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Battlefield's Ben Cousins all set to release The Drowning on iOS for DeNA
A little while ago, I said here on TUAW that the Ngmoco brand was "effectively done on the App Store," with the company's biggest games finally being shut down at the end of next month. And that hasn't changed at all -- the Ngmoco name just plain isn't being used. Ngmoco's parent company, DeNA, is still chugging along. A few years ago, DeNA, under the banner of Ngmoco, picked up former EA developer Ben Cousins, a veteran of both the Battlefield franchise and EA's "EAsy Studio" division, which specialized in free-to-play, casual browser-based games. Cousins' studio, which started out as Ngmoco Sweden, has now been renamed Scattered Entertainment, and he's set to release, with the help of DeNA, his first mobile free-to-play title, called The Drowning, sometime in March. TUAW got to see an early version of the game running on video, and chat with Cousins earlier this week about what it's been like working with Ngmoco/DeNA, and just how he put together his first mobile free-to-play title. What's probably most interesting about The Drowning, right off the bat, is just how different it is for everyone involved. DeNA (and Cousins, to an extent) has basically made its name on mainstream, casual experiences: It runs a very large Japanese social network called Mobage, and has found its first big hit in the US with Rage of Bahamut, a fairly casual social card game. But The Drowning is dark and atmospheric, and makes use of the much more hardcore first-person shooter genre. "We wanted to make a zombie game, but we didn't want it to be like every other zombie game on mobile," says Cousins. The Drowning is about "the apocalypse happening in the modern era. Overnight, completely unexpected and synchronized across the world, all of the deep sea oil rigs in the world start leeching this new oil and they can't stop it. And that oil seems to be creeping across the ocean towards populated places." Workers fall into this oil, disappear and then a week later return as monstrous zombies, trying to bring more and more living things under the water. It's creepy and strange, and it also sets up a solid premise for the other thing that's different about The Drowning: It's a first-person shooter designed not with virtual controls, but with controls meant to work best on a touchscreen. You can see the video below for a full rundown of how everything works, but Cousins says the idea for the controls came just out of constant "testing and prototyping and experimenting and trying out different things." "During one of the market research sessions," recalls Cousins, "I was sat behind a one-way mirror," watching a tester play with the game. The tester became frustrated with the virtual controls he was using, and expressed his frustration to Cousins: "Why can't I just tap enemies to shoot them, or tap the world to go there? Why can't I use these gestures to control a shooter," asks Cousins, "because that felt like the most natural thing to do." So the team worked to take the gestures we normally use on touchscreens like the iPad -- pinch and zoom, swipe, tap and so on -- and plug those into the usual shooter inputs. The result seems very fluid -- you can swipe around the screen to look, tap one finger to move through the 3D environment or tap two fingers to fire, with the point of attack coming in between your two finger taps. "With a single finger tap you were obscuring the contact point, and a lot of satisfaction of shooting these enemies in the game was kind of lost," says Cousins. So the team had the idea to use your two fingers "as an iron sight," and that worked well. "I can do it all in one fluid motion and I can shoot moving targets and things like that." Originally, the controls also included moves like jumping and crouching, but as the gestures became more streamlined, those actions got removed from the code. And Cousins says they weren't needed, though he does say the team built out one prototype using an actual Counter-Strike map, "where you can do everything you need just using the standard gestures." The actual gameplay isn't just killing zombies, however, says Cousins. The game's player character is originally based in Seattle, but is eventually forced out of the city by the invading creatures. He flees to a fictional nearby island, and there meets Charlotte, a mechanic/welder who can help him make weapons and other gear. From there, the game is basically a series of areas that open up in sequence, with the player going out to collect scrap and explore, and returning to Charlotte for upgrades and new weapons. Eventually the player will unlock vehicles, but these are essentially just keys to new places to play, like a boat that will deliver you around the island, or a helicopter that can climb up to a new area. The game is free-to-play, but Cousins says even he had things to learn from how DeNA runs their business models. At EA, he was considered the "F2P expert," but at DeNA, "it was evident in the first week that I was one of the least knowledgeable people in the company about free to play." In Japan, says Cousins, "the free-to-play market is so much more mature." As a result, there isn't an IAP "store" in The Drowning. Rather, Charlotte's upgrades take time, so if you want to progress faster through the game, you'll be asked to pay. She also has a scrapyard where you can find new rare recipes and other upgrades, and it'll cost IAP currency to visit, or to make sure you get an extra rare (but still random) item from her. In the game itself, there is no multiplayer mode. But as you go through the game, you'll sometimes come across larger boss creatures that are way too strong to beat on one run through. Those creatures will also appear in your friends' games, and together, run by run, you'll be able to take them down for a chance at a rare or better item, says Cousins. So there's a sort of asychronous multiplayer game at work. But it's basically skippable, he told us -- you can ignore the larger creatures if you'd rather not deal with them. Cousins says Apple has changed his life three different times -- with the iPod, the iPhone and then the iPad, and he's very happy to have to chance to give back to the platform. I have concerns about The Drowning's business model for sure. While Cousins and DeNA seem more than convinced that Western audiences are ready to pay for random chances at items and time savers (as they're already doing with Rage of Bahamut and its ilk), we haven't seen a model like that show up in a more hardcore first-person shooter. The Drowning does look like a very different take on what DeNA, and even Cousins, have delivered in the past. The setting looks very interesting and well-done, and those controls do seem like a very smart take on first-person shooting for the touchscreen. The Drowning should be available to the public sometime this March, so we'll know for sure then if all of the work on this game, back since June of 2011, has been worth it.
The Drowning headed to iOS for free next year
Scattered Entertainment is bringing free-to-play game The Drowning to iOS in early 2013. The "console quality" FPS is set ten years in the future, and draws inspiration from real life events in Beebe, Arkansas circa 2012, when thousands of black birds fell from the sky. The Drowning's story appears to only get more grim, as players control a character that is "one of the few survivors of a mysterious global catastrophe."Former ngmoco GM Ben Cousins is now GM of Scattered Entertainment, a DeNA studio located in Stockholm, Sweden.%Gallery-172799%
ngmoco's Cousins expects free-to-play equivalent of Skyrim in a few years
Ben Cousins, who spearheaded Battlefield Heroes and Battlefield Play4Free for EA before being snatched up by ngmoco to head up its offices in Sweden, envisions an industry landscape where big-budget free-to-play titles dominate.Cousins spoke of several different tiers of freemium games at the Free-2-Play Summit in London, as reported by GI.biz. The highest he predicts as a "monetization super-highway," with no limit to what players can spend and rewards that are more interesting and complex. "I believe that single-player will be the next to be cracked in terms of freemium monetisation," he said. "And I'm talking about traditional, story-based, scripted, linear and non-linear single-player that we see on consoles."I am totally 100 percent confident -- I will bet large amounts of money -- that we will have, in the next few years, a free-to-play equivalent of Skyrim," Cousins said. "A game like Skyrim, where you accrue skills and equipment over time, that you can play for hundreds of hours, is actually one of the easiest games to develop for a free-to-play model. That would be a big hit."In this future, Cousins said the average user would have no problem dropping $60 over the course of playing the game. "In the future I believe free-to-play will be the way that nearly everyone plays games, it will be nearly every genre, and it will be nearly every platform."[Image credit: OfficialGDC]
Ngmoco exec: Free-to-play is not exploitative
Delivering the keynote address at the current Free to Play Summit in London, Ngmoco Sweden General Manager Ben Cousins came out in strong support of the business model. He said that his response to people asking if F2P takes advantage of players is always the same: "Any business model where 95 percent of people who don't pay cannot be exploitative." As most F2P players never spend money in such games and tend to play the most, Cousins thinks that the model works in favor of the gamer. He also stated that freemium games are not set up to trick people into paying, saying that it's "ineffective" if that is the case as a vast majority resists doing so. Cousins addressed the news stories of people who dangerously splurge on in-game purchases as a rarity: "I've never come across a big spender on a free-to-play game who has maxed out their credit cards. The big spenders I've met generally know what they're doing. Even the $5,000 spenders are not being exploited, they are just people who have found their big hobby." Ngmoco publishes freemium titles on the iOS and Android platforms, including games like We Rule and We City.
More DICE employees jump ship to Ngmoco's Swedish studio
After former DICE / EA Easy dev Benjamin Cousins left his former role, we were pretty sure he was on his way to a world bicycling championship. As it turns out, he's keeping his bicycling hobby on the side and running the Swedish branch of Ngmoco instead -- and he's bringing along some friends from his former employer. Senior artist Wille Wintertidh and senior programmers Torbjørn Lædre and Malte Hildigsson, all from DICE, have joined the team, and we don't expect they'll be the last. Cousins announced the hires via Twitter, where he characterized the trio as "fabulous new employees." We're hoping he also threw confetti in the air as he remarked as much.
EA staff leaves for Ngmoco Sweden
A few more Electronic Arts employees have jumped ship for Ngmoco's newest studio, in Sweden. After Ben Cousins (who formerly worked at EA's "EAsy" division) left to form Ngmoco Sweden, he's apparently been building a wishlist of various developers, and now he's grabbed three more, this time from EA's DICE studio (creators of the Battlefield series). Torbjørn Lædre and Malte Hildigsson are joining as senior programmers, while Wille Wintertidh is on as a senior artist. Cousins has also previously grabbed some staff from Crytek, so he's building a formidable group over there at Ngmoco's studio. It's hard to say what this will mean for iOS games specifically -- Ngmoco has said in the past that it definitely wants to expand away from just the Apple platform, and recently we've seen a pretty big push towards Android and even social games from the growing company (that originally started, you'll remember, as simply an iOS publisher founded by EA vet Neil Young). All of these acquisitions definitely point towards some sort of first-person shooter title (as most of these vets have experience on Battlefield and Medal of Honor games), but whether that's a free-to-play browser based game or something more mobile, we have no idea. But it is interesting to see that a company basically started under the iOS banner is growing so quickly. We can't wait to see what Ngmoco Sweden is working on.
Ngmoco hires Ben Cousins, creates ngmoco Sweden
Ngmoco has picked up former EA developer Ben Cousins, the man behind much of that company's free-to-play services at the EAsy division. He will establish a new studio under ngmoco called ngmoco Sweden, which will create games and content using ngmoco's (and parent company DeNA's) services and platforms. At EA, Cousins was instrumental in setting up the free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes, as well as the more hardcore spinoff, Battlefield Play4Free, so it's likely that in his new position at EA, he'll be heading up some free-to-play projects more tailored to a traditional gaming audience than ngmoco's current social and casual initiatives. Cousins also used to work at DICE, the company behind EA's Battlefield series, which is also based in Sweden, so there could be a few employees from that developer following him across to the new division at ngmoco. All in all, this is good news for iOS players and fans of ngmoco's games in general. I can't wait to see what titles come out of ngmoco Sweden first. [via Joystiq]
ngmoco to launch Swedish branch with former EA Easy boss Ben Cousins
When Ben Cousins left EA Easy as head of the studio earlier this year, he didn't leave a forwarding address. Cousins and his new employer revealed today his position as head of newly formed ngmoco Sweden, where he'll be leading the studio in the development of "freemium games for mobile platforms like iOS/Android" (according to Cousins' Twitter feed). His last major project with EA was Battlefield Play 4 Free. The official PR from ngmoco puts the Swedish branch in a position of support for parent company DeNA's "Mobage" social gaming platforms. And the new studios puts Cousins in a position to hire up colleagues in a part of the world ripe for the picking -- Sweden. Don't be surprised if you see some high profile ex-DICE staffers showing up at ngmoco's new Swedish office over the next few months, as we totally warned you. [Image credit: OfficialGDC]
Benjamin Cousins leaves EA ahead of Play4Free launch
Today marks the beginning of the closed beta testing process for Battlefield Play4Free (with an open beta set to kick off April 4) -- making the announcement of EA Easy boss Ben Cousins' departure all the more perplexing. Cousins recently announced his exit from the developer on Twitter, saying he's "very proud of what I've achieved in the last 4 years." He didn't say what his next job opportunity is, only teasing, "soon as I can, I let everyone know." Cousins was instrumental in the development of EA's recent salvo of free-to-play titles like Battlefield Heroes, Lord of Ultima and BattleForge, which actually made the transition from a retail release to an F2P title. We wish Cousins the best of luck at whatever his new home may be, and hope that he continues to make things cost zero money. You're doing the Lord's work, Ben.
Battlefield Heroes is far from 'practically ruined,' GM Ben Cousins says
Today's GDC panel on Battlefield Heroes had general manager Ben Cousins rectifying the misconceptions about his studio's first free-to-play Battlefield game being "practically ruined." Cousins' talk centered around the allegations made by press (originating with his game's own forumgoers) that paid weapons were introduced that allegedly unbalanced the game in favor of players willing to shell out cash. Rather than panicking and reacting directly to the loudest voices -- and perhaps some overly reactionary press -- Easy Studio instead applied math. The develoeprs noticed that, despite all the negative attention, user numbers weren't dropping. Furthermore, they took the information of their forum members and discovered that, while the average BFH player would spend around 25 cents per month, forum members were spending -- on average -- about $22 (dollars!) per month. Moreover, the actively complaining population only made up about 2 percent of the overall player base. What Cousins' team discovered as a result is that most folks playing the game really didn't care about the introduction of the paid weapons. Cousins likened it to fancy sports equipment -- while it might impart a slight advantage to folks willing to pay, the disparity was made up for by the game's mechanics. User numbers remained consistent and, eventually, the complaints subsided. Having established what he considers to be this working business model in Heroes, Cousins is confident in East Studio's next effort, Battlefield Play4Free.
EA: In-game ads not so hot, real money is in microtransactions
Speaking to Edge, EA's general manager of free-to-play operations, Ben Cousins, revealed that in-game ad sales aren't bringing in substantial earnings for the company. Cousins stated that EA isn't "getting much from ad revenue at all," adding that in-game ad business "hasn't grown as fast as people expected it to." Microsotransactions, on the other hand, have grown leaps and bounds, said Cousins, pointing to the king of microtransaction operations, Zynga. EA has seen this firsthand, as Cousins noted that its free-to-play Battlefield Heroes has seen substantially more revenue generated by microtransactions than by advertisements. Cousins still believes that advertising can work, but said is should be "more about specific deals where you can tie the content in." Cousins pointed to the recent deal EA made with Dr. Pepper, in which players could redeem codes on soda bottles for in-game content. Still, while specific campaigns like this can work, Cousins said, generic in-game ads may soon become a thing of the past.
EA kind of announces 'new, unannounced' Battlefield game
According to a tweet from Ben Cousins, general manager of EA's Easy studio, Battlefield fans can start looking forward to a new entry in the franchise. Easy handles free-to-play online games for EA, such as Lord of Ultima and Battlefield Heroes, and this Friday, the studio will show its "new, unannounced" Battlefield game to London press for the first time, Cousins tweeted. Given Easy's current projects, we're inclined to guess the new Battlefield will be another freemium entry in the online space. Of course, does it even exist? It's still "unannounced," after all -- actually, wait, wasn't that tweet kinda the announcement? We're going to need to lay down. Our brain suddenly hurts.
DICE: Battlefield Heroes 'already out', closed beta to expand
Battlefield Heroes is a fairly unconventional game, especially when measured against other installments in the Battlefield franchise. It's an odd chimeric blend of some of our favorite shooters, with the cartoony style and sense of humor of Team Fortress 2, the character advancement of Call of Duty 4, and the free-ness of America's Army. As such, one couldn't expect the game to be released in a conventional fashion. Were the title gracing store shelves, we'd half expect the discs to come not inside a box, but rather, baked inside of a cake.Unfortunately for pastry fans, the title will only be available via digital distribution upon its release -- though the term "release" seems to have come under scrutiny from Ben Cousins, executive producer for DICE, Battlefield Heroes' developer. According to him, the title, which is currently in closed beta, is already technically "released", and won't have the "big splash release" one expects from an Electronic Arts title. Cousins explained that DICE simply plans to increase the size of the closed beta "to the point where every hardcore gamer in the world will probably be able to get a key if they want to," leading up to a time when the game will eventually "sneak out." We've never known a title to be well-served by a surreptitious launch, but we imagine the rules could be different when your game costs bupkis.
Battlefield Heroes to release with only 2 maps
In a Gamasutra interview with Battlefield Heroes producer Ben Cousins, the news was slipped that the MMO will launch its open beta with only two maps in place. For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, maps are different locales upon which matches can be played, selectable before entering the action. Cousins' reasoning behind only having two maps at launch was the trend for players to typically pick only two or three favorite maps to spend their time on, leaving the rest to go unplayed; why not, then, just release the best two right out of the gate?Of course, it's not the developers who can decide which maps will become popular, and with only two at launch, there's the distinct possibility that players might become bored with the offerings and leave earlier than usual. Perhaps anticipating this reasoning, Cousins went on to say ' ... we already have another map quite far along in development which will be included in an update soon after launch.' The game looks like it could be quite fun, and of course, 'free' is a great price for any endeavor.[Via EvilAvatar]
