Battlefield Bad Company 2 saw a burst of somewhat unexpected sunny publicity last year thanks to Infinity Ward’s decision to scrap dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2 on PC. DICE’s Gordon Van Dyke was quick to reassure official forum posters that his game would tick all the boxes on server support, to considerable applause.

Bad Company 2 online has more going for it than a sound network backbone, of course. According to producer Karl-Magnus Troedsson (whom we accosted at a recent preview shindig), the franchise’s approach to team play “has always been deeper” than that of most rivals – and remains deeper today.

Asked if there was anything he felt other multiplayer shooters were doing wrong, Troedsson replied: “Well I wouldn’t say ‘wrong’ – I don’t want to judge people, other games like that. But for us – multiplayer, online play, we’ve been doing that since Battlefield 1942, and to us it’s open environments, it’s sandbox, it’s team play.

“Because team play – what we’ve done in Battlefield for a long time is team play,” he went on. “You play as squads, you play teams, it’s very important. A lot of the other shooters are still actually in team deathmatch mode – they have tons of different game modes, but they all one way or another are just people playing to get the maximum score.

“This game is deeper, and Battlefield has always been deeper, and that’s due a lot to the gameplay. Like for instance you can heal each other, you can give each other ammo, you can revive each other – we’ve got the shock paddles in now.”

We find this claim a little dubious, to be honest. Among other current generation highlights, Killzone 2, Left 4 Dead and Gears of War have all done compelling things with player revival, healing and ammo sharing. 1942 may have been a trend-setter, but Battlefield faces stiffer competition nowadays. What do you think?

The game’s out on 2nd March in North America and 5th March in Europe.

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Singularity is what happens when crackpot Cold War sci-fi and gritty contemporary realism have a punch-up. Brought to you by Wolfenstein dev Raven Software, the game takes place on a mysterious Russian island facility with a highly volatile temporal signature. Besides shooting people in the face, players can manipulate time itself with the imaginatively titled Time Manipulation Device, tapping into the facility’s dark mid-century past. FPS Gamer recently lent its lungs and ears to a roundtable discussion with Activision’s Kekoa Lee-Creel. Results below.

FPS Gamer: So how does it feel to be working on one of Activision’s few original properties?

Kekoa Lee-Creel: As you said, Activision doesn’t do new IP often so it’s a huge deal for me, I’m really glad to be working on it. I worked with Raven on Quake 4 as well, and they’re a fantastic team, so I’ve got a good new IP, I’ve got great marketing behind me, and I’ve got a great development team, so I’m pretty psyched. It’s a big deal.

And it’s been crazy, but the thing about Singularity is that it was brought in by Raven when it was just a demo – they did this prototype of it, to show the concept. They wrote out the concept, they brought it into Activision and they showed it off, and Activision bigwigs were pretty impressed by the whole thing, and they thought this is going to be great.

So they tested the concept, and it was one of the highest-testing concepts in Activision history, which is a pretty big deal – we’ve had some good concepts come through. So that’s what led to the greenlight, so it’s not trivial, it’s not something they would have taken on lightly, because it’s a pretty big investment.

FPS Gamer: How important is new IP to the industry?

Lee-Creel: I think it’s absolutely critical. I personally am a hardcore gamer, I like playing things that I haven’t played before. I think if the industry doesn’t invest in new IPs, good ideas, then we’re really going to be playing the same game over and over again in a few short years when everything dies off.

A solid 7.6 on our Weird-Shit-O-Meter.

So I’m really glad to be part of it, and I’m really glad that other people are doing it as well. Even if it hasn’t always been met with the most substantial financial success, like there are other games out there that came out this last year, and they’re great ideas and I’m really glad they were made, and they’re fun and different.

FPS Gamer: Ray Muzyka from BioWare once told us that new IP rarely makes its money back straight away, but becomes profitable over time.

Lee-Creel: Sure, initial investment’s the big difficulty, initial investment to start an IP. Obviously they can take years of iteration to get it right, to really feel out the things that make it unique and special. So that’s a pretty substantial undertaking, it’s a risk, and it’s just money kind of “going”! But I think the pay-off is definitely there. There are plenty of franchises that have been built off a mildly successful first title, that have ramped into something hugely successful, and I think it’s a worthwhile undertaking.

1. New IP can take “years of iteration” to get right – Singularity producer Don't count your chickens before they've been blown to bits with plasma grenades....
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