical alpha state. We’re very meticulous about reaching quality and driving ourselves to make a better game than we did the last time. That means we’re always pushing the boundaries of how much we can get into the game. We’re going to be working hard on this game all the way up until the end. For us, it’s typical to work this way. We don’t finish it off and then take it easy. We try to really push the boundaries. That means we need to use every single week we have before the game comes out.
GamesBeat: Anything else coming up in the news this week for Battlefield?
Troedsson: I think we’ve announced most of it. [Laughs] It was a busy Monday, I have to say, showing both single-player and multiplayer and Mirror’s Edge and Battlefront. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot of people playing the game on the floor and enjoying it. I’m interested to hear the feedback on Commander and of course this concept of Levelution.
We introduced destruction in Battlefield: Bad Company, but now it’s so much bigger than just destruction. It covers everything from microdestruction all the way up to skyscrapers coming down, but it’s also this idea of a dynamic battlefield that changes depending on how you play. You can use that tactically. Things like elevators or boulders coming down to the ground and blocking the tanks or metal detectors going off — you can see your spatial awareness increase because of the environment reacting to other players. This concept of Levelution is very important to us.