Producer of Battlefield Heroes (the second Battlefield game this year that aims to rape your wallet with micro-transactions) Ben Cousins had a fairly lengthy interview with Gamasutra recently in which he divulged a large amount of information about his title. While explaining the character customization, gameplay, and stylistic choices of the title, he let slip some interesting information: Battlefield Heroes will only ship with two playable maps.

“…Every Battlefield game, we bust our asses making 50 maps, and then within six months of the game being released, everyone's playing two maps. The two best maps. So, we just decided to make just the two best maps, and not the other kind of maps.”

While it is easy to pick out the faults in his reasoning, he does have a point. Anyone who has played any first person shooter can vouch for gamers complaining when any map comes on the playlist other then a select few, and the few are usually universally loved. While it is impossible for a company to know for sure which maps those will be beforehand, it does feel like many maps in shooters are space fillers, just on the game disk so that the developer can flaunt having “two-dozen maps!” or whatever. However, if Ben can make just the “best” maps then why not make them all the “best?”

The holes in his logic are gaping.

Based on the backlash from this report and fear that it was another ploy to add a cost to the supposedly free game, Ben Cousins posted a follow-up to the interview. On their official website, he has confirmed that more maps are in development with release dates intended for months or weeks after launch.

“We have no plans for selling maps for Battlefield Heroes. Our game design and our business model is designed around the fact that 95% of the people playing the game never pay a penny.”

We will keep you posted on any news that comes out of the Battlefield camp, as EA has apparently decided to exploit the series popularity to test how far they can shove downloadable content down our throats.

 

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