Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Preview

VideoGamer.com: A recent study was released about the depiction of war crimes, as they put it, in video games, where they got people to play a list of games, including Battlefield Bad Company, World at War and Far Cry 2, and got some lawyers to talk about it. They concluded these games don't condemn war crimes. What's your attitude to games dealing with real world conflicts or things that are close to home, like the terrorist level in Modern Warfare 2? Is there a responsibility there?

GVD: We had war crimes way before video games. Video games definitely don't feed into war crimes. It's just people looking for a way to get attention, by bringing up the easy target, which are obviously video games. It is representing the ultimate defeat, which is death. But when I play a video game, and I'm sure when you play a video game, you never feel like you actually killed someone. You're like, ah now I got to respawn and go back and get them. Maybe it's a harsher way of doing it, but it's like chess. When you defeat a pawn, you're technically killing that pawn, or you're killing that king. They like to say you captured it because you put it to the side, because you don't actually crush the piece, but it's in that same realm as far as I feel. It's all about entertainment.

All of these things have always existed, and to try and equate it to something that's new is just preposterous to me. It's like, oh… right… okay. And actually there are a lot of studies that show that crime has gone down with the rise of video games. People are getting out maybe feelings of aggression - it's not the same thing - but maybe they're getting a release or some type of entertainment that keeps them occupied so they don't get bored and want to do something else that's maybe a little crazy.

VideoGamer.com: It's interesting because Battlefield is within that target area, right? It's the kind of game people tend to pick on. It was bizarre to me that when they did this they didn't pick Modern Warfare 2. Maybe if the study had been done a while ago…

GVD: Maybe Infinity Ward was like, here's some money, please don't talk about us [laughs].

VideoGamer.com: Modern Warfare 2 has enjoyed a huge launch. How much of a concern is it for you? Obviously the online is a massive component of Bad Company 2. Does Modern Warfare 2 keep you awake at night?

GVD: [Laughs] No, not at all. They provide a different experience. It's not like Coke versus Pepsi. Maybe they're Coca-Cola and we're a bottle of wine. I know that was a little cheeky! We offer a bigger experience as far as the war experience goes. Theirs is focused on fast-paced infantry combat and they do it exceptionally well. But ours is different. The pacing is still intense, but it's fast in a different way, and we have components like vehicles you actually control. To be honest, first-person shooter players, people assume they're only going to play one game. Some people are like that. But a lot of people like to play different versions of different games. Otherwise we wouldn't have new games coming out. You'd make one game and nothing else new would ever come to be. People just enjoy the different experiences. They almost, in some odd way, could compliment each other.

VideoGamer.com: Is it good for the shooter market that Modern Warfare 2 has sold so well?

GVD: They have brought this genre to a lot more people's attention and encouraged them to pick it up and play a first-person shooter. Sometimes I've heard - and I don't know how true this is - but a lot of people say first-person shooters can be more intimidating for someone, that getting into that three dimensional focus of how it's presented, where you can't see anybody, it's like - and Need for Speed Shift, I would love to see the data for how many are driving their car in third-person as opposed to in the cockpit - it was for a while that anxiety about playing inside the field of view of your guy instead of being able to see him.

VideoGamer.com: Some people have trouble with two thumb sticks. Give someone a Mario game and they can just about deal with the idea that you use the little pad to move and a button to jump.

GVD: If you ask girls around in our age group, and you ask them do you play video games, most of them will say no. Have you ever played Super Mario Bros.? Oh yeah, I love that! It's like, girls just typically don't care that much to invest that much energy into making their guy look, move around, strafe, go forward, go backwards.

VideoGamer.com: I know you can't talk too much about the single-player, but you did say earlier it was of a comparable level to Uncharted 2. That's a big claim.

GVD: That is a big claim. I do think our art team - this is overall, not only on the multiplayer but in the single-player - have done a brilliant job. They're really pushing it. I'm like, how can you guys make it look any better? And then they always seem to do that. I'm not technically savvy in that area, because we have technical artists and we have artist artists. We have one guy who's just a concept artist, and he does a lot of the cover art. He did this man on fire image and stuff like that. Then we've got a guy who's an artist but he's more the technical side, so he understands how much memory it takes to use this texture and the mapping and then the bump mapping and the light mapping. He gets all that, and they all work together. Out of all the projects this is the one time I have seen everything working in such an amazing way.

VideoGamer.com: But do you reckon Battlefield Bad Company 2 is as good, or better looking, than Uncharted 2?

GVD: No, I wouldn't make that kind of claim. Uncharted 2 is an amazing-looking game. But we're reaching that level of quality. It's going to be hard for any game to be able to make a claim that they look better. But we are getting to, I feel, that level, where it's looking very impressive. When you see it - and I've heard other people say it as well, so it's not just me - other people are saying it's getting there. The thing is though, we have much bigger environments. To even be close, to me is quite an honour as a developer. The one thing I did was, when I looked at their game I was like, damn them! What have they done to the rest of us? I was looking for something where I could say, okay, that we're doing better. I looked at their vistas, and I think that our vistas, because it's in-game, this is actual in-game terrain you could theoretically take your soldier and walk up to, our vistas are better. Naughty Dog, if you hear this, I challenge you versus our vistas!

VideoGamer.com: Are graphics put up on too high a pedestal by gamers? Surely the way a game plays is most important.

GVD: Exactly. I agree with you one hundred per cent. There are games, and I'm not going to name them, that technically don't look as good and don't have as good looking graphics or can't render as much as we can, but it's the gameplay that has counted. Something I've talked about for a while now among my peers in the industry, is animations. That's something the industry as a whole is starting to focus a lot more on and pay attention to. Graphics are so good now that the level of detail, it's hard to think what more do you need? Of course you can get it to where it looks perfectly like real life, but does that make for a better game? No. But do the animations in that world you've created that graphically it looks outstanding, how alive does it seem? Now, because the quality of graphics is so high, you can see so much more. Naturally your brain subconsciously recognises something doesn't feel right, but consciously you can't point it out. But that's our job, to make sure you don't have any of those subconscious feelings of disconnection or uncertainty about where you're at, and have this feeling of, this feels okay, but I don't know why. Maybe it's because some of the shadows are wrong and your brain knows that it's awkward or off, but you're not going to be like, oh, the shadows should be… right? It's also about animations. If something doesn't move like your brain thinks it should move, then it's going to feel awkward.

VideoGamer.com: Animation has been a big area of focus for Bad Company 2. What's been the hardest thing to animate?

GVD: It's just time consuming. Animations take a long time. Ask the Assassin's Creed 2 team! Those guys, they have a library of animations and spend a lot of time on it. The biggest thing is the time to do things and resources. You don't have a million people out there knocking on the door to do rigging and animations for you. So anybody out there who wants to get into the gaming industry… animations! If you're a really talented animator you're in a good position as far as the games industry is concerned.