Gamespot recently got a chance to sit down with the infamous Ben Cousins, the lead producer for Battlefield Heroes. In the interview, Cousins revealed, among other themes, that nearly 10,000 players have joined the beta and clocked in over 16,000 hours of game play time. Head on over to
Gamespot to get the full interview.
BC: MapleStory is doing really well, and Puzzle Pirates is also doing well. I've been going to a microtransactions roundtable at each Game Developers Conference over the last few years, and there used to be maybe a few guys operating small businesses, small-scale role-playing games and that kind of thing. When I went this year, it was clear there were a large number of [successful developers].
I think it's interesting Heroes is the first microtransactions-based game from a major publisher. So we appear to be breaking the ice and doing something cutting-edge, but there's a good precedent in the West for reasonable success for a smaller-scale business. There's an audience there and a demand for this sort of game, and we think we can bust it open with Heroes with a higher profile and the higher-quality game we're offering."