What’s wrong with AAA games? The development of the next Battlefield has answers.

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The road to Glacier

To understand exactly what’s going on with the next Battlefield title—codenamed Glacier—we need to rewind a bit.

In the early 2010s, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 expanded the franchise audience to more directly compete with Call of Duty, the heavy-hitter at the time. Developed primarily by EA-owned, Sweden-based studio DICE, the Battlefield games mixed the franchise’s promise of combined arms warfare and high player counts with Call of Duty’s faster pace and greater platform accessibility.

This was a golden age for Battlefield. However, 2018’s Battlefield V launched to a mixed reception, and EA began losing players’ attention in an expanding industry.

Instead, the hot new online shooters were Overwatch (2016), Fortnite (2017), and a resurgent Call of Duty. Fortnite was driven by a popular new gameplay mode called Battle Royale, and while EA attempted a Battle Royale mode in Battlefield V, it didn’t achieve the desired level of popularity.

After V, DICE worked on a Battlefield title that was positioned as a throwback to the glory days of 3 and 4. That game would be called Battlefield 2042 (after the future year in which it was set), and it would launch in 2021.

The launch of Battlefield 2042 is where Glacier’s development story begins. Simply put, the game was not fun enough, and Battlefield 2042 launched as a dud.

Don’t repeat past mistakes

Players were disappointed—but so were those who worked on 2042. Sources tell me that prior to launch, Battlefield 2042 “massively missed” its alpha target—a milestone by which most or all of the foundational features of the game are meant to be in place. Because of this, the game’s final release would need to be delayed in order to deliver on the developers’ intent (and on players’ expectations).

“Realistically, they have to delay the game by at least six months to complete it. Now, they eventually only delayed it by, I think, four or five weeks, which from a development point of view means very little,” said one person who worked closely with the project at the time.

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