The same year its “customers” voted Electronic Arts the worst company in America, the game publisher also released the best-reviewed titles on average, according to review-aggregation site Metacritic.

In 2012, EA had an average critic score of 75.2 on Metacritic, which collects the average score from dozens of different reviews for each game. That was enough to put it ahead of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo as its best-reviewed game publisher of the year. The company’s best reviewed game was Mass Effect 3 with a 93. It’s best original published game was Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning with an 81. It’s worst-reviewed game was Medal of Honor: Warfighter with a 53.

Electronic Arts decided to pull the plug on future Medal of Honor games based on Warfighter’s poor performance at retail. The fact that it was the company’s worst reviewed game of the year probably didn’t help.

Electronic Arts beat out Microsoft’s average review score by almost 2 points. The Xbox 360 manufacturer’s published games came in second, followed by Sony and Nintendo. You can see the full list on Metacritic’s rundown 2012′s best game publishers.

Interestingly, EA’s most direct competition, Activision, only just cracked the top 10. The Call of Duty publisher only managed an average score of 64.4 on the strength of Diablo III’s average review of 88.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Although Electronic Arts thinks Medal of Honor deserved better reviews, the publisher doesn’t have any plans to continue the struggling, sometimes controversial series at this time.

During a conference call to investors, EA says it’s removing the military first-person shooter series from its release rotation — effectively canceling the franchise.

“We are in a hits-driven business,” Electronic Arts Labels president Frank Gibeau said on the call. “We missed with Medal of Honor. We take responsibility for that. The rest of the studios performed well. The Medal of Honor miss overshadows those achievements.”

“We’re going to give Medal of Honor a rest while we plan its return,” an EA spokesperson told GamesBeat. “We haven’t made any decision on how or when it will return.”

EA said it has a new Battlefield title coming in the next fiscal year. The publisher is putting a lot of energy into that game.

“The top five games are maybe half of the industry’s profits,” EA chief executive officer John Riccitiello said. “FIFA and Battlefield could be one and two as we transition to what we see coming [for those franchises].”

Prior to this announcement that Medal of Honor series was going dormant, most analysts assumed EA would release a Medal of Honor game and a Battlefield game in offsetting years. This way the publisher could have a major shooter on the market every holiday, but that is obviously not the case. At the same time, EA denied that would annualize the Battlefield series.

Instead, the publisher claimed to have a new plan to have a new shooter each year, but it did not provide details.

EA currently has a publishing agreement with developer Respawn Entertainment, which the former heads of Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward started after leaving Activision.

The rebooted Medal of Honor and its sequel, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, were not hits. Recast in the modern era, these games received mixed reviews and sales that do not compare to the Call of Duty and Battlefield games that it competes with.

EA chief operating officer Peter Moore claimed that gamers couldn’t connect with Medal of Honor’s new focus on realism, although he felt the game deserved better reviews.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The video game business never has a year without controversy. 2012 was no different in that respect. But the different ways that game companies could get into trouble and draw mass market attention were surprising. The age-old controversies about sex, violence, and other cultural insensitivities surfaced again this year. But game publishers also had to deal with the consequences of being hacked, violating the government’s concerns about military security, and upsetting fans by failing to live up to games-as-a-service obligations in free-to-play games.

Sometimes, the controversies brew up from the bottom as unintended consequences. At other times, it seems like the controversies are intentionally manufactured for marketing reasons, so that the game can rise above the noise and catch the public’s attention. But that’s a double-edged sword, as such marketing can turn off as many consumers as you attract. Whether the controversies are accidental or intentional, it’s clear that when you create entertainment for the public, there are so many ways to get into trouble. Please vote in our poll for the top game controversy, and leave a comment if you like.

Video games take the heat for Newtown shooting

The horrific shootings at Newtown left 20 children and seven adults dead. Though it happened late in the year, this incident revived concerns over excessive violence in video games. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games were protected under the First Amendment. But calls for regulation and studying of a possible link between games and violence went out again in the wake of the shooting. The anti-game-violence crowd got help from an unexpected corner, as the National Rifle Association blamed the shooting on violent video games (and called for armed guards at schools). Greg Fischbach, former chief executive of Mortal Kombat publisher Acclaim Entertainment, predicted that the consequences of the shooting will play out over years for the game industry.

Ex-Navy SEALS disciplined for consulting on Medal of Honor Warfighter

Electronic Arts touted the fact that former elite soldiers gave it advice in the design of its realistic combat shooter Medal of Honor Warfighter. But the company failed to go through the proper channels in getting permission from the government for the consulting. As a result, the Department of Defense punished seven active-duty Navy SEALs who consulted on the game. The SEALs had two months of pay docked and received letters of reprimand. More were under investigation.

Among those who consulted was Matt Bissonnette, who was part of Seal Team 6 team that killed Osama Bin Laden. EA said that it wasn’t aware of any rules that required EA to vet the game with the DoD. It wasn’t clear if any military secrets were improperly divulged in the game. Bissonnette also got into hot water for co-writing the nonfiction account of the raid that killed Bin Laden in the book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.

Copycatting called out

Zynga has long been accused of copying other game designs. Electronic Arts finally sued the company this year for allegedly copying The Sims Social with the launch of Zynga’s The Ville people simulation game. EA claimed that Zynga’s team copied many details of The Sims Social. Zynga denied outright copying, and it noted that EA’s SimCity Social was similarly a copy of Zynga’s own city-building game, CityVille, and that CityVille itself has only passing resemblance to EA’s SimCity games on the PC.

In response to similar allegations of copying in a bingo game, Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, claimed that his company has re-imagined past games by making them more social. The result is those games become more popular than ever thanks to sharing with friends on Facebook. EA said that it had to stand up for the industry to stop the rampant copying. Complicating the matter was the fact that The Ville’s designer, Mark Skaggs of Zynga, used to work at EA, as did many other Zynga executives. The issue of copying came up again as Spry Fox sued 6waves for copying not the look of its game, but the game play. That lawsuit was settled. But the EA-Zynga dispute is still pending.

The courts have been clear on the subject. Making a new game in an existing genre isn’t a violation of copyright law. But taking someone’s computer code and claiming it as your own is illegal.

Talent raiding wars

Related to the copycat allegations, big companies also went to war over talent raids. After Zynga hired an EA executive, Zynga alleged that EA’s chief executive John Riccitiello proposed an anti-competitive no-hiring pact or he would threaten litigation. Zynga claimed that was the real reason for EA’s copycat lawsuit. Meanwhile, Kixeye CEO Will Harbin made a hilarious video lampooning Zynga and EA as part of a campaign to recruit talent. But then Zynga sued Kixeye for stealing a game designer. Zynga alleged that Alan Patmore took 763 confidential documents with him when he started his new job at Kixeye. But Harbin blasted Zynga for lashing out while it was “burning to the ground and bleeding top talent.”

Apple cracks down on bot marketers

Early in the year, Apple quietly prohibited mobile game companies from using bots and other marketing tactics that artificially boosted games in Apple’s rankings of its top-performing apps. Animoca alleged that Apple unfairly cracked down on its Pretty Pet Salon game and that communication from Apple was sparse. Our own investigation found that the secrecy around the crackdown left a lot of developers wondering what was OK to do and what wasn’t when it came to marketing games. Game developers feared that if everyone used unfair marketing tactics, then legitimate high-quality apps might never get noticed. But one thing was clear. If you used too many incentives, Apple would start paying attention. Late in the year, Tapjoy again learned a tough lesson about being too aggressive with incentives, this time with web-based offers that apps linked to from within Apple apps. Neither Apple nor Tapjoy elucidated on the matter, leaving developers in the dark.

Hackers disrupt online games

Anonymous taught Sony a big lesson last year as it hacked into both the PlayStation Network and disabled the network for 77 million registered users who could no longer access their online games. It also attacked Sony Online Entertainment. This year, hackers were back with more attacks. Gamigo got hacked and lost control over 8 million email addresses and passwords for its users. And 11,000 Guild Wars 2 players also had their passwords stolen. Zynga’s YoVille social game saw disruption for 1,000 fans after some players began using a vulnerability to steal belongings from other accounts. Game companies that get hit by hackers will find out that consumers will blame the company for lax security as much as they will blame the hackers.

Fan revolts hit Mystery Manor

Game Insight had a tough time dealing with fan outcry after it decided to take away some perks offered to players of the game. Game Insight made the iOS version of Mystery Manor: Hidden Adventure, which was enjoyed by as many as 20 million registered users. The hidden object game was a free-to-pay title where users could play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. But Apple banned a practice that the game had previously allowed: letting friends obtain and trade gifts with other players inside the game. Game Insight had to scramble to comply with the rules and fans objected. A second fan revolt erupted with a second service disruption. Fair warning. Fan revolts are going to be common if game developers decide to change long-standing online games or discontinue them altogether.

Sex chat brings down Habbo virtual world

A British TV station dealt Habbo a severe blow when it blew the lid off a sex chat culture within parts of the virtual world, which has more than 250 million registered users. During the scandal, retailers stopped carrying prepaid cards for Habbo and an investor pulled its support from the company. Habbo had measures in place to stop sexual predators, but it shut down the service to deal with the new allegations. The company reviewed its chat records and found 3.7 percent of members were engaged in inappropriate chat. By the time that Habbo went back online with new measures in place, it had lost about 35 percent of its membership. Chief executive Paul LaFontaine pledged to redouble efforts to protect kids and win more of those users back.

Ex-OMGPOP ignites debate about refusing to work for Zynga

OMGPOP’s Pictionary-style mobile game Draw Something gained a huge number of users early this year, prompting Zynga to buy the New York game company for $180 million. But Shay Pierce, one of OMGPOP’s employees, wrote a blog post about how he didn’t want to work for Zynga, which he viewed as completely antithetical to his professional and creative values. Then OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter tweeted that the one employee who didn’t accept a job with Zynga (Pierce) was the “weakest” one. But Pierce didn’t miss out on much. Draw Something lost millions of users and Zynga had to take a write-off of $95 million because of the diminished value of the mobile game. Zynga’s stock price also cratered as it announced two quarters of weak earnings in a row.

EA and Activision Blizzard spar over Infinity Ward

In 2011, Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts squared off over the departures of the founders of Infinity Ward, an Activision-owned studio that built the Call of Duty franchise into a billion-dollar machine. Two co-founders were fired from Infinity Ward as they prepared to exit and set up Respawn Entertainment, a new game studio funded by EA. The lawsuit was headed for a trial this year. Just before the trial, EA and Activision settled the case. But not before there were some interesting disclosures about Project Icebreaker. Activision executive email records showed that executives were hunting for dirt on the co-founders as a pretext to fire them. Activision denied the characterization of the emails.

Mass Effect 3′s ending fiasco

Fans were in an uproar after they played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy, only to be disappointed by the uninspired ending of Mass Effect 3. The fan reaction was so intense that Electronic Arts’ BioWare division decided to come out with an enhanced ending to satisfy gamers. And not long after that, BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk decided to retire from their top positions at EA.

Here’s our poll.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts is launching its Zero Dark Thirty map pack today on Origin.com for its Medal of Honor Warfighter modern combat game. The release of the game’s map pack is timed to coincide with the movie debut of Zero Dark Thirty, which chronicles the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The film opens for screenings on Dec. 19 and will be in theaters everywhere on Jan. 11.

Before you get too excited, the map packs don’t include a rendering of Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Rather, they depict scenes where elite soldiers known s Tier 1 operators clash with terrorists in a couple of new hot spots around the world.

The map packs allow players to walk in the shoes of special operations soldiers who hunted for Bin Laden. The new multiplayer levels include Chitral and Darra, with 10 map and mode combinations. There are also six new weapon configurations and 14 new weapon camouflage decorations.

Darra (pictured at top and right) is set in Pakistan in a gun market that is considered one of the largest black markets for weapons in the world, home to dozens of back alley shops. The combat takes place in multiple-level buildings. If you rack up enough kills in the infantry combat, you can call in support from a helicopter gunship or direct an artillery strike. Various modes include one that requires you to find a bomb and defuse it while the enemy team tries to stop you.

Chitral is set in a Pakistani compound that was allegedly one of Bin Laden’s hiding spots. It has a wrecked helicopter and allows you to roam through a bunch of hills. It features a lot of close combat among buildings clustered around a central square. You can call in an 81 millimeter mortar fire mission on a specific spot. If you take a perch above the square, you can dominate the action during the dusk/early evening battle.

EA has a new trailer that makes the combat seem exciting and important. It isn’t clear how well these map packs will sell. Medal of Honor: Warfighter received bad reviews (with an average score of 53 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic). By contrast, its chief competition, Call of Black Ops II, got a an average score of 83.

The association with the film could raise the awareness for the game. Zero Dark Thirty is the military term for 12:30 am, and the film was directed by Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker. But the game has already been associated with considerable controversy: Some former Navy SEALs were accused of discussing secret information with game developers and were reprimanded as a result.

The map pack will be published for $9.99 (or 800 Microsoft points) on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. It will be available on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network on Dec. 18. EA plans to donate a portion of the proceeds to its Project Honor campaign, for families of fallen special operations soldiers. The map pack is available at no cost to those with Limited or Deluxe editions of Medal of Honor Warfighter.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It turns out that real soldiers don’t regenerate and machine guns don’t have unlimited ammo. Who knew?

It’s no secret that first-person shooters — in all their Hollywood-inspired clamor and spectacle — don’t simulate the realities of war very well. From basic rules of engagement, to gun safety (such as “don’t flag your buddies”), and the dynamics of combat, first-person shooters are more akin to interactive action flicks than a proper re-creation of armed conflict.

Of course, no one wants to play a hyper-realistic military simulator, as this hilarious Onion sketch illustrates.

No one wants to fill out endless paperwork, take mandatory sexual harassment training, write NCOERs (noncommissioned officer evaluation reports), sit through Powerpoint presentations with the potency of 10 Valiums, or stand 12-hour watches. No one wants to experience “hurry up and wait.”

Because that would be boring. Too realistic.

People want an escape from the mundane. But surely we can find a happy medium between silly action flicks and boring reality.

With the recent release of what will probably be the best-selling video game of the year, Call of Duty Black Ops II (for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC), I thought it instructive to get the low-down from a real soldier, a veteran who deployed in support of the Global War on Terror. Sergeant Dave Mull deployed to Iraq in support of the Global War on Terror three separate times: ’04-’05, early ’07-late ’07, and ’08. His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is Cavalry Scount (19D), which essentially means that his job is enemy, area, and route reconnaissance. Altogether, he served 12 years.

Our conversation yielded some fascinating insights, and some of it may surprise you.

GamesBeat: What are some of the most basic details that your average military shooter gets wrong?

The author firing the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). The barrels get really hot and have a tendency to overheat.

GamesBeat: What inaccuracies seem the most jarring? Is there anything that would prevent you from playing such a game?

Dave Mull: Hmm … they seem to be trying far too hard to make everything “epic” in campaign mode. It can sometimes be a chore trying to figure out which enemies actually count and which ones are the infinitely respawning cannon-fodder bots.

It won’t stop me from playing it, but you’d think they could remember that sometimes nothing happening can be just as, if not much more, suspenseful.

GamesBeat: It does seem like the goal of many shooters — Call of Duty especially — is bigger setpieces, bigger explosions, and bigger bodycounts. Which naturally makes them more like a Michael Bay movie than anything resembling reality.

Dave Mull: Remember in the Metal Gear Solid games, it’s intended that you don’t kill anyone. Of course, you can, but it’s not the way [series creator Hideo] Kojima envisioned it.

GamesBeat: Indeed. And a reader on Bitmob, GamesBeat’s sister site, pointed out that MGS4 is one of the few games to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. In many ways, it’s a more realistic depiction of war than any first-person shooter.

Dave Mull: Very much so — specifically toward the end with Adam’s adoption of Liquid Snake’s personality and with the four gals of the Beauty and the Beast unit.

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Who knew the Department of Defense took operational security so seriously?

Multiple outlets are reporting that the government agency charged with protecting our nation’s secrets – the DoD – is punishing seven active-duty Navy SEALs who consulted on EA’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Four more are under investigation.

The DoD docked the SEALs’ pay for two months and placed letters of reprimand in their file. For all intents and purposes, this could end their careers.

Last month, GamesBeat reported that EA consulted with two dozen active-duty and retired SEALs and other Spec Ops personnel – including Matt Bissonnette, who was part of the Seal Team 6 team that killed Osama Bin Laden – for Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

At the time, EA spokesman Pete Nguyen told GamesBeat, “We are not aware of any rules that oblige EA to vet the game with the Department of Defense, and we don’t know if veterans who consulted on the game have been in contact with the Department of Defense.”

The latter has now been definitively settled. Apparently, the SEALs didn’t follow the normal vetting process, and they’re paying the price.

While civilians aren’t obligated to safeguard classified information – think of it as freedom of the press – military personnel are entrusted with security clearances, which entail very specific guidelines and restrictions.

And the military is very clear about interacting with the media: Service members must obtain permission before speaking to journalists. Typically, the DoD will refer the military personnel or media to Public Affairs Officers (PAOs).

I have no doubt that EA’s intentions were pure. The Medal of Honor reboot (2010) – based in part on Afghanistan’s Operation Anaconda – took great pains to honor the heroic sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. See this quote, taken from the game’s ending.

But EA forgot to bone up on OPSEC procedures.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was in the Army Reserves for three years and can attest to the fact that the military takes OPSEC (and idle chit-chat with the media) very seriously – especially after General Stanley McChrystal – formerly the Commander, International Security Assistance Force and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan – got a little too chummy with a Rolling Stone reporter, thereby forfeiting his career.

The military routinely lends technical assistance to Hollywood productions (provided the script passes DoD muster).

See: Top Gun, Transformers, Battleship, Black Hawk Down, etc.

But the DoD is especially sensitive about OPSEC concerns (the ‘ol “loose lips sink ships”), and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty – a fictionalized account of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden – caused a recent stir.

In response to the alleged disclosure of sensitive intel, Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said that “I am concerned about the possible exposure of classified information to these filmmakers, who as far as I know, do not possess security clearances.”

King has called for an investigation.

Given this turn of events – and the DoD’s ruffled feathers – it’s no surprise that the SEALs who consulted on Medal of Honor: Warfighter face disciplinary action.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This week, Valve claims the Linux operating system is more viable than Windows 8, Disney buys Star Wars studio Lucasfilm as well as LucasArts, and hurricane Sandy delays Take-Two Interactive’s earning call.

You’ll also find reviews for Halo 4, Pid, Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, Assassin’s Creed III,  WWE 13, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

News:

• Halo 4, Xbox, and American Express partnership: kill Covenant nasties to earn cold, hard cash
• The DeanBeat: Halo 4 is the romance of Master Chief and Cortana, disguised as a combat game
• Startup accelerator Tandem Capital rolls its new capital into mobile technology and games
• Twitch embeds livestreaming in Sony Online Entertainment’s Planetside 2
• Flurry’s knowledge is power as it raises a whopping $25M for mobile app analytics
• Wii U’s browser is better equipped for HTML5 than Internet Explorer 10 on PC
• Now streaming for Windows 8: 1,000 games from Agawi’s GameZen
• Preorder Crysis 3 and return to the beginning with a free download of Crysis
• Here come the brands: Wizard of Oz game launches on Facebook
• Mystery narrative and new features headline CityVille 2′s launch
• Minecraft-like first-person shooter heads to Steam in December
• Israel’s Plarium debuts graphically rich hardcore Stormfall game on Facebook (exclusive)
• Mountain Dew-branded Halo 4 game makes a weird sort of sense
• Valve prepping next batch of Greenlight-approved games in November
• Disney’s recent history suggests it might not be ‘business as usual’ at LucasArts for long
• Grand Theft Auto V delay blows a $600 million hole in Take-Two’s outlook for 2013
• Imbibe a Nos Energy Drink to unlock Assassin’s Creed III multiplayer character
• Disney buys LucasArts alongside Lucasfilm (updated)
• Gaming’s ‘Nite to Unite’ raises over $800,000 for children’s charities and scholarships
• Publisher Valve says Linux is more viable for games than Windows 8
• Browser-based steampunk: City of Steam enters closed beta in November
• Hawken publisher Meteor Entertainment raises $18M as big launch draws near
• Developers are mostly thrilled with the chance to make money with Windows 8 games

Mobile news:

• Boom! EA brings its Madden football franchise to iOS & Facebook
• Developer support builds for Ngmoco’s mobile social gaming network
• Amazon Game Studios launches its first mobile game: Air Patriots
• Joining the insane social sports-betting crowd, Bunker Mode debuts its High Limit Sports app (exclusive)
• Wooga expands into mobile with its Bubble Island arcade shooter game
• Leap Motion hires former Apple director to lead its marketing team
• Gameloft doesn’t hesitate to support Windows Phone 8 with 12 optimized games
• Activision preps two more Skylanders mobile games for this year
• Developers wary about investing in Windows Phone 8 games

Earnings:

• Sony’s game division revenues fall nearly 16 percent in Q2 2012
• Hurricane Sandy forces publisher Take-Two Interactive to postpone earnings report

Reviews:

• Halo 4 is the next chapter, not the next evolution (review)
• Pid turns childlike magic into planet-sized punishment (review)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s bearded badasses can’t defeat mediocrity (review)
• Assassin’s Creed III: The revolution will be gripping but glitchy (review)
• Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation can’t match the quality of its console brethren (review)
• WWE ’13 gives fans plenty of nostalgic Attitude (review)

Previews:

• Nintendo Land will make you hate your friends and family (hands-on preview)

Interviews:

• 343 Industries’ Josh Holmes on Halo 4′s love story, weaponry, and new enemies (interview)
• Better graphics and physics gave designers more freedom for Halo 4 (interview)
• Treyarch’s Mark Lamia promises that Call of Duty: Black Ops II will push gaming’s boundaries (exclusive interview)
• How to find the secret website in Shadowgate’s Kickstarter video and more (interview)
• David Vonderhaar’s expert advice on how to get ahead in Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer (exclusive interview)

Pieces of flair:

• You don’t have to play horror games to pee your pants in fear
• You can play Tetris on this pumpkin
• From celluloid to pixels: Movie personalities crash video games

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Mark Lamia’s day of reckoning is approaching: Nov. 13. That’s the day that Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II goes on sale around the world. The previous Call of Duty games have been the fastest-selling games of all time. And once again, Lamia’s Treyarch game studio is up to bat on the franchise (it shares development duties on the franchise with Infinity Ward). This time, the developers took a lot of risks, taking the storyline of the game from the late 1960s into the near-future of combat in the year 2025. While the battlefield is full of deadly drones and robot mechs, Call of Duty still focuses on the infantry soldier’s combat experience.

We spoke with Lamia about what Treyarch tried to accomplish and how they will define success as hardcore fans pick up the game on Nov. 13. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: You’re already in the category of the fastest-selling game of all time. What kind of goals do you have left?

Mark Lamia: As a developer, our goals were to create a Call of Duty game that would not only build on what people know and love from the series, but really — I know it’s an overused term — but we wanted to push the boundaries. People have a certain set of expectations coming into a Call of Duty game. Creatively, what we wanted to do making Black Ops II was turn some of those expectations around. There’s a lot of new things we’re bringing to the table for a Call of Duty game.

That starts from our setting. Black Ops was set in a different time period. This is set in the near future, and there’s also a time span here that takes place in the ’80s. If you look at the campaign, we’ve changed up the fundamental structure. It’s different from any Call of Duty game that anybody’s experienced before, the non-linearity of it. There’s a campaign arc that you have to see through if you want to get to the end, but we also have the Strike Force levels, which give you a choice. It affects not only what you’re playing but also the narrative structure of the game. We wanted to introduce greater player choice into the story, giving people these branching storylines and more choice inside the levels. The levels are designed so that you can take different approaches. You can even optimize your loadouts in campaign before you go in.

There’s a lot going on. It has a complex narrative structure that we architected. Players are going to love it. They’ve never gotten to experience that in the franchise. And all the gameplay mechanics have been built around this near-future setting. But it still has some core fundamentals. … The epic, cinematic nature of how we present Call of Duty to players and how they experience it in the campaign is still there. The core gun gameplay, how that feels. People who’ve played it before are going to find a familiarity in it. At the same time, though, there’s a lot that’s new as well.

For me and for the team, that’s very important. Bringing it back to your first point, we have this game that a lot of people love and a lot of people play. It’s a franchise. But in order to stay exciting and on top of your game, we have to bring new energy and new experiences. That dovetails creatively with what we wanted to do: something creative, not just an iterative sequel.

You’re always riding that line. You’re creating a sequel. Clearly, a lot of people are interested in that, because they liked the first one. You’re always balancing that, making sure you have something new and enough of what people already love. And that’s just the campaign.

But with multiplayer, it’s the same thing. You’ve played it, right? It feels how a Call of Duty multiplayer game should feel, but it opens it up wide. There’s that thread of choice that we provided the players. It’s accessible and it has depth and replayability. Whether it’s in campaign or the multiplayer, or even in Zombies, those are important design goals for us.

GamesBeat: How do you feel about the competitive noise this year? Last year, we had a lot of manufactured attention about Battlefield 3 versus Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. This year Medal of Honor: Warfighter is out, but it almost feels like we’re seeing more divergence this time. What’s your observation about the competitive environment?

Lamia: First off, it is an incredibly competitive environment. There are so many high-quality titles coming out in just one month, six weeks surrounding our launch. That’s great for the industry and great for entertainment. But when we’re making the game, we don’t know what other people are doing. It’s not really a factor in anything that we’re doing while we create the game.

How do I feel about it, personally? Well, there’s a lot of great choices for people. There’s a lot of diversity out there. If you look at the kind of games that are coming out in the window, you’ve got Assassin’s Creed, which is a different genre and a different kind of game. You’ve got Halo, which is a first-person shooter, but it’s a different kind of fiction and a different kind of game. Medal of Honor is very different. People have tried to draw comparisons between the two — they’re both first-person games and they both have military themes — but I don’t think anybody who plays Medal of Honor will think they’re that similar.

We have a military theme that runs through our action entertainment product. That’s what we’re doing with Black Ops II. The multiplayer is military-themed, but it’s as much about that competition, especially with our eSports agenda. And then we have Zombies, which clearly distinguishes it from any other games. … [Laughs]

GamesBeat: What kind of sentiment do you detect about the storyline? How has some of that changed since you guys started talking about it and revealed more things? What kind of feedback is coming in?

Lamia: The fundamental story hasn’t changed. It’s a narrative set in 2025. We wanted to tell that story arc about the villain and how his motivations came into being. We tell that story in the past through the eyes of old man Woods, his memories of those black ops missions. The consequences of those, in our fiction, are how this villain came into being.

It’s interesting to go into the future and see how warfare has changed. This villain is a villain in the past — he’s a narcoterrorist and a dealer in arms — but in the future he’s taken on different means to achieve his goals. There’s a lot of really great stories for each of our characters. They have their own arcs in the game, and the branching affects that. Certain decisions you make will have an effect on the entire structure of the narrative the game is going through.

The fan reaction to us taking on a new setting and telling a story in this new time period has been great. You get all kinds of feedback on a Call of Duty game, especially since people haven’t experienced it yet. People have all kinds of opinions. But generally, I think they’ve been surprised and delighted that we’re trying to bring something new to the franchise. They appreciate all those things I was talking about in terms of trying to push things forward.

The trailers that we’ve put out were very deliberate as far as trying to make people understand that we were going to be telling a story in our campaign and in multiplayer. We’re going forward with customization and player choice and the eSports. We have this expanded world that has exponentially more choice. People appreciate the ambition of this game. They had some preconceived notions about what Black Ops II might be, especially given the success we had with the first one. I think this is unlike what anyone expected us to come to the table with.

GamesBeat: Is there anything else that’s noteworthy coming in the final run-up to the game’s launch?

Lamia: When you run a studio, you feel differently about different projects at the end. After you create something and you’re going to put it out there and you know that a lot of people are going to have a lot of different opinions about it. … I look at this project as something we’ve thrown our hearts and souls into over the last two years. It’s the culmination of almost a decade’s worth of building this team. That’s what this game is.

Many people won’t have played a lot of our other games. Some people will have played Black Ops, some might have played World at War or Big Red One. We have people on the team from back to Call of Duty: United Offensive. You can see how, as a studio, we’ve been building up, how this is where we’ve gotten to.

The feeling around the studio is that there’s a lot of energy. This is the best work we’ve ever done, and I think the people who’ve seen us creating it feel that. That bodes well for the game and for everyone who’s going to buy it. It bodes well for the franchise. It’s going to be a great step forward.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello said in a conference call with analysts today that Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s sales are coming in below expectations.

As a result, EA expects soft sales in the third fiscal quarter ending Dec. 31, and it will have weaker earnings for the full year. Riccitiello made the remarks during a call today describing the giant video game publisher’s financial state after its second fiscal quarter earnings. EA beat overall analyst expectations.

Riccitiello said, in a baseball analogy, that EA doesn’t win every game, but it does put “more runs on the scoreboard” overall. Medal of Honor has been panned by critics (with a 60 out of 100 from GamesBeat), with an average of 50 out of 100 on Metacritic, an aggregator of review scores.

EA has tried twice now (last time in 2010) to reboot this modern combat franchise. This year, EA has been uncharacteristically quiet about competing head-to-head in the first-person shooter modern combat genre against Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty series.

In our review, Eduardo Moutinho write, “Horribly rendered CG cutscenes try to weave a patronizing and sometimes confusing tale of country-first heroes sacrificing their personal lives in the name of righteousness. One of the protagonists deals with personal crises involving his need-to-know-basis mission and uncanny valley-dwelling wife and daughter. Again, mimicking the ‘real thing.’”

Frank Gibeau, the head of EA’s game studios and an executive vice president, said Medal of Honor: Warfighter had a disappointing response from critics. Still, Warfighter has topped the charts in the United Kingdom.

Gibeau also said EA canceled NBA Live again this year because it didn’t live up to quality expectations like Madden NFL 13 and FIFA 13.

“We’re not pleased with the situation on either of these titles,” Gibeau said. He said EA is committed to basketball. He said internal testing and mock reviews showed that the Medal of Honor game is better than the critics said.

“But there are people out there who just don’t like the game,” he said.

Compared to last year’s Battlefield 3, Warfighter is a big disappointment. Battlefield 3 has sold more than 17 million copies.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Jingoistic modern-day first-person shooters love quotes from icons of American history, or at least their loading screens seem to enjoy them. So I couldn’t help but use a JFK classic to summarize Medal of Honor: Warfighter as an experience: “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

Electronic Arts’ recently released multiplatform first-person shooter assumes we can’t get enough of the blockbuster bang-and-boom escapades that have made competing franchises like Activision’s Call of Duty so popular.

Yet with Warfighter, EA remains at the rear of the corporate first-person-shooter platoon because it chose to march in place instead of moving forward.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Warfighter can’t hang with its big-budget brothers in arms, so let’s enter the fray and take a closer look.

What you’ll like

The modern-warfare shooter model is tired but still fun

Warfighter clearly takes inspiration from other releases in its genre. Unlike some of the me-too efforts that have followed a similar path, the gameplay here can be pretty fun at times. Shooting mechanics are familiar and precise. Helpful onscreen icons let you know when you’ve nailed that reflex-rewarding headshot. And single-player skirmishes give you access to a convenient peeking move that facilitates leaning around corners, adding a slight cover-based-shooter vibe to the combat. Sadly, the feature is unavailable for multiplayer encounters.

Wait … is this Need for Speed?

The remarkably short single-player campaign doesn’t just leave you gripping human-neutralizing weapons. It makes you grip a steering wheel every now and then, too. These vehicle sequences are surprisingly lengthy, and they task you with driving through people-packed Pakistani streets and freshly paved Dubai motorways. You’ll even get to maneuver an indestructible Zodiac boat through a fiery-and-flooded Filipino town.

While these moments don’t have the same feel as a tightly tuned EA racing title, they break up the body-count-boosting fighting sequences pretty effectively.

United Nations of multiplayer

Obviously, Warfighter puts a lot of emphasis on multiplayer. Playing on the Xbox 360, I had to insert a whole new disc just to battle other flesh-and-blood beings. Regardless, you’ll encounter many of the standard FPS multiplayer tropes. So expect to unlock different combat classes and weapon loadouts by racking up kills in the different online modes.

What makes Warfighter stand out, however, is its global approach to the aforementioned classes. Keeping with its from-the-frontlines tone, you’re immediately asked to browse through different real-world, tier-one special-forces archetypes representing 10 countries. You can deploy as a United States Army SFOD-D assaulter, a Canadian JTF2 sniper, or even a German KSK heavy gunner, among others. While somewhat superficial, the international angle adds an interesting layer to the typical choose-your-guy-and-go approach.

Multiplayer also introduces the “fire team” concept where you’re paired with someone for a group-deathmatch session. You’ll receive bonuses as you help your fellow friendly, and you’ll even have the option to respawn at your buddy’s location (if he can stay alive long enough).

What you won’t like

Mediocrity ‘inspired by real events’

Every contemporary-combat based FPS has a gratuitous near-death, arms-flailing-in-front-of-you, holy-expletive moment or two … or 12. Warfighter joins the club, but the instances in its single-player campaign take inspiration from actual events, adding a never-before-seen level of “realism.” So this time, when a massive explosion causes a chain reaction that leads to a giant crane collapsing on top of you, it’s more “lifelike.”

Horribly rendered CG cutscenes try to weave a patronizing and sometimes confusing tale of country-first heroes sacrificing their personal lives in the name of righteousness. One of the protagonists deals with personal crises involving his need-to-know-basis mission and uncanny valley-dwelling wife and daughter. Again, mimicking the “real thing.”

The genuine men and women fighting these wars are facing life-and-death threats, both on and off the battlefield. No one can replicate or claim to replicate what they’ve gone through, are going through, and will go through. Most FPS releases hide behind a digital veil of ignorance. They’re just video games, right? Nothing but mindless fun. EA deliberately chose to stick the authenticity label on Warfighter, and that decision brings the consequences, and scrutiny, that come with it.

In short, Warfighter feels like a Michael Bay movie masquerading as a Kathryn Bigelow film.

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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) hopes to jumpstart sales of its graphics chips and PC video cards by bundling top-selling video games with them.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is launching the Never Settle bundle that includes an AMD Radeon 7900 graphics card and multiple games for hardcore players. For those who buy the card, AMD will offer four major titles either free or at a discount. AMD needs the boost, as it recently reported a quarterly loss and said it would lay off 1,700 employees, or 15 percent of its workforce.

“This is the single most important game bundle of the year for Radeon graphics,” said Robert Hallock, AMD product marketing manager, in a press briefing. “This is the biggest graphics card bundle we have ever offered, and this is probably the biggest graphics card bundle that has ever been offered in the graphics industry.”

The bundle comes with an AMD Catalyst driver and free PC copies of Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs. In addition, customers will be able to get a 20 percent discount on Medal of Honor: Warfighter. All of the titles are major releases for the fall.

The bundle has several options. If you buy an AMD Radeon HD 7800 series graphics card or a Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition card, you can get Far Cry 3 for free and Medal of Honor Warfighter for 20 percent off. If you buy two AMD Radeon HD 7850 series graphics cards ($399), two Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition cards ($239), or two Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition cards ($499), then you can get Far Cry 3 and Hitman: Absolution for free as well as the 20 percent discounter on Warfighter. The value of the games in the bundles ranges from $60 to $170.

The new Catalyst 12.11 driver software provides a 15 percent performance gain in titles such as Battlefield 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Sleeping Dogs, and Dirt: Showdown. The bundle will be available in October after the launch of Windows 8.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, EA is reportedly working with Fox on a Battlefield: Bad Company TV series, Valve wants gamers to help playstest unreleased products, Kixeye opens up about last week’s racism allegations, and OnLive’s assets sold for a mere $4.8 million.

You’ll also find reviews for Dishonored, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Forza Horizon, and Nights: Into Dreams HD.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The pace of disruption from physical to digital gaming
• Xbox Live tells us who won the vice presidential debate
• Temple Run developer has figured out how to make money on Android
• Rocket-powered robots to shoot other robots in Hawken beta this month
• Block by block: How Roblox is building one of gaming’s biggest platforms
• Linden Lab grabs its second life with creativity games
• How big is League of Legends? 12M daily users play for 1B hours each month and 75 die every second (infographic)
• September NPD: Borderlands 2 nearly tops best-seller list as overall sales take another dive
• Sony refreshes interface for its entertainment network
• Amazon gets Assassin’s Creed III Encyclopedia Edition for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
• Streaming tech company T5 claims Sony’s Gaikai infringes on its patents
• The first Borderlands 2 expansion is filled with booty — date and price announced
• Both ToeJam & Earl games headed to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade in November
• Valve wants your help playtesting unreleased games and hardware prototypes
• ‘Fight Club’ director producing Halo 4 launch trailer
• Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts returns to gaming with Star Citizen online game universe
• With nine brains, this hydra-like Tilera chip is a multitasking wizard
• OnLive’s assets were sold for only $4.8 million
• Three-day badges are sold out for the PAX East gaming convention
• Windows 8 now defaults to real currency, but Xbox 360 still uses Microsoft Points
• The exodus continues: Zynga Poker general manager quits
• D&D artist casts ‘resurrect’ spell on old art, with help from Kickstarter
• Fanhood enters the sports-betting game fray on Facebook (exclusive)
• Updated: Developer Backbone Entertainment lays off workers
• Rovio: Star Wars Angry Birds ‘is the best Angry Birds we’ve ever done’
• EA reportedly working with Fox to develop Battlefield: Bad Company TV series
• 2012 game investments: Number of deals is up, but average raised per startup is dropping
• Sony sues Kevin Butler actor (update: Sony comments)

Mobile News:

• 23 percent of app gamers play only on mobile devices
• Heyzap launches a ‘play with friends’ feature for multiplayer mobile games
• He-Man game for iOS in the works
• Stunning mobile game Contre Jour goes multitouch in HTML5 with Microsoft’s help
• Moga mobile game controller to debut in 7,000 stores (video)
• AOL remakes Games.com for social-mobile era
• Sega brings Crazy Taxi to iOS

Reviews:

• The open road meets dubstep-laced stereotypes in Forza Horizon (review)
• Threeview: A critic, an analyst, and an academic review Resident Evil 6
• PlayStation 3 Super Slim isn’t worth the upgrade (review)
• Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise is a dead bear’s party that’s not much fun
• Threeview: A critic, an analyst, and an academic review Bad Piggies
• Nights into Dreams HD is too brutally difficult to overcome nostalgia (review)
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown is peerless in modern game design (review)
• Dishonored lets you take sweet, sweet revenge (review)

Previews:

• Vehicles are the real stars in the chaotic world of team-shooter Ravaged (hands-on preview)
• EA invests big in Medal of Honor: Warfighter multiplayer combat (hands-on preview)
• Far Cry 3 balances an unforgettable narrative with an open world (hands-on preview)

Interviews:

• A successor to Nintendo Power magazine has less than 8 hours left to raise $5k on Kickstarter (interview) (update)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter focuses on buddies and international warriors to boost multiplayer audience (interview)
• Gaming luminary Trip Hawkins talks about a $400 mouse, his new gig, and gestural controls (interview)
• Kixeye CEO says his company is aggressive, but not racist (exclusive interview)
• Dead or Alive 5 director discusses Hollywood, eSports, and tips for beginners (interview)

Pitch us in one Tweet:

• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#1: Sixty Second Shooter)

Pieces of Flair:

• The weird and bizarre side of 25 years of Street Fighter
• Game industry pros confess their piles of shame
• Cool concept art for Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen online game (art gallery)
• Star Citizen features stunning sci-fi visuals (screenshot gallery)
• Borderlands 2′s Mechromancer: A girlfriend plays ‘girlfriend mode,’ boyfriend plays ‘boyfriend mode’
• The best of Skyrim mods #3: Super Skyrim Bros.
• Nonlethal and undetected: 10 essential tips & tricks to mastering Dishonored
• GamesBeat’s massive Street Fighter tournament: Decide who moves on from Division 1
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 7: Consoles)
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 6: Retro arcade)
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 5: Mobile)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Medal of Honor: Warfighter debuts on Oct. 23 as Electronic Arts’ latest bid to steal some thunder from Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty franchise.To make a dent in the world’s fastest-selling game series, Warfighter has to step up the competition for the attention of gamers in multiplayer combat, which is crucial to the retention of players over many months.

While Call of Duty: Black Ops crushed EA’s 2010 reboot of Medal of Honor, last year’s Battlefield 3 helped close the gap in 2011 against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Now, EA hopes that Warfighter will take more market share from this year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which debuts Nov. 13.

Having played it hands-on, I say the jury is still out. I haven’t seen enough of it yet. But the game does a good job of putting players in the boots on the ground. That is, it feels authentic.

In Warfighter, the good thing is that multiplayer mode has become a bigger priority. Developer Danger Close handled the multiplayer combat itself this time, whereas it was outsourced in the past. The multiplayer game offers two unique selling points compared to other shooters. The first is that you can play in cooperative mode with a buddy, who can watch your back. When you die, you can respawn right on your buddy’s location, making it less likely that you’ll be instantly shot once you reenter the action. And you can share situational awareness of the map.

The second is that you can choose to play a soldier from any one of 12 special forces units from 10 countries around the globe. For gamers, that means there are a dozen different kinds of soldiers to try out, allowing for endless variety of weapons, armor, and attachments. That adds a lot of depth and replayability. You can meet people from all over the world and kill them in Warfighter’s multiplayer combat system.

The downside of that is a loss of realism. While it might be possible for a rainbow coalition of soldiers to appear in a mission, it’s very unlikely in the real world. But in this game, you’ll see Swedish special forces alongside American Tier 1 Operators fighting against South Korean commandos and British Special Air Service veterans. For a series that prides itself on authenticity, as we noted in our preview of the single-player version, this is a drawback of diversity.

Overall, the combat in Warfighter is more like a “scalpel” of surgical missions compared to the “sledgehammer” of Battlefield 3′s large-scale warfare, said Kristoffer Bergqvist, the multiplayer creative director at Danger Close, in an interview with GamesBeat. Warfighter aims to deliver a more personal experience where you can see the enemy in one-on-one combat, rather than blasting at a clump of soldiers with a tank from a mile away.

Warfighter shows more diversity of maps, too. Whereas 2010′s Medal of Honor was focused in Afghanistan, this game covers the globe’s hot spots for terrorism. It also features the Frostbite 2 engine that powered the realistic physics and 3D graphics of Battlefield 3. That makes for better quality images, but at the sacrifice of some speed. EA showed off five maps and four modes at a recent preview event.

Warfighter has some modes such as Home Run that lend themselves to competitive gaming. In that mode, you get one life. If you’re shot, you have to sit out the game. You can’t really use vehicles unless you count remote-controlled drones or a single flyable Apache gunship.

Danger Close has tried to make the game snappy and responsive. But the version I played — a Capture the Flag mission in the ruins of a city — wasn’t that fast. In the close quarters of the ruins, it was very hard to get a bead on the enemy at close range.

That can be fixed with better connectivity and refinements by the time of launch, but the clock is ticking on optimizing the experience for the retail customers. I got some kills but couldn’t dominate. The graphics look good, but the camera zooms in a little too close on the faces of the soldiers after the matches. The problem is those faces don’t look very realistic, and that takes away from the experience.

The game debuts on the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3. Here’s a screenshot gallery of multiplayer action below:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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When it comes to the first-person shooter combat game market, the Call of Duty and Battlefield series rule. But Electronic Arts and its Danger Close game studio are trying to get the previously neglected Medal of Honor series to capture the attention of the world’s most picky hardcore gamers.

This year, Medal of Honor: Warfighter promises to be a step up from past efforts in part because it uses the Frostbite 2 engine from the Battlefield series. Medal of Honor, last created in 2010, is about reproducing an authentic special operations experience. But this time, EA is moving the subject matter of the game beyond the Afghanistan-focused U.S. Tier 1 operators and to a global battle against terror.

Key to getting more gamers more engaged with the series is to get them to play multiplayer for a longer time. So we caught up with Kristoffer Bergqvist, multiplayer creative director at Danger Close, to talk about how Medal of Honor: Warfighter, which ships Oct. 23 on multiple platforms, will accomplish that. Here’s an edited transcript of our talk.

GamesBeat: If you pull out to the bigger picture — there’s Call of Duty, there’s Battlefield, and they’ve done very well. They’ve dominated. Medal of Honor still has to prove itself. So how is the multiplayer for Medal of Honor going to help lift you up to the level of the competition?

Bergqvist: It’s been interesting, defining Medal of Honor multiplayer. It’s something that happened very early on. One way to look at it is we’re the scalpel. Battlefield is the sledgehammer. They do the big tanks and jets kind of warfare. We’re about operators working on foot. More man-to-man combat.

One thing that defines our gameplay is the fighting functionality. Fighting as these two-man units. You and a friend pair up. You share intel. You share situational awareness. You can spawn on each other if you go down. Playing as a pair like that will pay off a lot, both in terms of score and in terms of kill/death ratio. It’s the single most important gameplay feature.

GamesBeat: What should we notice about this kind of multiplayer compared to what you were doing a couple of years ago, where it was all just American soldiers?

Bergqvist: There’s a couple of big things we’re doing that stand out. One is we’ve taken a page from EA Sports, where you can represent your nation. I go out and play as the Swedish unit, of course, because I’m Swedish. I represent my nation in the blue-versus-blue scenario. I can battle as the Swedish SOG versus, say, the American Navy SEALs to see who’s the best.

We also have a lot of classes — more classes than we’ve ever had before. Six classes. Each of them has unique support actions, unique abilities, unique gadgets and grenades. Unique weapons systems, of course. We have over 30 different abilities to try out. Everything from hand-thrown UAVs to trip-wire booby traps to flyable Apache helicopter gunships. That was a big focus for us during development — to add a lot of depth and a lot of content to the multiplayer experience.

GamesBeat: How many different worldwide special forces are there here?

Bergqvist: We have 12 units from all over the world? They’re from 10 different countries. We have three American units in there. You can play as any of those today. We’re going to start off with a smaller map, the same one that was playable at E3. After that, we’re going to northern Pakistan. We’re also going to play Sarajevo Stadium. It’s in Bosnia.

GamesBeat: That’s the way it’s going to be in the finished game as well?

Bergqvist: Yeah. You’re going to see all of them today. We have some combinations still locked in this version, though. Each of these units can exist in any class. We have 12 units and six classes, which makes for 72 possible soldiers in total in the final game. You’ll have access to 24 of them today, I think.

GamesBeat: It seems like a good marketing idea [laughter]. If you live in Pakistan, you don’t necessarily want to play as an American soldier all the time.

Bergqvist: The story behind it was that … when we started designing the game, we sat down and talked with the consultants we work with. We talk to a lot of American operators. They spoke very highly of other international special forces they’ve met and deployed with. We’re a very international development team, so we said, “Hey, that’s really cool. We want that.” That’s how it started, and we ended up with these 12.

GamesBeat: As far as improvements compared to 2010 — the buddy is there. You’ve got that. What else makes a difference?

Bergqvist: There’s a lot more content. We have six classes compared to the three from the last game. We have [five] game modes. We’ve done a lot of work using the ways in which Frostbite has developed since then. We’ve worked a lot with the control inputs, trying to take that to the next level. Making it as snappy and responsive as players expect.

Most of all, we have added a lot of depth to the game. We want a persistence system that will last for months. That’s also why we added all these features, all these gadgets. There are lots of things to unlock. We also added a weapon customization system that allows for hundreds of thousands of different variations on your guns.

GamesBeat: What else helps Medal of Honor become a year-round game? That’s the model Activision has moved Call of Duty toward with Elite and stretching the map releases across every month.

Bergqvist: We are increasing our focus on competitive gaming. We have a game mode especially designed for competitive gaming called Home Run. It’s more about a small team. It’s a one-life game mode with no respawning. If you get a group of six friends together, you can go online and choose to match up with any other clan that’s out there. Playing these matchmaking battles will earn you a ranking. You’ll get more ranking depending how good the clan you may have defeated was. That’s where we see most of the lifespan of the game.

GamesBeat: I noticed that you’re driving a car there in the single-player trailer. Are you going to be able to do that in the multiplayer as well?

Bergqvist: Vehicles are a part of some of our support actions, but not in that sense. There are remote-controlled drones, both flyable ones and ones that fly on tracks. We have this flyable Apache gunship that you can get in and control. You drive that with your fighting buddy, so you drive while he fires. Those are the kind of vehicles you can use.

GamesBeat: What are some other things people are going to notice as they start to unpack the game and start playing?

Bergqvist: The first thing they’re going to notice is, of course, the 12 different units. That’s the first option you get when you get in there. You see them all lined up.

Another thing they’re going to notice is the Battlelog integration. We now have Battlelog also inside the game clients, so you can access your news feed while you still have the game running. In Battlelog, we have a meta-game we call Warfighter Nations. By playing Medal of Honor: Warfighter multiplayer, you earn tokens. You can spend those on Warfighter Nations. You choose a country to represent there out of 193 different nations we feature in that meta-game. If you spend your tokens well, you’ll get more experience feeding back into Warfighter that will help you level up even faster.

GamesBeat: Are people going to be motivated to try more than one country, or do you expect people to stick with their native nation as long as they play?

Bergqvist: Actually, I see people switching a lot. I switch a lot myself. Partly because they have different support abilities. They can do different things. With all these variations, having 72 different soldiers to choose from, it’s pretty amazing. If you’re bored of looking at one, there’s a lot more to pick.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Cliff Bleszinski leaves Epic Games, online developer Kixeye comes under fire after a former employee blogs about alleged racism in the workplace, and Zynga pre-announces weak third quarter earnings.

You’ll also find reviews for Resident Evil 6, FIFA 13, and Bad Piggies, as well was previews for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Skylanders Giants, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

News:

• The DeanBeat: Raptr’s gamer data shows that building real communities pays off in profits (it’s the community, stupid)
• Words With Friends co-creators leave Zynga
• Rovio teases Star Wars-themed Angry Birds
• Loot Drop reveals RPG storyline on Kickstarter
• Photo gallery of Skylanders creator Toys for Bob studio
• Activision gives Skylanders Giants the mega-investment treatment
• Zynga ‘pre-announces’ weak earnings again for third quarter
• Full Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox retail titles headed to 3DS eShop
• The 3DS eShop’s best game, Pushmo, gets a sequel in Crashmo
• AppFlood is one of the fastest growing developer-to-developer ad networks
• Kixeye fires four after investigation into allegations of racism
• Dishonored isn’t a Choose Your Own Adventure game, but this trailer is
• Artillery aims to make web browsers into game consoles (exclusive)
• Cliff Bleszinski leaves Epic Games
• Bethesda hires former Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer to run new Austin studio
• George Washington stars as the villain in Assassin’s Creed III extra content
• Patch notes: Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition update includes Creative Mode, strongholds, and dozens more
• Game veterans launch a two-fer ‘old-school RPG’ game on Kickstarter
• Kixeye takes ‘substantial corrective action’ after black contractor calls out alleged racist behavior at social gaming firm
• Notch to Callaham: ‘Thanks for the personal attack’ (UPDATED)
• Ubisoft continues support for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier with new multiplayer maps
• Resident Evil 6′s science is not just for ‘old men in tweed suits’
• Buy certain games on the 3DS eShop, get Donkey Kong: Original Edition free
• Possible box art appears for the unconfirmed Star Wars: First Assault Xbox Live Arcade game
• Mass Effect trilogy on Xbox 360 won’t include any of the paid DLC
• Aaargh! KingsIsle Entertainment’s Pirate101 online game world to launch as early as Oct. 8
• Maingear launches a 17-inch gaming laptop with free custom paint jobs
• What were the cheapest and most expensive consoles in gaming history? (infographic)

Mobile news:

• Angry Birds maker Rovio plans to reveal its mobile book app
• Battlefield 3 graphics for mobile? EA has developer DICE on the job
• Directly record your iPhone games with Kamcord

MMO news:

• Mists of Pandaria sales fall short of previous two World of Warcraft expansions

Interviews:

• How animators bring Skylanders Giants to life (video interview)
• How Toys for Bob turned Activision into a giant toy company with Skylanders (interview)

Reviews:

• FIFA Soccer 13 strives for perfection through gameplay imperfection (review)
• Bad Piggies is a painfully challenging departure from Angry Birds (review)
• Resident Evil 6 thrives on its silliness but stumbles when things get serious (review)
• Pokémon Black and White Versions 2 take few risks but still offer classic thrills (review)

Previews:

• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance may need to rise above its surprisingly conventional design (hands-on preview)
• How animators bring Skylanders to life (video interview)
• Medal of Honor: Warfighter wants to be ‘Saving Private Ryan meets Hurt Locker,’ but its gameplay is in the way (hands-on preview)
• Activision gives Skylanders Giants the all-in, mega-investment treatment (hands-on preview)
• Giant robots with frickin’ laser beams: MechWarrior Online closed beta (hands-on preview)
• Will Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified lure gamers to the PlayStation Vita? (hands-on preview)
• Beef up your NBA 2K13 career with Facebook and mobile apps (preview)

Pitch us in one Tweet:

• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#2: Colour Bind)
• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#3: Hackycat)
• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#4: Ring Run Circus)
• The top 10 games of ‘Pitch us in one Tweet’ (#5: Dunk Dreams)

Pieces of flair:

• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 4: It came from Japan)
• A insider’s photo tour of the Toys for Bob game studio, where Skylanders are born (photo gallery)
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 3: PC)
• Steampunk NES’s creator spent 20 hours on the coolest gift a nephew ever got (gallery)z
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 2: Popular franchises)
• Gaming art for your Twitter header (Part 1: The modern era)
• Mmm…10 video game cakes and other sweets (gallery)
• 15 bizarre Street Fighter Alpha mysteries

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The 2010 reboot of Medal of Honor certainly had its share of controversy. Billed as a gritty look at the lives of so-called Tier 1 Operators — the elite of the elite in the American special forces — it caught flak from the real-world military for putting players in the roles of the terrorists. The terrorists are gone from the multiplayer, but for better or worse, the single-player campaign is intent as ever on ripping its story straight from the headlines.

In real-world hot spots in the Middle East and Somalia, the Tier 1 Operators encounter both pirates and local terrorists in their hunt for PETN — the same stuff used by “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid. It’s an approach meant to set the series apart from the more fanciful stories of Call of Duty, with their secret numbers and Russian conspiracies. The story also goes out of its way to add depth to its eclectic cast of super soldiers. The main character, a man code-named Preacher, is shown dealing with both the fallout of the fighting and a broken family.

Single-player producer Luke Thai talks at some length about the need to get a “soldier’s perspective.” He feels that it’s a sense of personal engagement with the soldiers that helps set the series apart. With Call of Duty having quite a bit in common with the television show 24, Thai identified shows and movies that are similar to Medal of Honor, and he isn’t shy about employing a bit of hyperbole: “It is a little bit Hurt Locker meets Saving Private Ryan.”

Neither film, of course, needs any introduction. Thai laughs off suggestions that Medal of Honor’s story is on the same level as these Best Picture nominees, but he feels fans have a genuine connection to the franchise and to the “soldiers who have sacrificed so much for their country.” It says as much as anything about how developer Danger Close wants its franchise to be viewed by general audiences.

Such sentiments, however, can’t help but bring Medal of Honor into sticky territory. Unlike Call of Duty, which defaults to classic Red Dawn-like scenarios that are rarely meant to be taken serious (save for the still-chilling “No Russian”), Medal of Honor rips its missions from the headlines. The Bin Laden raid took place after development had already started, for example, but given a chance, one gets the feeling that Danger Close would have tried to work it in.

What’s troubling about Medal of Honor: Warfighter is how nonchalant it sometimes seems about the issue of war. The recently-released Spec Ops: The Line, for example, has been lauded for its deconstruction of the modern military shooter and its uncomfortable depiction of war as hell that blurs the line between friend and foe. Medal of Honor’s outlook is a bit more black and white.

“It’s important to call out the fact that the conflicts that are occurring are versus forces that are considered bad guys in the world,” says Thai. “So it’s not really about race or nationality. It’s really about fighting the bad forces in those particular regions that we depict in the single-player. And approached that way, it’s not really that sensitive.”

That outlook is reinforced with missions that feel arcade-like at times. Danger Close showed two levels at their recent event: a conventional stage that culminates with a sniper battle on the rooftops and a driving chase. With a few exceptions — moments that Thai refers to as “nuggets of realism,” such as working together to break down a door — it feels much like any other military shooter. The action takes place around discrete set-pieces and involves mowing down dozens upon dozens of enemies — not exactly the stuff of a film like Hurt Locker.

Never is that more apparent than the car chase section, which the Need for Speed: The Run team at EA Black Box developed in part. It’s actually the strongest part of the demo, featuring challenges like navigating narrow alleyways, a crowded marketplace, and a surprise traffic jam. When you finally catch your prey with a well-timed sideswipe, the resulting collision is straight out of Burnout.

“What ended up working really well is that, if we’re going to do a driving level, we’d better do it right,” says Thai. “That’s what’s going to set our driving level apart from any other. And that’s where the idea came into play to interface with and collaborate with some of the Need for Speed folks and get their expertise to really make that driving experience super compelling.”

It’s perfect for Medal of Honor, which may be part of the problem. With a few exceptions, Need for Speed has generally been content to leave the sim aspects to the competition in face of a more arcade-like experience. That feeling is certainly present in Warfighter. It feels good, but it’s definitely at odds with the franchise’s attempts to present itself as a realistic military shooter. It seems that Medal of Honor wants to have it both ways: gritty realism and arcade shooting.

Admittedly, walking the line between realism and fun isn’t easy, especially when it comes to shooters. Even Spec Ops is ultimately pretty arcade-like in its approach to shooting. But that said, Spec Ops is pretty fanciful itself in its depiction of a Dubai buried to its waist in a vicious sandstorm. Medal of Honor wants you to believe that the scenarios it’s presenting could be playing out as we speak.

In that, it displays a certain lack of self-awareness. Danger Closes’ attempt to make its soldiers more than action figures is laudable, but in the end, the gameplay has to match the tone of the story. Based on what has been shown thus far, the gulf between the two in Medal of Honor is as wide as ever.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Update: EA spokesman Pete Nguyen returned our request for a comment on this situation:

Medal of Honor: Warfighter is an authentic depiction of combat operations in the war on terror. More than 20 combat veterans have actively contributed to the game. They offered advice on weapons, tactics, and other elements. It was not our intention to betray secrets or threaten national security in any way. We are not aware of any rules that oblige EA to vet the game with the Department of Defense, and we don’t know if veterans who consulted on the game have been in contact with the Department of Defense.

A major aspect of the Electronic Arts media campaign for the first-person shooter Medal of Honor in 2010 was that real top-level soldiers consulted on the game.

EA lauded the involvement in promotional materials: “A small group of these men acted as consultants on the development of Medal of Honor, infusing the game with their experiences and contributing ideas that make it the most authentic and relevant combat experience to date.”

Using a military expert to legitimize the authenticity of a work of fiction (be it a game, movie, or book) is not unusual.

Things are a bit different for Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and it’s because of one man: Matt Bissonnette. Under the pen-name Mark Owen, Bissonnette authored a nonfiction account of the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. He was a member of SEAL Team 6 when it conducted the operation. Bissonnette has since retired from the U.S. Navy.

The book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden, hit stores on September 4 and drew scrutiny for potentially revealing classified information about the military tactics used to kill the world’s most-wanted terrorist. Typically, publishers submit nonfiction accounts of military duty like this to the United States Department of Defense (DOD) for approval. Bissonnette’s publishers skipped that process.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bissonnette — again under the name Mark Owen — consulted on Medal of Honor: Warfighter with two dozen other retired and active-duty SEALs and other special operatives. The Department of Defense requires that military personnel receive permission before consulting in the media.

The DoD claims that no requests for approval were ever made for the Medal of Honor: Warfighter project.

“The Department of Defense has never asked to vet the games or the contributions of veterans and active-service members,” Electronic Arts spokesman told the L.A. Times.

We’ve contacted EA about Bissonnette’s involvement in the production of the game and will update with its response.

That brings the entire situation back to Bissonnette and a Department of Defense that is afraid to allow the author off without some sort of punishment.

“I cannot as secretary send a signal to SEALs who conducted those operations, ‘Oh, you can conduct these operations and then go out and write a book about it … and/or sell your story to the New York Times,’” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said in an interview on September 11 broadcast of CBS This Morning.

So while Medal of Honor: Warfighter may not include any sensitive information, and Bissonnette’s specific contributions could be negligible, that isn’t really the point.

“How the hell can we run sensitive operations here that go after enemies if people are allowed to do that?” Panetta asked rhetorically.

EA plans on releasing Medal of Honor: Warfighter on October 23. The sequel picks up where the first game left off and follows the team of “tier-1 operators” as they travel to dangerous locations around the globe.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts’ abrupt debut of Battlefield 4 rippled across the gaming community within the past week with many gamers staking into the “too soon” camp as the primary reason for the upcoming fourth-quel’s lukewarm reception so far.

Indeed, EA’s chatter regarding another fully realized entry in the popular multiplayer first-person shooter franchise seems impulsive. Battlefield 3 Premium is but a month old and only two of the five planned map packs released so far.

Of course, some shooter fans consider yearly installments of their favorite titles the standard metric for pacing. Call of Duty players, for example, receive a new game every year regardless of choice. The Battlefield franchise typically sticks to a two-year cycle, but concerns over whether developer DICE’s resources will become stretched between maintaining BF3 and developing BF4 present possible roadblocks for the studio in addition to shoring up player-requested features such as in-game voice chat functionality and a spectator mode.

DICE, predictably, thinks the timing is ideal.

“We’ve seen a lot of concerns about the pacing of release,” BF3 community manager Ian “Crash” Tornay wrote in a Reddit post. “I think it’s worth noting DICE released a Battlefield game every two years or sooner and Mirror’s Edge at least every two years.”

He continued, “I truly believe we’re in one of the best positions for creating our next title. [BF3 graphics engine] Frostbite 2 has matured, we’ve been gathering fan feedback like crazy, BF3 continues its expansion with features we can learn from, and we’ve got more data about how people play than ever.”

Tornay also pledged DICE’s continued upkeep of BF3′s servers and support, saying, “Starting work on BF4 doesn’t mean we’re abandoning BF3 or working any less hard to bring you the best expansions we can.”

He also confirmed “other ways” of accessing BF4′s beta test (planned for fall 2013) aside from pre-ordering developer Danger Close’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter, although the latter provides a “guaranteed entry,” according to Tornay.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In the early morning hours of July 14, a pre-order promo on Origin (the Electronic Arts digital-distribution service) for the new first-person shooter from developer Danger Close apparently revealed the existence of Battlefield 4. A banner ad read: “Medal of Honor Warfighter – Pre-order today for exclusive Battlefield 4 beta access.” That bonus no longer appears anywhere on the Origin service.

Battlefield 4 has not yet been confirmed by developer DICE or publisher EA. During a speech at the University of California in November 2011, Electronic Arts president Frank Gibeau said, “There is going to be a Battlefield 4.” After that keynote, EA backpedaled, claiming that Gibeau was speaking “broadly,” and that the company had nothing to confirm.

Well, someone at Origin seems to think that Battlefield 4 is coming.

This type of pre-order promotion is in keeping with the marketing EA employed for Battlefield 3. The publisher granted early access to the Battlefield 3 beta to players who bought the Medal of Honor: Tier 1 edition.

According to the copy on this Origin offer, only customers that pre-order Medal of Honor Warfighter will get into the BF4 beta.

EA knows where it’s first-person bread is buttered.

[Update: EA announced the Battlefield 4 deal formally on July 17]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The sensory smorgasbord of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) heaved itself upon the video game industry for three straight days, and GamesBeat’s intrepid crew enthusiastically hit showfloors, conference halls, and meeting rooms to offer our readers piles of previews, interviews, and news.

What follows below is our collected coverage during the show. You’ll find everything here sorted into categories for easy navigability.

Awards

Who needs stickers? We analyzed, judged, and sorted our top picks for the show’s offerings directly for you. Take a look — the results might surprise you.

GamesBeat’s E3 2012 Game of the Show…plus staff picks – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

The GamesBeat E3 non-award awards: The least prestigious awards in the industry – by GamesBeat staff

The coolest technologies we saw at E3 2012 – by Dean Takahashi

The best family games of E3 – by GamesBeat staff

The top 8 trends of E3, from bows to brutality – by Mike Minotti

The top 15 swag shirts of E3 2012 – by Rus McLaughlin

Previews

You’ve found the beating heart of E3′s overwhelming magic. Whether from observatory impressions or direct, hands-on experiences, GamesBeat discussed and dissected a sizable stable of upcoming games and hardware.

Hands-on

Hitman Absolution lets you perform hits in giant crowds – by Dean Takahashi

Metro Last Light fights shooter fatigue with deeper single player – by Dean Takahashi

Crysis 3 brings the jungle, gun hacking, and silent stealth kills to Manhattan – by Dean Takahashi

EA reveals Dead Space 3, coming with drop-in cooperative play – by Dean Takahashi

Sleeping Dogs turns Hong Kong crime movies into a video game – by Dean Takahashi

From the creator of Portal, Quantum Conundrum caters to physics-based puzzle gamers – by Dean Takahashi

Capcom remakes hack-slash-shoot-grapple formula with upcoming DmC: Devil May Cry – by Dean Takahashi

Capcom shows three playable characters for Resident Evil 6 – by Dean Takahashi

Finding similarities between Arma III and Carrier Command: Gaea Mission – by Omri Petitte

Neverwinter’s user-generated content could elevate it above the competition – by Stefanie Fogel

DmC: Devil May Cry is full of swagger…and F-bombs – by Eduardo Moutinho

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed leaves Mario Kart in its dust…and wake…and vapor trail – by Mike Minotti

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is an anime you can actually play – by Eduardo Moutinho

Sony Online Entertainment’s PlanetSide 2 – by Rob LeFebvre

Slice, dice, and julienne enemies in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – by Eduardo Moutinho

Medal of Honor: Warfighter deploys fire teams to the front lines – by Eduardo Moutinho

Hell Yeah! is like Metroid with a chainsaw jetpack-riding demon bunny – by Mike Minotti

Dead or Alive 5 wants to deliver a power blow to the competition – by Eduardo Moutinho

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s simplicity is just what consoles need – by Omri Petitte

Hands-off

Just what kind of game is Star Wars 1313? – by Dean Takahashi

Warner Bros. confirms LEGO: Lord of the Rings video game – by Dean Takahashi

EA’s cute The Act romance game exploits iPad’s touchscreen for unique gameplay – by Dean Takahashi

Turn the snow crimson with redcoat blood in Assassin’s Creed III – by Dean Takahashi

Far Cry 3 demo leads you deeper into drug-induced insanity – by Dean Takahashi

Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls is one of the best games of E3 – by Dean Takahashi

The 5 different games you’ll be playing in Dishonored – by Sebastian Haley

Final Fantasy XIV brings new gameplay and western sensibilities to venerable franchise – by Rob LeFebvre

Windows 8 works hard to meet the needs of all gamers – by Rob LeFebvre

A trio of Mario games strengthen Nintendo’s 3DS lineup – by Mike Minotti

OnLive’s MultiView spectating entices multiplayer and co-op gamers – by Omri Petitte

Player choice matters in The Walking Dead: Episode 2 – by Stefanie Fogel

The Last of Us is even smarter than you think – by Rus McLaughlin

Star Wars 1313 is a game of firsts for the sci-fi franchise – by Eduardo Moutinho

The adventure-game renaissance continues with The Cave – by Eduardo Moutinho

Heroes and villains join forces in Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion – by Mike Minotti

007 Legends proves personality makes or breaks a game – by Omri Petitte

Breaking down what’s exactly new in God of War: Ascension – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Turning technology against your friends in Watch Dogs – by Omri Petitte

Interviews

Chasing after the wayward developer or evasive executive amid a sea of journalists and industry luminaries didn’t slake our interview appetite, and we nabbed a slew of thoughtful talks with members across various gaming companies. Take a look.

Why Ubisoft is pouring a lot of resources into Wii U games – by Dean Takahashi

Harvest Moon creator wants to spread happiness with his new game – by Jacob Lopez

How Shenmue’s lead programmer rescued a bad game – by Jacob Lopez

The Last Story developer talks Operation Rainfall, reason for cover system, and Wii U – by Jacob Lopez

With 1.3B tanks obliterated and 30M players, Wargaming.net plans to conquer the online gaming world – by Dean Takahashi

Even Scribblenauts’ creator is surprised by the things people make in his new game – by Jacob Lopez

The Witcher developer CD Projekt RED wants to set new standards with Cyberpunk – by Stefanie Fogel

Japan’s Gree moves mobile gaming into the spotlight at E3 – by Dean Takahashi

THQ’s Brian Farrell talks about looking for a bottom and staging a comeback – by Dean Takahashi

Crytek says CryEngine 3 already does awesome graphics as good as Unreal Engine 4 – by Dean Takahashi

Our opinions

During the craze-filled days of E3, our minds typically busied themselves with ensuring our legs avoided snapping off our torsos and running away with yelping noises. But sometimes, a cohesive thought miraculously coalesced within our overloaded brainpans. Our hands shakily reached for the keyboard, keys started tapping, and well…these are the results.

The DeanBeat: What to expect at E3 – by Dean Takahashi

4 ways developers will use SmartGlass to enhance Xbox 360 experiences – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Nintendo’s Wii U: Safe on first, weak on third-party – by Rus McLaughlin

Why Nintendo will have a tough time adding a second GamePad tablet controller to the Wii U – by Dean Takahashi

Tomb Raider is not torture porn – by Rus McLaughlin

Would it be a mistake for E3 to move out of LA? – by Dean Takahashi

Bored, impressed, and giddy: Our final thoughts on E3 2012 – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Move over, consoles – mobile is the future – by Rob LeFebvre

Microsoft’s E3 2012: Analysis of 16,000+ comments shows Halo 4, South Park impressed, rest did not – by Andrew Hiscock

Sony’s E3 2012: Analysis shows “shotgun blast” won big, Wonderbook lost – by Andrew Hiscock

Nintendo’s E3 2012: Reactions show hardcore gamers lost faith in Wii U – by Andrew Hiscock

Memes

All it takes is one memorable quote, one Freudian slip, or some facepalm-worthy banter to prompt the Internet community’s creative and unrestrained hand at animated gifs, a worshipful use of Impact font, and hastily jangled Photoshop edits. Here’s what we’ve found.

The best memes of E3 – by Jeff Grubb

Remember these crazy memes from past E3s? – by Jeff Grubb

The wildest memes from the Microsoft E3 press conference – by Jeff Grubb

Silly memes inspired by Sony’s E3 press event – by Jeff Grubb

Aisha Tyler: Ubisoft’s meme machine – by Rus McLaughlin

The oddest Nintendo E3 gifs and Photoshops from the Internet – by Jeff Grubb

Galleries

We snapped plenty of pictures while attending parties, pressers, and meandering the showfloor. Direct your eyeballs upon these galleries, and enjoy the view!

The big gallery of E3′s huge banners – by Mike Minotti

E3 2012 will get your hands up – by Evan Killham

Our editor-in-chief’s E3 adventure – by Evan Killham

The many costumes of E3 2012 – by Jacob Lopez

Retro games have a place at E3, too – by Jasmine Rea

Videos

Dubstep. A beleaguered Lara Croft. Ham-handed hosts. No, this isn’t the latest entry in Alex Trebek’s dream diary — it’s some of our E3 video and trailer content below. Enjoy!

Tomb Raider trailer shows how Lara Croft feels sorry for shooting you – by Dean Takahashi

Konami pre-E3 2012 event: More Castlevania and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – by Jasmine Rea

Ubisoft shows strong commitment to the Wii U – by Mike Minotti

6 awkward moments from the E3 press briefings – by Evan Killham

Why we wub wub wub E3 2012: The dubstep of E3 – by Jacob Lopez

Press conferences

Surprises and snooze-fests alike emanated from E3′s five major press briefings held by Microsoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Ubisoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Check out all the announcements and debuts here.

Microsoft (video)

Halo 4 trailer video shows Forerunners, new tech – by Rob LeFebvre

New Splinter Cell: Blacklist borrows from Uncharted – by Jeff Grubb

Gears of War: Judgment sets Sera on fire (again) – by Rus McLaughlin

Microsoft previews Xbox Music at E3 press conference – by Rob LeFebvre

Forza Horizon brings street racing to the franchise – by Jasmine Rea

Microsoft introduces Xbox SmartGlass to integrate smartphones and tablets with Xbox 360 – by Dean Takahashi

Nike+ Kinect Training brings in-depth fitness measuring to Xbox 360 – by Jeff Grubb

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer coming to Xbox 360 this fall – by Jacob Lopez

Usher hits the stage to announce Dance Central 3 – by Rob LeFebvre

Xbox Live is getting Nickelodeon, Machinima, and tons of live sports – by Tom Cheredar

Kinect voice commands hit EA Sports flagship titles – by Eduardo Moutinho

South Park creators introduce their game and playfully mock Microsoft – by Jeff Grubb

New Xbox 360 games coming from Signal Studios, Twisted Pixel, and…Gore Verbinski? – by Stefanie Fogel

Microsoft E3 2012 press conference recap…in limerick form – by Andrew Hiscock

Electronic Arts (video)

SimCity Social: If this free-to-play game is too good, will you pay $60 for the full PC version? – by Dean Takahashi

EA reveals Battlefield 3 Premium and fields “15 million players worldwide” – by Omri Petitte

Star Wars: The Old Republic gets new planet, new species, and free trial – by Jacob Lopez

EA nabs UFC from THQ – by Jeff Grubb

Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s beautiful carnage – by Rus McLaughlin

EA shows off Need for Speed: Most Wanted at E3 – by Rob LeFebvre

Ubisoft (video)

Rayman Legends rhythmically runs to the Wii U – by Eduardo Moutinho

You are the network in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs – by Rus McLaughlin

Here’s where that Watch Dogs cube-head QR code goes – by Jeff Grubb

Sony (video)

Experimental developer Quantic Dream reveals the haunted life of Jody Holmes in Beyond – by Jasmine Rea

Nathan Drake and the Big Daddy Bouncer join PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale – by Mike Minotti

J.K. Rowling is writing PlayStation’s Wonderbook – by Rus McLaughlin

Sony announces Assassin’s Creed III Vita and PS3 bundles with exclusive content – by Jeff Grubb

Sony brings down the house with The Last of Us demo – by Dean Takahashi

Sony E3 2012 press conference recap…in limerick form – by Andrew Hiscock

Nintendo (video)

Social networking comes to Wii U, Miiverse will interface with PCs and phones – by Jasmine Rea

First look at action-strategy game Pikmin 3 – by Jeff Grubb

Nintendo confirms 23 games at E3, video streaming, and more for Wii U – by Mike Minotti

Wii Fit U will make you sweatier, livelier, and happier – by Rob LeFebvre

Brag to the Miiverse and take on new modes in New Super Mario Bros. U – by Eduardo Moutinho

Zombify your face with ZombiU for the Wii U – by Mike Minotti

Nintendo bets big on “asymmetric” tablet-based gameplay – one player against several – by Dean Takahashi

Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition utilizes Wii U’s GamePad screen – by Omri Petitte

Nintendo details 3DS Mario titles, Luigi’s Mansion, and third-party games – by Jeff Grubb

Nintendo Land brings asymmetrical multiplayer to Wii U – by Jasmine Rea

Nintendo’s E3 2012 press conference recap…in limerick form – by Andrew Hiscock

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Right after the GamesBeat staff got back from the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last week, we started wondering if we were all at the same event. Despite a combined 38 years of experience attending the annual game-industry trade show, lead writer Dean Takahashi, culture editor Sebastian Haley, and I (GamesBeat’s editor-in-chief) came away from the 2012 edition with drastically differing opinions on what we saw.

Here’s what we thought of this year’s E3:

Sebastian Haley, culture editor:

I might be alone on this, but E3 was a disheartening experience for me this year. Sure, I’ll buy and love Borderlands 2, Dishonored, and a ton of other games that were shown off, but everything was just so iterative — from the countless sea of sequels and spin-offs, to even the press conferences that seemed to focus less and less on what gamers like myself actually want.

After years of being the punchline of the Internet, why is it so hard to make a good E3 press conference? Microsoft gave carte blanche to Nike and ESPN to talk as long as they wanted, but when it came time to show off the only three original intellectual properties (IPs) in the entire lineup, if you blinked you would have missed it. And even if you didn’t blink, you’d still have no idea what the games were even about. Then Usher and Joe Montana come out for awkward performances, and that’s supposed to make things better?

The industry more or less seems to be on autopilot, and I can only hope it’s saving up all its energy for a massive 2013. But again, maybe that’s just me.

Dishonored

Dean Takahashi, lead news writer:

The game industry didn’t have such a bad showing at E3. The traditional game publishers showed off new original games such as Beyond: Two Souls, The Last of Us, The Unfinished Swan, Dishonored, Warface, Hawken, World of Warplanes, and Watch Dogs. New technologies such as Unreal Engine 4, facial animation, SmartGlass, the Wii U, and Sony’s Wonderbook were cool. The staple franchises such as Assassin’s Creed III, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Tomb Raider, SimCity, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and Crysis 3 will keep gamers delighted and busy in the next year.

But like Sebastian, I also have high expectations of game makers in the core console market. And I’m not sure they have done enough to shield themselves from the disruption that is hitting their industry. This E3 was an in-between year. Next-generation consoles are in the works, but only Nintendo showed off its cards, and they weren’t very disruptive this time around.

From the outside, the game industry is under pressure. Apple is one of the driving forces of the real disruption, but it isn’t alone. Samsung announced at the show that it will create its own cloud gaming service in partnership with Gaikai and Nvidia. It will in effect become a fourth major platform for game makers, launching a cloud-based game service that could threaten the core console business. Apple and Samsung could bring cheap, high-quality games into the living room that could compete quite nicely against $60 games that come with the number “3″ or “4″ after their names.

This is a very real threat. At E3, I didn’t see a masterstroke to deal with it. There was innovation, but not enough of it to make a difference.

The Last of Us

Dan “Shoe” Hsu, editor-in-chief:

Last year’s E3 only gave me one stick-with-me moment: the BioShock Infinite demo. It left me near breathless, and even though I don’t smoke, I felt like I needed a cigarette after watching it.

Nothing this year quite matched that, but three games came awfully close, all from my personal top 3 games of E3: Watch Dogs, The Last of Us, and Dishonored. I saw The Last of Us on the last day of the show, and it just put the biggest smile on my face. Right when that amazing, frightening, tension-filled demo finished, it cemented this E3 as one of the best in recent years for me. So I’m quite surprised at Sebastian’s reaction — this show was amazing! When was the last time so many new IPs surprised and wowed us like this? We’re always complaining about the sequel parades (and rightfully so), but it’s up to us to look past the flashy hype of the Call of Duties of the world to champion original games like the ones I just mentioned.

Nintendo Land and ZombiU on the Wii U were both pleasant surprises as well (though the latter proved to me that first-pers0n-shooter controls will take a lot of hand-eye-coordination reconditioning due to the controller’s new layout — a reconditioning I’m not sure I want to commit to). Even the known quantities got me excited again: I honestly thought I was over Halo and Gears of War, but both Halo 4 and the overrun mode in Gears of War: Judgment were a lot of fun to play in multiplayer.

I went into my 16th E3 jaded and thinking I’ve seen and experienced it all. I left a surprised, giddy gamer.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In war, fighting for the man to your left and right is everything. Electronic Arts wants to emphasize these battlefield bonds with its fire-team feature in Medal of Honor: Warfighter. I had a chance to experience the all-new mechanic at a behind-closed-doors multiplayer demo of the first-person shooter during the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

Kristoffer Bergqvist, a creative director on the title, put the mode into simple terms, “It’s the feature where you get together with a friend, and you fight together as a fighting unit of two. This is a concept we got from the real special operatives … and we wanted to get that relationship into the game.”

As I hopped into a match, I was immediately paired up into a fire team with a fellow player. My new brother in arms received his own green highlight, making him easily distinguishable from the rest of my teammates and enemies. The mode encourages you to stick together with your battle buddy, and it even adds a new twist to spawn mechanics. You can now reenter the fight by spawning at your fire-team partner’s location, and if your colleague kills your killer, you will respawn immediately without a time penalty.

I found myself staying close to my brightly tinted teammate, exchanging ammo and pushing toward the objective. The fire-team feature added an extra layer of purpose to the multiplayer, giving me another reason to stay sharp.

Warfighter also features classes based on real-life special forces from around the world. “We have six different classes, and all these classes have their own special abilities,” Bergqvist added. “We’ve been adding a lot of depth … We want players to go in and experience (the game) for a long time and work out new strategies with the tools.”

I played as both a Polish GROM assaulter and American SFOD-D demolitions expert. The SFOD-D soldier was particularly devastating with his juggernaut-like special ability. With the press of a button, I became a human tank, able to sustain significant amounts of damage while dishing out plenty of pain myself.

The multiplayer demo allowed teams to mix and match different forces, creating NATO-like units on both sides. Bergqvist hinted that this will not always be the case, “The big new thing for the game is what we call ‘Blue on Blue.’ That is pitching, for instance, American special forces versus the Swedish (special forces) … We’re creating new game modes to support that.”

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Medal of Honor: Warfighter. While the game can be classified as just another modern-combat-style shooter, I feel the aforementioned new features help make it stand out from the pack. Get ready to form your own fire teams when the title hits Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Wii U later this year.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If your head is spinning with all the breaking E3 news, GamesBeat wants to help. At the end of each day, we’ll compile a handy roundup of the day’s best content in one convenient post. If you want to keep track of them all, just type “E3 roundup” in the search bar.

Four out of the five major press conferences happened today, and that means GamesBeat is nearly overflowing with breaking news, previews, and commentary. Below you’ll find coverage from Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Sony.

Sony brings down the house with The Last of Us demo

Sony announces Assassin’s Creed III Vita and PS3 bundles with exclusive content

J.K. Rowling is writing PlayStation’s Wonderbook

Nathan Drake and the Big Daddy Bouncer join PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale

Experimental developer Quantic Dream reveals the haunted life of Jodie Holmes in Beyond

THQ confirms that it has laid off employees of WWE developer THQ San Diego

E3 2012: You are the network in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs

Here’s where that Watch Dogs cube-head QR code goes

Rayman Legends rhythmically runs to the Wii U

Ubisoft shows strong commitment to the Wii U (videos)

Far Cry 3 demo leads you deeper into drug-induced insanity (preview)

Turn the snow crimson with redcoat blood in Assassin’s Creed III (preview)

Why Ubisoft is pouring a lot of resources into Wii U games (interview)

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot embraces disruption, new business models and new platforms (interview)

Ubisoft will make eight games for the Nintendo Wii U

Ubisoft’s creative director on why hooded assassins still fit in the American Revolution (interview)

EA shows off Need for Speed: Most Wanted at E3 2012

E3 2012: Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s beautiful carnage

EA nabs UFC from THQ

Star Wars: The Old Republic gets new planet, new species, and free trial

EA reveals Battlefield 3 Premium and fields “15 million players worldwide”

Madden NFL 13 is now even more of a contact sport

SimCity Social: If this free-to-play game is too good, will you pay $60 for the full PC version?

NCAA Football 13’s Heisman Challenge mode puts the “I” in team (hands-on preview)

EA reveals Dead Space 3, coming with drop-in cooperative play (hands-on preview)

Crysis 3 brings the jungle, gun hacking, and silent stealth kills to Manhattan (hands-on preview)

Hitman: Absolution trailer is indicative of gaming’s broken culture

New Xbox 360 games coming from Signal Studios, Twisted Pixel, and…Gore Verbinski?

South Park creators introduce their game and playfully mock Microsoft

E3 2012: Nike+ Kinect Training brings in-depth fitness measuring to Xbox 360

Forza Horizon brings street racing to the franchise

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Tier-1 operating got a big facelift in the last two years. Medal of Honor: Warfighter follows up on the 2010 reboot with a new engine, a new (and fictional) conflict, and lots of bad people to shoot. So a few familiar elements return, too.

Franchise lead Greg Goodrich took the stage to announce “We’re goin’ global.” Instead of a single-location return to the Iraq War, Warfighter jumps around the planet. “Every single mission has a dotted line to a real-world hotspot,” according to Goodrich.

A ten-minute campaign demo took the war to Somalia, with a marine assault on an entrenched pirate hideout that went seriously wrong in record time. For starters, the air support had to retreat under rocket fire. Then a sniper bullet nails you right in the chest, kicking you back into the beach’s shallow water. Luckily, your armor took it. Unluckily, there’s plenty more where that came from. Your team moves up under the broken remains of a wharf that’s more obstacle than cover while more Somalis rip it apart.

And it all looks spectacular. Medal of Honor now runs on Frostbyte 2.0, the same engine that made Battlefield 3 so gorgeous. Particles hang in the air, debris flies through the air, and all of it happens around you with beautifully devastating precision.

Once the operators reach the broken coastal city, add black smoke to that list. An arc-menu popped up to direct a teammate to breach a door, leading to a Call-of-Duty-like slow-motion breach, followed by the always entertaining target-painting-a-building sub-mission. One high-impact detonation later, it’s time to send in the drone.

Here again, FrostByte 2.0 showed off some fun lighting effects, with Somali flashlights in the darkness providing handy direction on where to send your far superior firepower. Once back out in the open, however, the bot linked up with friendlies getting torn apart by RPG fire, and those projectiles –  fired from enemies hidden in the surrounding buildings — swiftly took the drone’s advantages away. After evening the odds a bit, one last rocket knocked it out for good.

Campaign demo done, Goodrich shifted to the game’s online mode, Global Warfighter. “No shooter is complete without a great multiplayer,” he said, and Medal of Honor’s new version (built by an in-house team at EA’s Danger Close studio, replacing DICE). Teams will take on the roles of special forces units from around the world, including Afghani Grom fighters, SEALs, British SAS, Delta Force (SFOD-D), and Russian Spetsnaz.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter releases on October 23 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Wii U.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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As the head of the EA Games label, Patrick Soderlund (pictured) oversees Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Need for Speed, Dead Space, and other hardcore gaming properties. That amounts to a huge chunk of the company’s revenues and one of its most competitive segments.

Last week, EA announced its Medal of Honor Warfighter game and new downloadable content (DLC) expansions for Battlefield 3. Both of these are big launches in EA’s ongoing battle with Activision Blizzard, publisher of Call of Duty, in the multibillion-dollar first-person-shooter market. We caught up with Soderlund shortly after the announcement at EA’s Medal of Honor and Battlefield party during the Game Developers Conference. (See our preview of Battlefield 3: Close Quarters). Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Please tell us about your background.

Patrick Soderlund: I joined EA in 2006, via the acquisition of the DICE studio. At the time I was still running DICE for EA. As time went on, I got a little bit more to do. I started by running a couple of other studios for EA and then moving to oversee all the shooter business and then the driving business. And then eventually, fast forward, today I now oversee the Games label for EA.

GamesBeat: What’s the evolution been like? It seems like the investment in shooters has been going way up.

PS: It has. For me, coming from a single studio working on multiple brands and multiple studios has been exciting. And also being a part of transforming a couple of things inside the company has been rewarding for me.

GamesBeat: That includes the reboots of these two franchises, Medal of Honor and Battlefield?

PS: Absolutely. Battlefield moving to console with the Bad Company series was a big thing for us. It was also the first time we did single-player in the Battlefield franchise. And then fast-forward to Bad Company 2, which was the first real breakout hit for the Battlefield franchise, with a substantial amount of units sold. And then obviously to the even bigger Battlefield 3 that we launched in October.

With Medal of Honor, it’s been interesting. I came in kind of late to the Medal of Honor reboot, the 2010 version. That was interesting because they had moved away from World War II. They had gone modern, and that was interesting for the team. They had to take a different approach in how they designed the product. And now, today, what you’re going to see in Medal of Honor Warfighter is the next step. It’s the most ambitious Medal of Honor product to date, I think it’s the best-looking by a country mile.

GamesBeat: So you’ve had a continuous improvement going on, the ratings for Battlefield 3 were better [though not at GamesBeat], and the sales were a lot better than Medal of Honor as well. How do you make that happen?

PS: Quality will come from many things, in many ways. A lot of people point to Battlefield 3, and they talk about the Frostbite technology. We made a conscious decision to invest in new technology. We realized that technology is going to be the enabler that gets us over the hump, so to speak, into this next generation of products.

We didn’t build tech for the sake of building tech. We looked at it and said, “We need to provide the consumer with a different kind of teamwork experience and to do so we need new technology.” We identified certain areas; we looked at things that break the illusion of reality. For us it was animation. We needed to take a giant leap in animation, and we did that.

We looked at something that a lot of people tend to forget, which is audio. We said, “We need to do a lot better at audio than we have.” We invented what we call the High Dynamic Range audio, which is what you hear in the Frostbite engine. And lastly, we also said, “We need a much higher-fidelity rendering engine and a much better destruction system.”

GamesBeat: So I guess the main competition has one big franchise. You’ve got two. That’s a good thing, right?

PS: Well, we have several. We have Medal of Honor; we have Battlefield; we have Need for Speed. We have Dead Space; we have a bunch of [intellectual properties] in our portfolio, and that’s where I think it’s our responsibility to nurture those and make them better and bigger. And also to bring out new intellectual properties for EA and for the Games label.

GamesBeat: I guess Activision made this leap a while ago — Ubisoft with Assassin’s Creed as well — a big franchise coming out every year. Is that what you have in mind, or is that somewhere you want to get to?

PS: Well, right now we’re focused on the Medal of Honor game. That’s coming this year. We shipped Battlefield last year, so that’s one way of looking at it.

GamesBeat: And I take it you’re learning a lot by doing one and applying it to the next across these franchises….

PS: What you’ll also see today is that Medal of Honor is now on the Frostbite tech. That will be visible when you see it. Again, it’s about consistently improving and consistently refining a recipe but also finding that if you take some bold risks, you can come up with some new, innovative ideas.

GamesBeat: What are the fans really asking for, and what are you trying to deliver?

PS: Well, the Games label, which is what I oversee, is actually full of fans. We are the fans. Let’s never forget that we are here to make games that we want to play. And arguably, if we make a game that we think is great and that we want to play — obviously we need to be objective — but if you do that you’re ultimately going to win over the audience. Because we are the audience. That’s one way of looking at it, and that’s the approach that we take. That’s really worked for us.

GamesBeat: Are you really shooting to raise the review scores on the games as well?

PS: Yeah. The people who know me and who work for me will tell you that I’m a hard man to work for when it comes to quality. I push my teams to the extreme to achieve quality. Again, it’s not for the sake of reaching a score. It’s because I want the best possible game in the hands of the consumer. I want them to look at it and say, “Wow, did you see that?”

GamesBeat: How do you look back on the Battlefield 3 launch?

PS: I’m extremely proud of both the team and what EA, frankly, as a company, was able to achieve. We took this thing and we really put everything we had in it, and we launched a game that was not only successful but is one of the most successful games in the history of EA. I’m extremely proud of that, and I think people out there need to understand. We see this as a start. This is where we start, and now we go forward. I think that’s the mentality I have; that’s the mentality the team has. People who have invested in the Battlefield franchise can expect a lot more from us.

GamesBeat: You had some critics, too. Is there anything you’re taking to heart from that quarter?

PS: A part of the quality process is to be very, very self-aware and realize where you have problems. Obviously, talking to others, talking to critics, reading reviews, talking to consumers, which we do all the time, is key to learning and understanding what was great and also what wasn’t so good. And then you take that to heart and change it and go forward.

People out there need to understand that the people who make these games want nothing but to please the people outside. When you have 10 million or more people buying a product, it’s going to be hard to make sure that every single one of them is happy. But the majority of people we listen to. We want to improve, and we want to make a better experience for those people.

GamesBeat: The game’s story and the server access were issues that critics raised.

PS: I wouldn’t actually say server access was that big [a deal]. We had a little bit of a hiccup at the beginning, but overall, we did really well. If you look at all the major games shipping, I know of other games shipping in our industry that had a bunch of problems. When you launch a game of that size, I don’t think it’s acceptable for us to say, OK, we’re going to just accept the problem. We’re always going to strive to have a perfect launch and get it done. But we also have to realize that things may go wrong, and I think it’s how we approach it when it does go wrong that’s the most important thing. Clear communication to the consumers about what may be wrong, that we’re fixing it, and then run as quick as you can and fix the problem.

EA PR rep: For what it’s worth, this crosses from Patrick’s portfolio into Star Wars: The Old Republic. A lot of the lessons that Patrick learned at the Battlefield launch contributed to a successful launch for Star Wars a month later. The point there is that we learned a lot on Battlefield, and you saw that learning come into play on Star Wars.

And that launch fundamentally changed our business. That launch was great for all of us. Having live teams and transitioning our studios to live teams and having an integrated team supporting the launch in that way forever changed things for us.

PS: It’s a mental switch. It’s something that you have to do as a company, where we went from, “Let’s get this thing out, and maybe we’ll patch it” to “OK, we were pregnant, the baby’s out now, and we have to take care of it every single minute.” [Editor's note: EA recently patched Battlefield 3.]

GamesBeat: So Battlefield is effectively, say, moving into a service mode first? And then maybe Medal of Honor will…?

PS: We look at it as a 24/7 service. We have people in Stockholm and North America and other parts of the world that are on this every single hour of every single day. 365 days a year. We have an operations team at DICE to look at telemetry data. How are people playing the game, how can we improve the experience? Are they having problems? Are servers down? Are they up? All that stuff.

GamesBeat: Do you think you’ll eventually get to a subscription type of model? And do you also think you’re going to take down Call of Duty?

PS: I think it’s fair to say that we’re looking at that. Like all other companies, we’re looking at how we can maximize our investment in this and get the most out of our investment and get more people playing this product. That may take us to different places, but we’re not really talking about where that is yet.

When it comes to taking Call of Duty down, you know what? I don’t look at it like that. We are in this business because we want to make the best possible products. Call of Duty is a shooter, but it’s a different shooter. And I think they have a market; we have a market. I’m fine with what I’m doing. I’m going to continue innovating and doing as best as I can with my teams. Hopefully that’s going to lead us to more units [sold] and more happy consumers.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

[Photo credit: Dean Takahashi]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Here’s the headlines and links to stories in reverse chronological order:

Friday

Microsoft warns that OnLive Desktop’s Office streaming app violates license

Flurry launches AppSpot mobile app ad platform

How Thatgamecompany designed its new game, Journey

The DeanBeat: Tips from Ubisoft on making a happy game industry acquisition

Thursday

See what Tim Schafer is doing with all your (his) money. Kickstarter crowdfunding was a big topic at the GDC.

Konami and others will make games for Zynga.com

Core game sales drop like a rock in February

Electronic Arts reveals new Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars online numbers

Angry Birds Space gets geeky with awesome real-life demo from NASA (video)

Gaikai signs up Warner Bros.’ Lord of the Rings Online game for instant demos

Peter Molyneux departs Lionhead Studios and Microsoft to found 22 Cans

Wednesday

Facebook’s tips for getting your mobile game noticed

Browser-based games get real 3D graphics with latest Unreal Engine and Flash technology

Heyzap launches mobile API to add high-level analytics

Game developers salivate over the new iPad’s specs

EA lines up three Battlefield 3 expansions for 2012

Tuesday

EA to launch Medal of Honor Warfighter on Oct. 23

Google promises a unified social and mobile game platform

EA revives Sim City for 2013 launch — with curvy roads

Nintendo 3DS tops 4.5 million units in US within first year

Halo 4 quotes: The hype, the excitement, and the…huh?

Casino wars: Big Fish Games acquires mobile casino game maker Self Aware Games

Alex St. John’s Magi.com launches social gaming hub (exclusive)

Monday

Zynga reaches beyond Facebook with Zynga.com

Numecent spins out Approxy cloud-gaming startup

Numecent emerges from stealth with “revolutionary cloudpaging technology” for digital delivery

How to design a game for your teenage daughter

Funzio spreads out with games for Google+, Chrome Web Store, and Android

Facebook paid $1.4B to game developers in 2011

6L teams up with 16 mobile game developers and plans big marketing spend per title

Apple’s iOS runs HTML5 games three times faster than Android

Forza Motorsport fans can look forward to Forza Horizon and Porsche expansion

Star Wars Kinect lets you rampage like a monster using gestures (preview)

iSwifter makes iPad game streaming available to all PC game companies (exclusive)

Trials Evolution creative director discusses going bigger, multiplayer, and female riders (interview)

Steel Battalion Heavy Armor combines Kinect and controller commands (hands-on preview)

11 new things we’ve learned about Halo 4 (with video)

How Fable: The Journey will use the Kinect in revolutionary ways (interview with Peter Molyneux)

[Photo credit: Dean Takahashi's picture of Sony's Move/virtual reality demo]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Electronic Arts announced last night that it will launch three new expansions for Battlefield 3 as it tries to establish the game as a year-round service for die-hard fans.The first for this year will be Battlefield 3: Close Quarters, and EA demoed the game last night.

To compete against Activision’s Call of Duty Elite social network for hardcore fans of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, EA is lining up enough new online content to keep players busy throughout 2012. Such fierce competition has become a staple in the multibillion-dollar first-person shooter modern combat game market.

The next expansion to hit the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3 will debut in June, said Karl Magnus Troedsson, general manager of EA’s DICE studio in Sweden. The expansion will have maps, weapons, achievements, and vehicles. He spoke at a party at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Moreover, EA will also unleash a new service where players can rent a server on the consoles. That will allow them to host their own custom servers and set them up exactly how they want them to play, Troedsson said.

EA launched Battlefield 3 in October and sold more than 12 million units. That fell short of rival Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s sales numbers, but it was a record for EA. To keep gamers playing, EA is launching multiple expansions to give players a better multiplayer experience. In December, it launched the Back to Karkand expansion.

Close Quarters, the second expansion, will be all about infantry fighting.The maps will have more destructible environments, 10 more weapons, and it will focus on short-range combat.

A third expansion of the year will be Battlefield 3: Armor King, coming later in the year, emphasizing vehicle combat. It will have big open maps where you can drive vehicles such as tanks and jets. A third expansion, Battlefield 3: End Game, will come later in the year. That one is still secret in terms of its content.

Troedsson said that Battlefield is all about the big war, or the “hammer,” while Medal of Honor is about the personal experience of war, or the “scalpel.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The title is the sequel to the 2010 reboot of the franchise, dubbed Medal of Honor. Along with the Battlefield series, the Medal of Honor games are feeding the voracious appetite that fans have for modern combat first-person shooter games, which have become a multibillion dollar-market led by Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty series.

Patrick Soderlund (pictured), head of the EA Games label and longtime leader at EA’s DICE studio in Sweden, said in an interview with VentureBeat that the new game isn’t aimed solely at topping Call of Duty from its perch.

“I don’t look at it that way,” he said. “We are in the market to make the best possible game.”

EA’s combat games lagged in the past, but they have shown steady improvement since Battlefield Bad Company 2. Battlefield 3, which launched last fall, was an improvement on the previous year’s Medal of Honor (though there were a lot of flaws pointed out by critics) and it was a commercial success with 12 million units sold, more than any other previous EA modern combat game. Still, EA, had some troubles with server issues for Battlefield 3 and critics favored Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which is believed to have outsold Battlefield 3 by millions of units.

With Medal of Honor Warfighter, EA is going to get serious again and apply the learnings from the past, Soderlund said. EA took, for instance, what it learned from the Battlefield multiplayer launch and applied that to the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, he said.

Karl Magnus Troedsson, general manager of DICE, said on stage at the EA event at the Game Developers Conference that Battlefield games were “general war,” or the hammer, while Medal of Honor was more like “the scalpel.” Medal of Honor games involve real-world scenarios like hostage rescues in the Phillippines or the Somalia coast.

Greg Goodrich, executive producer of the Warfighter game, said that former professional soldiers are helping to craft the latest game about “Tier One” operatives who, in the last game, fought Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Tier One soldiers are the best of the best in the American military.

This time, the battle will take place across the globe. It will involve “Tier One” elite soldiers from 12 organizations in 10 countries, including the British SAS, the German KFK and the Polish elite soldiers.

“We’re doing this because believe it or not, kids in Poland don’t grow up dreaming they will become U.S. Navy Seals,” Goodrich said.

The goal is to make it as realistic as “the headlines on CNN.” It is also about making the game authentic in terms of replicating the gear, the weapons, and the behavior of soldiers in intense combat. Goodrich said that two dozen members of the U.S. Special Forces are helping to design the game, and two of those members came out on stage to offer their endorsement of the game’s authenticity.

“They were ghosts, the silent warriors who defend freedom around the globe,” Goodrich said as he welcomed soldiers named Kevin and Tyler on the stage.

Kevin said the game would “tell a story” about their fellow warfighters and the battles they went through around the world.

EA showed off a hostage-rescue mission in Isabela City in the Philippines. In the scenario, a team of Tier One soldiers crept up to a big building in a rain-soaked area. They blew open a door and immediately came under withering fire from several directions. The player takes aim at the threats one by one and takes them out, firing through smoke, flying building fragments, and explosions. The team, working with Filipino special forces, clears the building room by room, outflanking when they can.

They toss flash bang grenades and burst into rooms in slow motion, taking out the terrorists before they can kill the hostages. They escort the hostages out into speed boats waiting in the rain. The boats speed off and terrorists in buildings alongside the river bank try to intercept them. The player fires a heavy-caliber machine gun, tearing up the buildings and the terrorists at the same time. When you finally escape, you sigh with relief.

Goodrich said that the Medal of Honor Warfighter game will use the Frostbite 2 engine, which delivers cool 3D graphics, high-end audio, and destructible environments.

“It is the biggest and most ambitious Medal of Honor game in the history of our franchise,” Goodrich said. “Without this engine and the unprecedented support of the special forces community, this game could not be made.”

[Photo credit: Dean Takahashi]

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