14 DAY TRIAL // The humor present in the story campaigns of Battlefield: Bad Company 1 and 2 backfired on developer DICE, as the studio has confirmed that it resulted in lower sales and unhappy players, despite critical acclaim.
A few years ago DICE tried to implement something new into its Battlefield series and delivered Bad Company, a special experience that emphasized single-player story over multiplayer, telling the story of a squad of misfits caught between two global superpowers.
The game had some success and a sequel, Bad Company 2, was also released, before DICE went back to the main series and launched Battlefield 3 and 4.
According to the studio's Patrick Bach mentioned that the humor in the story of the Bad Company games actually backfired, as it turned fans away from the series.
"It is a discussion about niche and mass market, I think," he told OXM. "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."
Bach emphasizes that, if a shooter wants commercial acclaim, it shouldn't try to implement any sort of humor when it comes to story.
"So it's not that we've buried the crew, so to speak," he continued. "But it is true that for some reason if you want to make a game for the masses, you need to be more neutral when it comes to things like humor, because humor is very personal. Some people love it, some people hate it."
DICE hinted in the past that the Bad Company series isn't dead and might make a comeback but, with this new statement, the odds aren't looking that good.