Bad Company's Humor Made it a "Niche" Title

The Battlefield: Bad Company series humor makes the game more of a "niche" product than the mainline Battlefield titles, said DICE executive producer Patrick Bach.

"It is a discussion about niche and mass market, I think," said DICE executive producer Patrick Bach in a recent interview. "If you make your product more niche, you'll get more happy fans, but that audience will be smaller--some people won't care, some people will love it."

"When we did the original Bad Company and the sequel, we got a lot of criticism. Why would I play this? It's not a serious shooter, I don't care about this. I want a serious shooter with a more hard-boiled angle. And we thought it was fun! We loved it, we thought it was a great game. The narrative was amazing and the characters were amazing."

"So it's not that we've buried the crew, so to speak," continued Bach. "I love franchises that don't take themselves too seriously."

"I think that games in general can be anything," continued Bach. "Sometimes you get the feeling that the community and the press only think there's one type of game, the ultimate game, and for me it's becoming more and more diverse, much like the movie industry, which I think is a good comparison."

"When you started out it was quite serious, because it was an expensive business to make a movie, so you'd [effectively] have this stage drama that you'd film, but then you start to add comedy to it and make money off that, and turn it into a genre, and now you have all types of genres, where it isn't just based on comedy, drama, documentary, or whatever--it's also how you consume those movies," concluded Bach.

"Trust me, the Bad Company [team] isn't forgotten, they are just on a very long vacation," said DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson in October. "They are out there, they're coming back."