Battlefield Hardline Delay Explained

Viceral had a hard time convincing EA that a delay was necessary.

Battlefield Hardline’s creative director Ian Milham recently said that it took EA some convincing by Viceral to delay the game in order to work on the player feedback received during the game's beta.

"We had that Beta in June and it went really, really well. But we had this ton of feedback and we had a lot of conversations about, ‘Man, this is really cool we should do this. Oh, but we don’t have the time,’" he said. “And then as we really started to think about how long games are living now over our time, we thought we only get one chance to do this right and we got something that is on the doorstep of being great."

Viceral and EA, back in July announced that Battlefield Hardline was delayed from October 2014 to 2015 to take on feedback received during the game's Beta.

"I mean we just want to make cool games and thats all we care about or want to do. And there is a whole universe of other stuff going on: What other things does EA have coming out? What other games are coming out?" he said. "Like this had nothing to do with release windows or competition or any of that kind of stuff. But those are things in the world. So of course there was a lot of ‘Grr, well I don’t know we got to figure this out, this is a pretty big deal are you sure?’ But as we talked it out, it became pretty clear that it was the right thing to do, so they were onboard."

One of Visceral’s concerns rolling out the Beta was fans not thinking that it was Battlefield title and saying ‘Huh, this wasn’t what I thought,’" he said. "And maybe the more cynical amongst them might think that they already had some bank robbery game and EA wanted it to sell more so they put Battlefield on the box," Milham said. "Which isn’t the case at all. This was kicked off as ‘Hey, we wanted to make a Battlefield game’ before we chose theme of the world and that is what it has been since the beginning.

"What was interesting was the response at E3 was actually in some ways the opposite, that people went ‘Oh, thats Battlefield but I wanted it to be more different I want it to more cops and robbers-sy and more specific and and more different features and more different maps and more different modes.’ And that was again part of what we trying to do here."

"Not only did we did get permission to make it different, we got demand to make it different," Milham said. "Some of it wasn’t necessarily that all of the feedback was ‘Oh, we want it more  different’ and we were like ‘Well, OK, that is going to take a while,’ But it was part of the compilation of stuff, for sure."

"I think we are making something different from the core of Battlefield that is being made and I think they can live along next to each other. And whatever gets made next and whenever the next Battlefield comes along, I don’t think it necessarily  replaces this one."