Tag Archives: ZombiU

Technology

Battlefield 2042 Pulls Zombie Survival Mode After It Breaks XP

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Image: Battlefield 2042

Last week DICE launched a new game mode for Battlefield 2042 called Zombie Survival, which would pit a small team of human players against a horde of the undead. It lasted about a day before it had to be removed, for reasons that had nothing to do with Zombie Survival itself.

Justin Wiebe is senior design director at Ripple Effect Studios, formerly known as Danger Close Games and DICE LA, a studio that these days mostly helps out on Battlefield with stuff like game modes and expansions. He took to Twitter over the weekend to explain why the mode was pulled so quickly:

“We’ve removed the Zombie’s mode and replaced with Gun Game”, he wrote. “Hopefully we can fix it in the future and keep it in alignment with standard game progression. We’ve also tightened our review process to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Thanks for your patience and understanding.”

Then, responding to a player saying that the mode had been seeing a “a mixed bag of reactions” from fans, Wiebe added “I think there was potential for the mode but needs to go back into the workshop for a bit. Regardless, we need to be focusing on more important issues like improving core XP progression for BF Portal.”

“I’m not going to lie, this one shouldn’t have gotten through our review process” he says in another, later tweet. “I think our desire to create a fun zombies mode clouded our ability to see such a simple thing like the impact it would have on progression. I’m very sorry for the hardship this has caused.”

The issue here is the Battlefield 2042, for better and mostly worse, is built around the idea that as you play it you gain XP, which lets you unlock new weapons, vehicles, skins and equipment in the main game modes. That makes it one of the most important things for the team to have to get right, and introducing fan-made modes in Portal—the game’s creation suite—that break that progression threatens to undermine the whole system that the main game modes are relying on.

This of course sucks, regardless of whether you enjoyed Zombie Survival or not, because it reminds us that the progression system itself is deeply unsatisfying for anyone playing the game for a serious amount of time, and to see interesting game modes like this nuked to preserve it shows that this game’s priorities are wrong at their most fundamental levels.



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Technology

Sony Saw Days Gone As A Disappointment, Former Director Says

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Maybe a Days Gone sequel would’ve improved upon its myriad flaws.
Image: Sony Bend Studio

While developer Sucker Punch Productions celebrates the massive success of Ghost of Tsushima, which recently sold more than eight million copies, not everyone is reveling in the excitement. Case in point: Former Bend Studio director Jeff Ross, who used the opportunity to take a stab at Sony for how it handled the reception of the open-world zombie game, Days Gone.

Ross took to Twitter to air out some grievances, particularly regarding the sales of Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima. See, with Days Gone having been out for approaching three years now, the game has sold more than nine million copies to date, especially with its PC release on May 18, 2021. Unfortunately, Ross said “local studio management” made Bend Studio “feel like [Days Gone] was a big disappointment,” despite the game selling well. Even before Ross left Bend Studio at the end of 2020, Days Gone wound up selling the same 8 million Ghost of Tsushima recently has.

We’ve reached out to Sony for comment and will update if we hear back.

Many in Ross’ mentions think the determining factor for Sony positioning Days Gone as a “big disappointment” was its score on Metacritic, a review aggregate site that collects critic and user scores from across the internet. Looking at Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima, it’s clear the latter reviewed much better, with Ghost of Tsushima receiving a score of 83 and Days Gone a 71.

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According to BenjiSales, a YouTuber who focuses on gaming industry sales, Days Gone was the best-selling PlayStation 4 exclusive on PSN in 2019. It also made the top 10 best-selling digital games of that year, despite Sony allegedly refusing to “do PR” on the game’s sales success. And even though it was a commercial success, Bloomberg reported in April 2021 that Bend Studio couldn’t get Sony to pick up a Days Gone sequel pitch.

I’ve got some ideas for why that is, having played both Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima, but my best guess is that Days Gone just wasn’t fun. It wasn’t an enjoyable experience to sit down and play. The controls were clunky and cumbersome. Hunting resources was a chore. I enjoyed riding the motorcycle in the beautifully apocalyptic Oregon, but the novelty wore off after incessantly running out of gas. And on top of all that, Days Gone dropped in an oversaturated genre, whether that’s open-world games, zombie survival games, or both. Wrong place, wrong time.

Read More: Days Gone Mod Makes Zombie Hordes Ludicrously Large

When asked if there would ever be a Days Gone sequel, Jeff Ross reiterated one “won’t happen anytime soon” but that fans should never say never. Ross told another Twitter user that the reason the sequel pitch got canned “wasn’t ever explained well.” All will likely get covered later today when Ross appears on David Jaffe’s podcast at 7 p.m. ET.

 



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