How Silence made Battlefield great

Design is, for me, a relatively quiet activity. In becoming a global industry - a recognized, necessary force within almost any imaginable project.. what do we lose?

The last fun Battlefield game

A famous saying in comedy goes along the lines of

"Jokes are like frogs.. if you dissect them, well, you kill them."

I grew up playing a myriad of different video games, which all (mostly) aim to let players have fun. What exactly makes a game fun is a well studied subject, but the answer is continuously evolving. The last Battlefield game I truly remember enjoying was Bad Company 2. (BC2 from hereon)

Let's see what one of the developers has to say about how they made BC2 fun:

...there's one thing that lingers with Bad Company that we've been asking ourselves: what is it that the people really liked about Bad Company?

Some people say this: the Bad Company 2 multiplayer is the best you've ever done. Okay, why is that? It's hard for people to articulate what that is, which is actually hard for us. It would be hard to remake something like that. Can we do it? Of course.

I'm not going to interpret this as nobody at Dice knows why the game they made is good. To me, the situation in the quote reads as a comedian being told to say something funny after having just said something really funny. You can't just tell the same joke again, and that's the issue.

What happened after BC2?

If you have a poor sense of how FPS games differed from each other at the time - I'll just say this: most were very hectic. The core loop of multiplayer FPS games is to be thrown into battle, perish and be thrown in once again. This loop can be made very hectic - a smaller play area, powerful weapons, fluidity and ease of player movement - all reinforcing each other to up the tempo.

That's where I feel BC2 was different - it was rather slow. Rather, each iteration of the loop had its own crescendo, a build up from slow to intense - and back to slow, if you manage to stay alive.

Loss of quietude

In BC2, even navigating the menu, choosing a loadout for your character was a rather quiet experience. A bit like tweaking a couple of settings on your phone. There was a level up system, but seemingly mostly put in for funsies. After 10-20 hours of playing, you'd probably unlocked most of what you could possibly need.

All in all, the combined cognitive load of getting the hang of the game, wrapping your head around new equipment gained by leveling up.. was very manageable. There was a balance between gameplay and gamification, if you will.

Later releases seemed to take more cues from competitors in the genre. Beyond upping the tempo - everything became more. Extra. From the most action-packed, grungy and cool looking menus and UI you've ever seen - to the most Diablo 2 like maze of equipment, skins and upgrades to keep track of. Musicians know that silence is a powerful tool for building suspense, emphasis and even respite from say, a particularly intense passage.

Modern FPS games feel very go-go-go all the time, from the menu screen to the gameplay. Complex UI animations, cool sound effects, lots of tabs and layers in the loadout settings. There are no quiet moments. It's a special sort of all-in immersion that leaves no room for the mind to wander.

Silence, space and momentum

If you have a driver's license, you've likely experienced speed blindness. Coming off of a highway exit, you feel like you're driving slow enough to even hop out of the car safely. But you're still going fast. Your senses dull when there's no change of speed and momentum, when it's all fast, fast, fast.

Maybe you're a speed junkie. BC2 has fast-paced game modes for you. The star of the show, for me - is the great open maps, where you and your team push to advance in waves, moving further and further toward the final objective. There's nothing stopping you from going behind enemy lines.

You can really move quite far away from the action, thanks to the space. And because the sound design is excellent - the ambiance changes, there's a visceral silence.. a sort of hunter's instinct emerges from the emptiness. You sneak from bush to tree with your squad, hoping to pull off a legendary ambush, or maybe clear out an annoying sniper nest.

And when the tension breaks and the action starts - the reward, the "fun" - stems from such a unique blend of factors that transcend explanation. You have to experience it, and you'll have experiences unique to only you. Nobody will tell you "oh, that happened to me too!" - instead, they're going to be reminded of a unique experience of their own.

I don't blame DICE for not understanding the why behind the fun. In BC2, they set the stage for unforgettable player experiences because they stepped back, and let silence take center stage. That's something you have to design with intention, and confidence. When you follow trends and whatever the other games are doing, you're more likely to create just another game.