Battlefield: Bad Company, the DICE game that Electronic Arts released earlier this summer, has attracted a lot of attention as it is one of the most important revenue sources for Electronic Arts in the first financial quarter of the year.

Being financially successful usually means more attention, so the title is now getting a free new game mode called Conquest. The date for the free update which will introduce the new mode is August 7 and four of the maps that are not playable in Gold Rush mode will also be playable in Conquest. The basic idea is very simple, yet tactically complex. Each team in the game has a number of tickets which the other one tries to deplete by conquering control points and by taking out members. The team which looses all its tickets is defeated.

The game was not initially set to be a big success, especially as Electronic Arts butchered its image shortly after it was officially announced by saying that some of the weapons you could use in Bad Company would only be available if you paid for them. The outcry from gamers persuaded the company to drop the less fortunate idea pay as you shoot, but a few people thought that the game might be doomed to be ignored.

A series of very inspired and humorous ads, some of the them featuring shoot outs to other videogame franchises like Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid, made the game interesting again and, on launch, players saw that DICE created a very good multiplayer game, with lots of balance, which also has a competent single player campaign.

Electronic Arts is probably thinking about adding more game modes in future patches, mainly to prolong the multiplayer life of the game until later in the fall, when the inevitable wave of Christmas shooters kill it.