I am a former EA/DICE/Rovio Designer & Current FNATIC Coach. My name is Tim "stormonster" Kjell, AMA

"DICE: We'll never charge for Battlefield maps"

what happened?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/241306/dice-well-never-charge-for-battlefield-maps/

I really don't know. I remember the quote but can't remember the context completely, and unfortunately I wasn't in a position to make that decision :(

What went wrong with the launch of BF4 (why did it launch in such a bad condition)? Is there anyone to blame and what can be done to prevent this from happening with future Battlefield titles? :)

I left not long after the game went in to the production phase, so I wasn't there for the actual launch - but my personal theory is that with new games the thinking seems to be "it needs more" and that eventually becomes impossible to manage and balance. Things will always go wrong along the way, and I think the development team did a really good job with the time that they had and I know I was very harsh during the first couple of weeks, but they cleaned it up quite well with patches. I think for the future the focus shouldn't be on just adding more stuff, but to rethink some things to make every choice important and interesting. Like for example - does BF really need as many guns and attachments and gadgets as it has now, or can we cut that down and make everything feel even more unique and of higher quality?

And you're absolutely sure that it wasn't because EA forced DICE to publish it too soon?

EDIT: Guys, it was a simple question, I don't want to accuse him of lying or whatever you think.

Well, there is always pressure from publishers, as well as internally in the studio to publish things. But as far as I remember, the actual development time on the project never got shortened in any way. I think with better planning and better demands to keep things simple, the quality of the game would have been much higher. Executives and marketing needs to trust the developers to be able to know what is best for the game from a gameplay perspective and not interfere with this - that way the game will be made from the core->out, making it feel very tight and solid.

I understand. Hearing that, was a big feature like Levolution even planned by the developers? I'm asking this because it was pretty bugged at the start (Crash when the tower on Shanghai comes down, FPS drops etc).

Levolution was actually something that came from developers in the beginning and it was a way to try and create a more dynamic battlefield where things would change depending on different states - but not every time. Unfortunately I personally don't feel there were enough smaller ways to dynamically change the map to make it feel varied, so it ended up not really affecting the gameplay dramatically (apart from the first couple of times it happened). Then again, this is the way with most things in games when you play them over and over and over for thousands of hours, right? :)

For being only 26, you have quite the resume. How did you get your start at DICE and why did you leave?

When I was in high school I dated a girl and told her about my history of BF1942 esports, and it turned out she knew the office manager at DICE. We started talking and I got a 6 month internship there and spent every day trying to help out with playtesting and feedbacking, and at the end of my internship I was offered a position in QA and worked my way from there whilst still modding and trying to dissect game mechanics at home :) I decided to leave because of a lot of things in my private life at the time were chaotic. I felt I got very stressed out about too many things at once and wouldn't be able to deliver a quality product, so I spent about 3-4 months handing over my work to other designers and left. I made it very clear when I left that I wasn't finished with DICE and today I would actually love to come back and work for them again to bring quality stuff to you guys! :)

Good luck to get back again!

Thanks Danny! Will keep my fingers crossed :)

What was your favorite game to work on?

I'm slightly torn on this one - because I had great joy and got really close to my coworkers on Mirror's Edge an we went through a lot together. The same goes for BF3 where I would say my tasks and day-to-day tasks were very fun.

Do you know anything about the next mirrors edge? Prequel? Online racing?

I don't know much, because I left before it really became what it is today - but I really hope that they have listened to the community of the original title, because that game had a huge potential that shouldn't just be lost for doing a reboot.

How do you feel about them saying that they're listening, but at the same time mention a stronger focus on combat?

I don't think that one thing necessarily has to negate the other. I mean, one of the weak points in Mirror's Edge was the hand-to-hand combat that I didn't quite feel was very rewarding or tight, and could definitely be improved upon. Hopefully this is what they meant too, and will just improve on what was bad and keep what made the game so great :)

It's obvious from the prototype footage that they're talking about making the combat faster. Most of the combat scenes in the prototype trailer show Faith doing one-hit kills while running full speed.

Yup, and in the first release the combat felt sluggish and slow, not very fluent and it constantly slowed the player down, killing the momentum that the game was all about. Let's hope they get it right :)

First of all, Mirror's Edge is one of my all time favourite games, thank you for it. Now for my question, what do you think about EA's DLC policy? I'm sure you've heard about the outcry of pools not being included in Sims 4 on release, do you think this is excessive and they're releasing downloadable content that should be in the game from the get go, or would you say it's fair business if people still buy their products?

I think it is absolutely fair that people pay for products, and people show that they are willing to do so. However, I think it's very important to do things such as Valve for example where they always look at ways to make sure that whenever a person buys something they are satisfied with what they get. I personally think there are a lot of new things in Sims 4 that still makes it a great purchase, but I do miss pools :(

This is such a diplomatic response. You'll definitely be able to get a career in PR if the whole dev thing doesn't work out for you.

Haha well, it might be diplomatic but that's the way I feel regarding this issue. I mean, I don't believe people are against paying for good products, but if they buy something and don't feel it was worth it, then everyone is going to be in a bad spot.

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I was never on the project, so I don't know much. But I hope there will be real wookies and not just the fake ones that we've seen in BF :) Also, I want to see space dinosaurs. And lasers.

Why after really moddable and customisable BF1942 and BF2, you decided to drop these options from BF3 and BF4? BF1942 and BF2 had really large and vivid esport scene and I really think partially thanks to that customisation.

Also which is more important, making a great game or making a great profit?

As it wasn't my call to make I can only speculate, but my theory is that the systems and engine parts are simply too intertwined and complex for the people within DICE and Frostbite to actually get to work properly outside of the studio. In short, I think it's too complex for the Frostbite team to create a standalone version that can be released to the public in a good & properly functional state, and because of that it has remained inside of the company to put focus on further development rather than creating a standalone releasable. Again, this is my theory :) Your second question is much easier for me to respond to, because in my mind with a great game comes great profit. And as a designer my mentality is always to put "gameplay first". I don't care if it looks a little less pretty, if it makes the gameplay better it should be done and prioritised.

Your second question is much easier for me to respond to, because in my mind with a great game comes great profit.

On the other hand, with great profit there isn't always a great game. So do you think that the focus has shifted in the industry from making a great game to making a great profit, example ever increasing marketing budgets and pre-ordering bonuses?

I don't care if it looks a little less pretty, if it makes the gameplay better it should be done and prioritised.

Difficult question - do you think DICE made a mistake when creating this engine that was pretty, but not fully functional, supporting modding and customisation?

That's right, it goes one way but not necessarily the other way :) I do think that the focus has shifted and I think it needs to take a little bit of a step back to calm down and settle in a position where it doesn't grow out of proportion and collapse on itself, so to speak. Let's try to go back to the roots of how we started and work on that as a foundation instead of going wild throwing money around as if it were growing on trees. Well, this was actually an interesting twist on the standard mod-tools-question :) I think it's hard to say which route that was the best to go, but I know for a fact that a lot of the features in the engine now wouldn't be possible if it had to be supporting modding as well. I would love it if the brilliant minds on the Frostbite team were to find a way to extract and create a standalone version of the editor for the community to use to create their own maps, modes, etc - even if it was a "FrostLite" or something along those lines :) Modding was one of the things that made BF1942 and BF2 so amazingly great to play and I hope from the bottom of my heart that there is a way to bring this back.

Modding was one of the things that made BF1942 and BF2 so amazingly great to play and I hope from the bottom of my heart that there is a way to bring this back.

Fantastic, that makes two of us, how about calling the guys at DICE and tell them there are at least two vets who would be really happy if modding comes back, even a "lite" version.

One more question and I'll get of your back.

I have noticed increasing number of the pro teams on different games have coaches. So my question is what exactly do you do, management, scouting, coaching?

Haha I have tried that and maybe one day they will bring it to us, huh? ;) Now, regarding my role I did cover it in another reply, but I'll try to give you a brief description as well. My main responsibilities are looking after the team, making sure that the players are happy with their contracts, that they get their tickets booked for events, that they have as much time as possible to focus on the game and not on paperwork, that sponsors are happy with the content we produce, keeping track and scouting players of all different teams in case we end up in a position where some kind of roster change has to happen. I also coach during boot camps and try to inform the guys on what to focus on at training, I go through vods to try and figure out patterns in other teams playstyles so that we can prepare well for tournaments and such. And at tournaments, I am behind the guys trying to get them hyped up for the game, I deliver as much info as I can in and between rounds on specifics like "they do a lot of 4-man pushes, dance instead to swap flags with minimal casualties" etc.

If you could change anything about what you've done in BF3/BF4

What would it be?

I would have spent even more time playing the game with the community to get the balancing of all weapons and gadgets done faster. I also would have simplified the attachments earlier than I did.

Do the old Swe_mob players still work at DICE? I am thinking about players such as oKKun, Honk as well as other players from the old Quake 1 community, for example Nikodemus.

Holy moly! I am almost surprised to see people still remember those days :D But yes, some of them do. Last time I met Honk he was still there and I think there are some others still there as well :) There's a fair few people from demo groups still there as well, like Pantaloon from Fairlight, etc :)

That's great to hear! In the Quake days, [9]Nikodemus sent me a couple of screenshots of a game he was working on. He said it was the first screenshots of the game shown to anyone outside of the company. What it featured was a vehicle in a snowy environment. Being used to Quake, I thought the graphics looked superb and my first reply to him when I saw it was "I think I need a new PC".

I didn't know it at the time but it was a very early development screenshot of Codename Eagle. I very much doubt sending screenshots of an unannounced game to an online friend would be viable at DICE now though.

Haha, that is really cool! I agree, it probably wouldn't work anymore, now that the industry has become so big. Thanks for sharing that little story! Brought a smile to my face for sure :D

Do you think all the hate that EA has been getting as of late is deserved? Also, my roommate is a Fnatic Fanatic, so thanks for that.

I hope you're still awake and haven't gone to bed yet... ;) I think that some of the flame has been warranted for sure, but I also think that the internet has done what it does so well, and kind of rally behind a cause that has popped up and throw more gasoline on the fire than might be necessary for an everyday bonfire. Now, I hope you don't take this as "EA haven't done anything wrong and the internets are just trolls", because that's not what I mean - but I do strongly believe that it has escalated more than it should have, so I sincerely hope that EA and the gaming community as a whole can get ways to communicate to each other in ways that can constructively build stronger relationships and better games for everyone to enjoy.

Also, tell your roomie I said hi :)

1. How many people work on fixing the bugs?

2. On average how long do you test games before publishing them?

Ps - A big thanks to Dice for helping fix BF4 with us gamers. It took a while but it has restored my faith in developers.

1. Pretty much everyone during the projects "production"-phase. After that it is usually handed over to an "operations"-team that handles "post-launch" which includes patches/expansions etc. and this team varies in size, but off the top of my head I think it was around 30 or so people. When specialist help was needed in an area, say weapons for example, that team would borrow the designer who made the weapons (in this case me or Demize99).
2. We started testing as soon as we had a build running (usually this was gray cubes everywhere just to get it running) and then we just never stopped testing. Every day we had playtests with usually somewhere around 70-80 people (at least!) joining servers and playing. Then on top of that we had a big QA team with experts in different areas working on finding the really nasty stuff every hour of every day and working pretty much around the clock for the last 4 - 5 months of the productions. In short - a lot!

Thanks for the answer!

Thanks for the question! :)

Ok, so this is going to be a stupid/crazy/hail Mary question.

I tried my hand at programming... Not very good... I tried my hand at 3d rendering... I also sucked at it.

Know what I can do? Come up with an intense story. I love writing. My username hopefully shows that.

How does one get into the industry as just that? An idea man, a concept writer?

I suck at most else but Jesus when it comes to an in depth world with rivalries, factions, betrayal, and the works those are the things I can create on a daily basis... Fresh and new not rehashed...

I would love to write for a game company. Please for the love of all that is holy... Where do I start?!

Wow, that was quite the question, huh? :) I am personally more inclined to work on mechanics and numbers and problem solving, more than creating a big and vibrant story such as the one you described, so I would just be guessing if I answered that question. I sincerely think the best man to answer that is David "locust9" Goldfarb. That ol' fella has been a writer for ages, a designer since I was just a kid and is right now working on his own stuff. Poke him on twitter and say I sent you - maybe he'll give you some pointers :)

Also, very sorry for not being able to give a better answer :(

Thanks a jillion times a jillion

You should also look into writing style, and learn more about literature in general. Not to sound harsh, but the amount of dots and enters you've used in your question is ugly. So while it's good to be creative, you need to be able to deliver a quality result, rather than just an interesting idea.

Writing is much more than just inventing.

Edit: I highly recommend you read "The Elements of Style" at least once.

Thanks for the help there, buddy! :)

Are there fourm topic or false conspiracy theory about game developement that makes you want to yell at the poster? Or compains that might seem small but the team believe would cost too much resource to justify?

Absolutely - this happens all the time. But I usually just breath in and out to calm myself down and then try to see it from the other persons perspective. I'm a very competitive person and I know what it's like to be frustrated, so it's just a matter of communicating as well as possible to make sure everyone understands each other :) More communication between devs & community I think will greatly improve both the relationship AND the games!

If you could be a designer for any game that you were in charge of with a bottomless budget what do you think your game would be about and what would some main mechanics be?

Also what do you think of EA's notorious rep for DLC and micro transactions?

I have always had a weak spot for RPG- and FPS-games. If I had a bottomless budget and could run it the way I wanted, I would love to see the two combined in an extraordinary world populated by other players. This type of game would allow for a lot of depth and interesting mechanics. But on the flipside I am also extremely in love with esports so working on a team creating a title that is tailored for the community with a focus on skill and big tournaments surrounding that would be an absolute dream come true! When it comes to DLC and Micro-transactions I think there are ways of doing this without coming across as greedy. Looking at studios like Blizzard and Riot for example, they both charge a lot from their players but they do it in a way that is fair for the players. Every purchase I have done from them have always left me satisfied with the pricing and the content I have received in return.

I have always had a weak spot for RPG- and FPS-games. If I had a bottomless budget and could run it the way I wanted, I would love to see the two combined in an extraordinary world populated by other players. This type of game would allow for a lot of depth and interesting mechanics.<

So you would create a game like Destiny, but with more actual RPG and MMO characteristics? I like the way you think.

Yes, mechanically that pretty much sums it up :) That's why I looked forward to Destiny and hope they bring out even more content now and hopefully can support expand on the world & rpg-elements :)

What's your opinion of destiny in it's current state?

Well, I have already clocked a lot of hours on that game and I think it's a really good game. It's polished and, though I am missing trading with friends, I like the game a lot. However, I do hope to see more raids and challenges being unlocked in the future to ensure it stays fun to play :) Basically, I wantz moar!

Hello, I live in Russia, and i realy want work in DICE, but I have two probem: can ea or DICE help with housing? And where better to learn- university or special school school (for example "scream school)?

Hi, every developer and studio will usually arrange for moving if you are coming from abroad. EA/DICE/Rovio/DeNA/Blizzard/Riot and most other big companies do this and will help you get an apartment/house as well as move your stuff from your house in Russia to your house in Sweden. I'm don't know too much about the education available for this in Russia, but in Sweden the specialist schools have gotten really good actually. They also tend to have a higher chance of getting developers to come and hold presentations and connect with. Good luck and hope to see you in Stockholm soon ;) Also, I hope you have read the Russian interview I did a few days back? Is available on my twitter :)

And 1 more question, feed in DICE free?

On Fridays there is a big breakfast buffet in the kitchen for everyone at DICE to enjoy, and apart from that DICE always pays for food if you work overtime (dinner or weekends) or if you are travelling with the company. On top of that, during the last couple of months, called "crunch", they will usually bring in things like afternoon smoothies and personally hand them out to developers at their desks.

And the last question. To work in DICE (sweden) necessarily need to know Swedish, or might do English?

Oh, I have worked with plenty of people who don't speak Swedish. In fact, some of my really great friends at DICE like Dan "Derblington" or Kuda "MuttleyP" have been here for probably about 8-9 years now and still struggle ordering McDonalds in Swedish, so English will be just fine. As a matter of fact, 86% of people in Sweden speak excellent English :)

• What misconception would you like to clear up?

• What question would you like to be asked?

• I would love to give more credit to the in-house QA teams at every studio (not just EA/DICE). These professionals pull an amazing weight of the production team, but usually gets worse contracts, lower salary, aren't included in team-/company-activities and still come back to put in some of the highest overtime hours across the company.
• I would love to if someone would ask me IF it's possible to add things to games before promising it (Yes, I'm looking at you Marketing!).

It should also be mentioned that bugs are rarely ever QA teams' fault. There's a 99% certainty that they've seen, replicated and documented an egregious bug but because of deadlines and such, it will ship with the product, along with a whole list of other ones.

Yes, yes and again, yes! Quite frankly speaking, a lot of the things I didn't have time to fix or decided was lower prio never ended up biting me in the butt, but QA got flack for it over social media (sorry guys - you know who you are).

Thanks T.K!

You're welcome, Z.L!

To start, I'd just like to thank you for working on games that I've spent so many hours having a blast on, they've given me some great memories !

And my question is, are there any upcoming games you see a great potential in or that you're looking forward to yourself ?

To start, thank you for the kind words and it brings a smile to my face to hear that you have enjoyed them that much! :) The last game I really looked forward to a lot was Destiny, because I absolutely love the idea of the RPG/FPS/MMO combination. To be quite honest, I've had a lot of fun playing it but I still feel there is more to be done so I hope they give out more content soon and continue to grow it. Apart from that, I am looking forward to Heroes of the Storm, the new WoW expansion (yes I will relapse and play it for a few months again, even though I promised never to do so again). I am a big fan of Uncharted so that would be the biggest thing right now that I'm waiting for (I'm one of the people standing in line for hours at midnight to play it and go to work without any sleep). Oh, and the new Far Cry looks like great - hope to get even more on the story in this one :)

I have 2 questions.

1. PC or console?

2. Favorite game?

Edit: PC or console was a stupid question seeing as you have a triple monitor setup in your proof picture.

1. PC.
2. Diablo 2.

'nuff said? ;)

I want to do game design so a few questions. Did you have game design experience before college? What course did you do in college?

This is where it gets wacky. I never went to college. I went to the Swedish equivalent of High School, in which I first studied Computer Science for 6 months and then switched to Media Communication and Photography. I did however have a lot of experience from modding when I was younger which I spent years doing, as well as a freelance project for a danish company.

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I played Project Reality quite a bit for BF2 actually and really enjoyed it, but my favourite mod was Desert Combat for BF1942, which also happens to be my favourite ever Battlefield game :)

Why you add Battle-pickups weapons dogtags? "500 kills with USAS-12/M82A3/M32GL" hmmm..what?

Dedication, buddy! ;)

but they are too hard to earn

Yep, they are really hard to earn and there is a lot of grinding required. But that is sort of the point of them, to really distinguish the super-dedicated people going for them from the people like me that go "What? No way!" and goes to watch TaleSpin and eat ice cream instead :)

You are right :)

I have completed all the assignments, opened all the medals and finish open weapons battlepacks

thanks for the 500 boosts by 25% ;)

You sir, are dedicated as hell! Should be tags or pre/suffixes for such accomplishments.

Are there many other Easter Eggs in BF4 that the community haven't found yet? If so, give us some clues?

Haha I would think that there are actually, because some of us at DICE were really good at hiding easter eggs and never even told other people in the office about them. I still have a lot of dates that are important to me personally on things in BF3, but that's not really as big as a pre-historic shark :) Unfortunately I don't have any clues to give out - but JackFrags is usually great at hunting this stuff down ;)

Do you watch csgo esports scene?If so what do you think battlefield could do to improve?

Being on Fnatic I try to watch as much as possible where we are entered (I just spent 3 days on Hearthstone, CS:GO and Starcraft 2). The CS:GO scene is great and is a benchmark for FPS esports. The problem with a game like Battlefield is the split in the community caused by the nature of the game. Some want 64 player mayhem across land, sea, and air, while some want the tighter experience of 5v5 domination for example. The 64 player vehicle experience isn't viable for esports and that means pro-players play something completely different from the majority of the audience. I would love to see more love from DICE PR though during events to highlight what is going on though :)

Without vehicles, what does competitive BF offer that CS:GO doesnt?

Do you think there is anyway vehicles can be integrated into the smaller esports formats?

Even without vehicles, the way the game is set up is very different from CS:GO through levels, gameplay, movement, weapon handling etc. I think there are enough differences to warrant a scene of its own - kind of like the different scenes for Unreal Tournament and Quake that are also similar games, but yet different enough. I do think that there are ways of having both vehicles and infantry in 5v5 modes, however I think both maps, vehicles and counter measures need to be re-tweaked for this purpose. However, I remember my good ol' days of 1942 where we would pixel-fire across maps to deny enemy fighters to take off. Great fun and vehicles had their place and counter plays :)

When are you and zh1nt0 playing cs again?

Whenever we get the time for it - we both have a lot of things on our plates right now :)

1. What was the first pc/console game you played?
2. Which one made you passionate about games?

I don't think I can remember the very first ever, but one of the first was Commander Keen. Great game! The game that got me really passionate must have been Chrono Trigger. That game is above and beyond most others even to date! :)

Why do you think EA Sports finally made a suitable Madden (fixs most of the glitches) that pervious Madden versions had. Did your company add anybody new to make sure Madden is actually good?

Unfortunately I wasn't on the Madden team, but I agree that it's gotten a lot better now. I would have to point that question to someone on EA Tiburon, currently working on those projects to give you an exact answer, but what I can say is that most studios in EA will hire consultants that are experts in their respective field to help out with these things. For Madden you'd get a professional football player or coach to help out, for BF and MOH we had soldiers of special forces and for Mirror's Edge we had professional free runners.

What did you study and how did you get into the industry?

Hey! I answered this a little earlier actually, but to sum it up - I was an esport player, studied photography in high school where I got lucky and got internship at DICE that led to getting hired :)

How do the players get paid?

Is there a percent of the teams earnings or salary?

Do players have to sign a contract?

Who owns the team? The players or are there investors?

The organisation gets money from sponsors and a percentage of the winnings in tournaments. Then the players get a base salary, usually bonus for things like streaming x-hours and such. When it comes to winning tournaments, this is where they get most of the money and a small cut goes to the organisation to cover things like travel expenses and hotel bills. When it comes to contracts different organisations do it differently, but I would say that any serious and professional organisation have contracts. At FNATIC we have both staff and players on contracts as a two-way safety :) The actual team is being run as a company right now, but I am not entirely sure in what form unfortunately.

Do your fanatic teams get together and play each other?

Usually we don't have time for that as it's a lot of practice, school, making dinner, and life around it. But sometimes we do! I know that there has been some LoL and Dota being played across the teams and I have been on playing CS:GO a couple of times with our team, as well as playing BF4 with some guys from the NiP team actually.

Thanks, this really helps cus i had no idea how esports clubs (is that right, clubs, like a football team) operated. So as far as changing the roster, who makes the decision?

I usually refer to them as "Organisations" and then within that there are "Teams" playing different games, but clubs work too :) When it comes to roster changes it's usually not a mandate from anyone, but more of a unanimous decision from both players and management. When we for example had to make the tough call to change one of our players, we had a lot of really tough meetings together all of us, and then part of my role is to always keep a lookout for players on other teams (like scouts in football). So I checked which players were on contracts (and if they were, how much it would cost to buy them from the other organisation), checked their history in esports to make sure they are "clean" and a lot of that stuff - then I presented my suggestions to the players and together we tried to find the best match for the team.

Was there ever even a remote possibility of Dinosaur DLC in BF3?

Something that was really close to make it in to the game though was a Dev-only attachment was the "3.4x T-Rex Laser Sight".

Yes and no :P We did have a lot of talks about it in the studio and there were some rumors of a concept floating around, but I guess it never got through all the gates it needed to make it :)

What game are you looking forward to the most that isn't published by EA?

Hand down it would be Heroes of the Storm, the new WoW expansion, new Uncharted, new FarCry. And the one I looked forward to the most before that was Destiny, which is a really good game in my opinion, but still not quite what I expected (hope they can expand it in patches with more story, bigger world & more rpg progression).

Hi Tim. How did you get into the business?

Hey Dylan (or is it Josh?), I don't want to be snarky, but I made a longer reply a bit earlier on this, so you will just get the shortened version here :) I played 1942 competitively for years, then I got an internship at DICE when I was in high school thanks to a girl I was dating (she knew the office manager at the time), and after 6months there I had done a lot of feedbacking and was offered a position in the QA department on BFBC1 and worked my way from there :) Ps. I don't recommend to rely on as much luck as I have ;)

How much influence do EA execs or marketing types really have on the creative side of things at DICE?

I would say that they have less influence on the creative side of things than people seem to think. For the years I was on the core gameplay team of Battlefield I didn't once make a creative decision based on executives or marketing. However, indirectly management can of course restrict the creative side of things quite a bit if they were to for example cut down budgets or shorten the production time of a project. There have however been a couple of times where marketing have made decisions and promises to the community, without speaking to us in development first - such as the ACB-90 addition to BF3 Premium for example. I actually didn't know that I was creating that until a community member told me he was hyped for it and sent me a link to our YouTube announcement. We didn't actually have memory allocated for such an addition (and neither did we have a name for the weapon approved by legal, so I made up the name on my own using initials and the birth year of someone close to me) - so I ended up having to quickly find resources and solutions to get it in the game, because the last thing I wanted was to let you guys down on another promise.

Hey Tim! Any tips on how to grow an awesome beard?

Don't eat fish, always finish your vegetables and never give up! ;)

Hi, The Aim assist in BF3 was tolerable, but in BF4 on console it's insane. It takes all skill out of the game.

Are you aware of this or do you have insight into why it's so invasive?

Hi, I felt that it was working the way it should in BF3, but had unfortunately left when it was done for BF4 and don't know why it was set up that way. I am guessing there have already been a lot of videos and forum posts about this topic, and I sincerely hope that tiggr_ and everyone on the dev-teams (I'm looking at you Pavel) are aware and fix this. Things like these should be tweaked together with the community imho.

Cool, I hope they do address it, because it's really spoiling the game. You wonder sometimes do devs even play their own game. Thanks for the answer.

I hope so too - and I can say that some devs do play a lot, and others don't play much at all, so very varied. Let's hope the communication gets better so that the focus of fixes etc go where needs be, and explanations get out as to why certain things don't get fixed :) Maybe one day we will even see estimates of when things are expected to be fixed? ;)

I think they'll realise they've pushed core fans too far when sales of Hardline hit them. I paid €120 for BF3 Premium, about the same for BF4 + Premium and another €70 when I upgraded to PS4, but I wouldn't give them another cent. I'm not the only one that feels that way.

I understand and pre-BF4 I was one of the people saying "Don't buy it on launch. Hold on to the money and wait for the launch & reviews to come out!". I would actually recommend people do that for Hardline as well - it's just a much better way to not throw money at promises that have yet to be proven. If the game however is really stable and great on launch, go buy it with a feeling of satisfaction of a great buy :) That's exactly what I'm gonna do at least.

• Are you also working on Mirror's Edge 2?

• I'm very much interested in how a regular work day at a game company looks like. Do you have some kind of a schedule where you say like "ok guys today we're going to do this and that" or is it more random, for example if someone brings up a good idea for a game can he implement it on his own immediately or does he have to wait until you've finished working on other concepts?

• Oh and another question: One of the soundtracks of BF4 is called "A theme for Kjell". Does that correlate with you?

• Well, as Danny so neatly pointed out I'm not at DICE currently, but I was doing a lot of feedback on the new Mirror's Edge waaaay back when it was a small team trying out new ideas. I haven't actually seen much of the new project though.
• I would say that there are no "standard" days in game development. Everyone has their routines, mine used to be a coffee in the morning, some chat with people by the kitchen and then check emails and get on with my tasks of the week. I always used to do weekly sprints where I had targets to reach that week, and depending on how many urgent requests came up from other people I would have to work more/less overtime. New concepts need to go through a lot of paperwork and gates before they are being built, but I have seen a lot of people working on their spare time in the office on projects of their own. I remember one game that we played in multiplayer during lunch hours that an artist made. You ran around and threw snowballs on each other :D
• A lot of people asked me about the soundtrack, but it's not actually about me. It's actually to my boss at DICE whose firstname was Kjell. He unfortunately passed away in a very tragic accident just before the game was launched, and so it was given to dedicate and remember him.

what happened to DICE and BF after BC1. There really hasnt been a game like bf2 since. (BF3 and 4 really dont live up to what bf2 was). Was there a significant leadership change?

Usually after projects there is some rotations done in positions. Some people decide to leave, some stay in the same positions and some get promoted. And of course, some new people come in. There was some movement in the company management and the Easy studio was born, so a lot of people were shuffled around. I don't think this made the games worse, but the focus on what kind of game we wanted to create shifted as the market changed. As I said in a previous reply, I think the optimal would be to have two battlefield titles, one that is focused on slower paced tactical gameplay and a spinoff that is more focused around the fast paced shooter experience.

In your opinion, What are the chances of mod tools coming back in a Battlefield game? I was a huge Desert Combat fan, I really miss that stuff.

Yeah, I loved Desert Combat too, but unfortunately I don't see mod tools coming back any time soon :(

How did you enjoy working on the Frostbite engine? Were there any plans to release it for others to use?

and lastly, as a Computer Engineering Student, how can I break into the game design industry, without coming from a specific "game design" school?

Thanks for your time!

I really enjoyed working on the Frostbite engine, both when I was on the Frostbite team and helped design the workflows and when I later was on the development teams and got to use the tools. I remember there being a lot of discussions regarding releasing it publicly, but the systems were so intricate and intertwined they simply became almost the "home tree" in Avatar. Everything was connected everywhere, which made it an immensely powerful engine and was really great to work with in-house, but it just wouldn't work outside of the office. Trying to detach things from each other to create a standalone version would, at least in my head, be too complicated to be done in a viable way. But let's hope some of the brilliant minds on the current team can figure out a way to solve this and get a version out for the community! :) Now, for your second question I would say that one way to do this is simply working on your own games or engines at home in your spare time. I know that Johan "repi" Andersson did a lot of work on an engine of his own, and so has most of my other friends that work as programmers (even the ones not working in gaming currently). Now, with todays great tools available (latest Unreal engine, Unity to just name a couple) you should be able to get projects going solidly and gain a lot of experience on what it's like creating code for games. Another buddy (notch on twitter) just loves doing different experiments, so he's been doing a lot of code on small projects and engines and see how they behave and are presented visually in various ways. But by doing this, you not only gain experience, but also something solid to show others, kind of like how artists usually have portfolios containing their works :) Hope that gave you some ideas at least :)

Thanks for the response! I totally get that an in-house engine will be pretty coupled together. I'll have to look more into doing my own small game experiments as well.

I'm really glad to hear that! Hope to see great things from you in the future :)

Hey, Tim!

Can you please tell us why and what's exactly the reason you left DICE studio?

I actually covered this very in-depth in an interview that was released a few days ago in the russian community, but I'll give you the shortened version :) I had a lot of things in my personal life going the wrong way at that point, causing both physical and mental stress on me and my body. This got to the point where I was hospitalised for quite lengthy periods of time and had a lot of surgery (actually having my very last one on Wednesday, so fingers crossed!). All of this basically led me to the point where I felt I wouldn't be able to deliver a game of this caliber to quality, and out of respect for the community, my co-workers and of course for my own healths sake I decided to leave and do something else for a while. Now that I am feeling a lot better however, I would love to go back again :)

Best of luck for your upcoming surgery!

Thanks, will be a long day but I'm stoaked to finally get it done with :)

Whats your favorite mech switches?

I'm not an expert on keyboards, but the one I like the most is the 6Gv2 from Steelseries. Just feels right both when typing and gaming, you know? :)

Okay. always bothered me:

In Battlefield 3, why have you not added the functionality to lock vehicles, so that vehicle stealing wouldn't happen?

Also, why fixing reactive armor hasn't got any visual ques? (except a shitty audio que, which is buggy) ?

I think that locking vehicles can be quite troublesome to create without stirring up a lot of new issues, but nothing is impossible - so my main theory on this is that it comes down to having to priorities, weighing how much time and manpower it would cost figuring out and tweaking a solution, versus how many other issues that are critical that could be fixed. Don't get me wrong, I hate jumping out of a jeep just to have someone else snatch it and drive off, leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere, but at least those are my two cents. When it comes to reactive armor I didn't create that part, but I worked across from the designers that did and I often reviewed their work - and the stuff they had to do to just get it to work the way it does now used to give me headaches, it was that complicated. I think these types of features should always have both visual and audio cues (that are reliable of course), but I think it simply came down to priorities again and not being able to ensure it worked well and in a reliable fashion in the timespan they had.

Thank you. I understand that making complicated systems within complicated systems is extremely complicated (lol).

Also, I am surprised DICE didn't consider making reactive armor regenerate after some time out of combat. It would alleviate the issue with bad response of fixing the reactive armor.

But I am extremely grateful to you for the marvelous game which i played for more than 150 hours. I wish you had more time/people. As in the end, I quit because of vehicle stealing.

Also, what is your opinion on snipers in Battlefield. Seems like the team wanted them to be played as a mid-range support class. Giving them many gadgets that assist the team. But still gave the marksman bonus for long-range kills.

This bothers me, as the sniper playstyle is fun only for the sniper. Because in the course of a long match, the sniper contributes 10-30 kills of random people. And these kills do not help in most cases.
This leads to the sniper being detrimental to his team, because he doesn't contribute in the same way other classes do (direct pressure on objectives. Like a tank, or a engineer who takes out a tank).
Also for enemy infantry players a sniper creates an annoyance. Not big enough like a engineer/assault but more like a mosquito.

What is your input on this? I really hope that in BF5 the recon class is reworked, so that the team with the most snipers isn't at a disadvantage.

Well the idea behind the re-work of the sniper class for BF4 (and previous titles as well, this is a tricky one) was to try and get recons more involved in the team activities and not just end up on "wookie hill" for the entire match. I think that both long range snipers and medium range recons can contribute to their teams (counter sniping and holding down specific locations for example), but I think that designers such as myself still haven't found an optimal way of doing this whilst still not ruining the long range sniper experience yet. I am confident that we will see more changes in upcoming titles that are in the right direction, as the guys and gals working there are really great and will one day find a great middle-ground :)

Are you up to anything right now other than coaching the fnatic team? Would you consider trying to create a new competitive FPS after seeing what makes a good e-sport first hand?

Right now I'm doing some freelance work apart from the fnatic work I do, but I feel I could do even more if I went back to a studio tbh - so we'll see about the future :) I would love to create a new competitive FPS and think I have a lot of knowledge in how that should be done to become a success. I have actually been in quite close contact with some developers at Epic working on Unreal Tournament together with the community, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes :)

Can you suggest a few underrated games that you find fantastic? I say underrated because I'm looking for something that is not mainstream...Some gem that is neglected.

Wow, I don't think I've had enough time to actually play games as such in a long time, but I have always loved the Dungeon Siege series (first game pre-expansion was the best!). Is that underrated enough? :)

Is BF4 the biggest fps but also the biggest FPS competitive game to play (Dixit zh1nt0)?

CS:GO is without a flicker of a doubt the largest FPS E-Sport on the market right now. BF4 and CoD are pretty much neck and neck, but would need to be seriously overhauled to reach the status of CS right now.

As of right now I would class BF4 in the same tier as FIFA and Street Fighter (Tier 2). The top 4 games in order are LoL>Dota 2>CS:GO>Starcraft 2. Then you've got that weird place where Hearthstone resides in-between the Tier 1 and Tier 2 e-sports.

Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

LOL! I'd like to say that without the ambition of getting there, you won't get there - so it was a very bold statement, but at least it got BF-esport a lot bigger than it has ever been before. Step in the right direction, right? :)

What does DICE think it's doing with battlefield? Their newer games are all trying to be super gritty and hyper realistic, but I feel like they are just draining out all the color and personality in their games. The BC series was so great because it wasn't afraid to be colorful...what's with this new direction?

Well, my theory is that it was probably a niche that they found to work - going for really amazing graphics and a type of "generic hollywood"-story if you will. I personally absolutely loved the story, delivery of voice actors and the gameplay of the BC-series, that said I think they are different enough to co-exist. I am still very much hoping to see another BFBC-game coming out, going away from the realistic and the randomness, focusing more on just skillbased, arcade-like, gameplay as well as a more quirky story. You should check out some of the tweets locust9 did a week or so ago with some BFBC3 fan fiction, btw! :)

Tim! A game design student here from BTH in Blekinge. What advice can you offer to game designers who want to enter the industry? I feel like as if game designers are the least requested people out of programmers, sound engineers and graphical artists.

Hey! Great to hear that you're at BTH, I want to start off saying it's a great school but I can't believe you guys stand living in a town like Karlshamn where everything is closed on the weekends... Anyway, to the answers - yes I agree that we can seem to be the least requested people, and I think there is some degree of truth to this and also ways around it. Now, the tricky thing comes when you get too specialised in a specific field. I, for example, am specialised in Gameplay Balancing and Tweaking, so my focus is creating new gameplay features and balancing/tweaking these a lot. Now, companies can't have too many of those as there simply isn't enough areas for all to cover. Now, the way to solve this for you is to make sure that you get a great and wide foundation to build upon - make sure you are good at level design, or that you are a great scripter, or that you are also a writer, or something along those lines, and you will see that you are more than qualified to apply for plenty more positions :) The upside to this is you are more likely to land a job, but the downside is that it might not be the perfect position from the very beginning, but once you are in and doing a good job it is easier to actually move to other areas when the positions pop up, as you have proved yourself and are available much faster and easier (and cheaper) than hiring someone from outside. Good luck with the studies, and I hope to see a creation of yours at SGA? :)

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If by designed you are referring to the way the characters look, they are the character artists at DICE and most of them obviously have some kind of education or background in 3D modelling, texturing or CAD, but a lot of them have also worked with photography, traditional arts such as oil painting on canvas or such things. I can't speak for where they get their inspiration as that is so individual, but I have seen a lot of them photographing amazing portraits, wildlife and architecture, same goes for the painting part (I actually thought one canvas we had in the office was a photo of a woman, when in fact it was an oil painting - it was that detailed!). The actual characters in BF4 were photo-scanned by an old friend of mine at DICE called "Jochen" internally, and he dressed dummies with all equipment, scanned it in a studio at DICE and then there was a lot of hard work going in to making all these ready for the game by rigging, texturing, polishing etc.

Ha en fortsatt trevlig kväll du med! :)

What's your thoughts on single player implemented to Battlefield? Battlefield is known from MP and SP actually worked on Bad Company series due to humor and all that but it's pretty safe to say that BF3&4 SP is just bad. The whole concept of short campaign with a very cheesy story + special effects on a franchise which is known from MP is.. is just dumb to be added.

Well, I think it has brought joy to some but would have personally seen more of the BFBC-spinoff take on the Singleplayer and possibly a polished and extended "red thread"-kind of Co-op campaign instead in BF3/4. I agree Multiplayer has been really strong on BF since the beginning and I would have loved to see this type of solution instead, and then saving the more humor-filled kind of singleplayer for the Bad Company-series :) I in fact quite liked the story and singleplayer of those games.

I'm actually really curious about how design phase works, does everyone involved in the project sit around a big round table and talk about their imagination XD?

Haha you are actually quite close to how it works. Now, of course it works differently in different stages on the project, and in the very beginning it will be just a few people talking about these ideas, but the ideas will usually be in some sort of presentation form (just text and maybe some crudely drawn pictures to explain some things) and then from there you bounce ideas with other designers. I remember when I was on BF4 very early on and the Lead designer on expansion for BF3 (DICEfigge on twitter) was trying to come up with End Game, he came by our room and asked me and Demize99 to sit down and bounce ideas. We sat down for a little while, trying different ideas on each other, trying to see how far we could get them design-wise and eventually we said "What if bombs are blown up, sh*t goes down and we end up almost in a post-apocalyptic setting where you gotta just try to scavenge whatever is around to stay alive?" and so it was born. This phase (called "concept phase") is actually really fun, but also very draining as you are constantly in meetings and trying to bring out every ounce of creativity for weeks, sometimes months, on end.

Can you give us info on the Mirror's Edge reboot?

Nope, I didn't work on the reboot the way it is now and I haven't had the luxury of seeing it lately, so I'm waiting just as eagerly as you on more info. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope they deliver a great game! :)

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Yup, I met rekkles the first time during Dreamhack winter last year and more recently during this years Gamescom we managed to somehow mess up my hotel bookings, so I didn't have anywhere to go for the first night. Luckily I just needed to make one phone call to Oliver, the LoL manager, and he had a couch for me to stay on. But we all went out for dinner and the guys are really great, although I still can't believe Rekkles comes from Gothenburg and haven't ever had sushi...

If you recall, what was the reasoning behind the changes in class design from BC2 to BF3/4? Specifically, the decision to swap the health and ammo gadgets between the Assault and Support classes.

This change has always seemed nothing short of ridiculous to me, and I'd really like to know what prompted it.

I can't recall the specific details of it, but I remember having these discussions about it and it felt better from a gameplay point of view to have more distinguished roles for each and every class. The Assault became the medic, and no longed could he noob-tube across the map for infinity by putting out ammo packs for himself, and the Support became just that - a support, that lays down suppressive fire, stocks up others ammo pool and brings a clear role to the team. I'm not in any way saying that the "noob-tube" was what instigated the swap or that this was the only way of solving such an issue, but it was a bi-product that we got for free by doing the swap for more clear roles.

What makes a BAD videogame?

Wow, this is a tough one... I think it can be multiple things, but in my mind the biggest thing that makes a bad game is poor design. Gameplay that just isn't tight or fun, or just plain repetitive, (or "bad" in a collective word) makes a bad game. I mean, why play a game if it isn't fun, right?

I would love it if DICE would foster a competitive scene for dogfighting. Maybe through specialized maps and modes. I feel air superiority missed the mark a bit, especially with radar broken.

If you ever make it back to DICE, or maybe in conversation with friends you still have from the studio; could you please suggest the power of growing these little bubbles of competitive communities. You're right; the 64 player may never catch fire, but dogfighting done right might.

I'm dreaming for maps designed for this like coral sea. Modes that let people Q up for 1v1's, 2v2's, 3v3's or dare I say 4v4's. And not just for jets. Attack choppers, scouts choppers, and other vehicles could find a sweet competitive scene with the right format. Thoughts? Opinions?

Personally, I am a terrible pilot so if you ever spawn on me in a chopper, jump out. Quickly! Now, whilst I might suck at piloting the aerial vehicles, I do still enjoy them and I am not entirely convinced there will be a competitive scene for it, but I would love to be proven wrong by some great design and a dedicated community. Now, I know a lot of people love dogfighting more than I love hot cocoa with honey, so it shouldn't be a bad idea at all. I think it would be really cool to have specialised maps for such things, like Coral Sea, and I'll politely bring it to conversation next time I go for a pub crawl with the guys and gals :)

Directly after BF3 was launched was there a big debate about the next game that would be developed(BF1944,BF2143,Vietnam 2,BC3) or was the whole of DICE determined to do BF4?

Secondly what is your thoughts on the unofficial BF3 mod Venice Unleashed?

Edit: Why did DICE back off about removing the blue tint?

The debates regarding this usually start before the projects are completely finished, so that when something is finished there is something for all the women and men to do. Now, I do know that there was a lot of discussions internally on what to do, but the natural thing felt like BF4 as well as some other smaller projects to prototype and see how they turned out, and I think that was a good decision that seems to have worked out quite well :) Personally, I think it's amazing that people have such knowledge and dedication that they can do projects like that. I absolutely love to see it and I'm sort of envious that I don't have the know-how to reverse-engineer things to that scale myself, but I say keep it up if you enjoy it! I'm not against it in any way :) As for the blue tint, I am not entirely sure why it wasn't removed - probably the art director just felt it really fit the tone and setting of the game and went with it because of it. Now, I know it has been toned down and I don't think it's interfering with gameplay, and to me then it's good - but I also think that if the community really don't want it, maybe there is a way for the AD to find different tones to use depending on the setting of the map or even different locations of the map? ;) I urge you to rally the troops for your cause if you feel it's a big one and give even more examples of how it could look and carefully explaining in a constructive way why it should be so and why it would benefit the game/community :)

What are your favourite games? And do you think the games you have worked on have some things from those you love?

How was the working conditions?

Some of my absolute favourite games are Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Chrono Trigger, Dungeon Siege, Quake 3 and BF1942 - of course the list could go on, but let's leave it at that :) I think those games have shaped me and the way I approach and tackle design issues. Seeing how they have affected me in that sense and help me find solutions, I think there are definitely traces of those games in my design. Well, working conditions are a little bit like the army - only warmer and more dry. You make amazing friends, and they become your second family. You have to be mentally prepared that out of the 80 great ideas you have, you will only have 2 make it at the very end. When you do things good, there is rarely credit or recognition, but make one mistake and it will follow you for a long time. You work long and you work hard, but at the end of the day it's totally worth it and being able to do things that can literally save lives is amazing.