Battlefield Hero's and time wasted to their beta key events.

If anyone has been following BF and their closed beta, which by the way, information is dribbled out to people - Their site has very little information other then to be released summer 08 and check for beta contests.

First things - If your going to have a beta key contest. Make it fair. World Wide. For everyone. Telling a north American consumer that the contest starts at XXX Stockholm time doesn't do anything for us. I'm sure the people in Stockholm know exactly what time the contest starts. - The rest of us have to look it up. And if your on a slow ass work computer that in itself is frustration. (Or, in the case of the last beta key contest which started at 10 am in the morning for those of us in north America - Well, I'm stretching things a bit, It started from 7am Eastern time right on to about 2 pm Eastern time, considering your location in North America. If you work for a living like and have no access to a computer during those hours, Your forced to sit out these contests or wait and hope it comes out some time this year)

Second - I applaud your trying to be creative with your contests - but enough is enough, Just Lotto the damn keys already. Making us put together a word from 9 different WebPages that couldn't have gone down faster if you had slash dotted them isn't fun. Seeing error with web page and 404 not found, Is reminiscent of the old radio station contests that would offer people money to do fairly embarrassing or painful things - Or as I like to call it, Who can NOT pee the longest. Win big money if your the last guy (Or Girl) with a ruptured bladder.

I'd like to point out something here - Your game while maybe be originally free to play - Will need to generate some revenue. This will most likely come from a paying source - Mainly parents or the people your irritating with this ridiculous contests. Right now, the only people winning these keys are kids or people who have the time to waste jumping through hoops. Me, I'll just go to your competition and play their FPS game - Who knows, I might even plunk down some cash right at the start just to own it. I'm sure Wal_mart or Ebgames won't make me do a dance contest, or humiliate myself singing a hit single at the cash register just to play the game. (Though, last time I checked Wal-Mart had Rock Band set up for people who were into that sort of thing)

Here's another thing to look at - With a parent like Electronic Arts [EA] giving the green for development - You might want to keep in mind that EA has cancelled MMO's with a far greater subscription base then this game will likely ever have - In fact, if you look at the history of Cancelled MMO's from EA (Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online, The Sims Online) You'll see that they have a finite lifespan, and driving away people who want to play the game, but won't because they've been forced to jump through an unlimited number of hoops will only hasten the demise of a product.

So Battle Field Hero's. You get a big wet raspberry from me when it comes to your beta contests.
Lastly - Consider this - Mythos, A free to play MMo (Fantasy based) Has been cancelled (Though it might show signs of life soon) And Dungeon Runners (another fantasy) lifespan is looking gloomy - The time is right for the marketing of this game, Getting the people rebounding from the previous two products won't be difficult, but not if you make trying to get into the game about as fun as a root canal with out sedative.

There are a lot of words flying around today about how game addiction is suddenly being recognized for what it is. My goal is to challenge that statement. While I’m not disagreeing that video game addiction does in fact exist, I’d like to changes some conceptions that the current media would have us believe.

I’m not disagreeing that addiction is a problem. Merely that we shouldn’t apply a broad scale application to the issue.

Yes, Computer [game] addiction can often have tragic consequences, let us not label all people who play games as addicts, rather saving that special label for the few that need it, rather then suffer the problem to become commonplace.

A simple way of looking at this – The majority of us used to go home after a hard day at work and hit the couch and watch hours of TV each night. While that was socially acceptable, those of us who choose to forgo the TV and instead spend those hours playing video games are suddenly at high risk of addiction.

The world has changed since the majority of us have passed childhood. No longer do we go outside and find something to occupy our time, today, many of our children turn to video games as a source of enjoyment. Indeed many of us ourselves change to various forms of games as a recreational activity.

Suddenly the world is at risk to video games. I’d like to challenge the statement of addiction and have people think about what we’re saying.

So often the word addiction makes people instinctively think of drug users. That gritty grungy world that most of us only have the slightest definition of from the media formats that we associate with.

The direct definition of an addiction is
1) A state of physiological or psychological dependence on a drug liable to have a damaging effect,
2) Great interest in something to which a lot of time is devoted

A better definition of addiction comes from real love

“Addiction is the compulsive use of any substance, person, feeling, or behavior with a relative disregard of the potentially negative social, psychological, and physical consequences”

I’d like to put my definition of addiction forward.

*Any habit that becomes the driving need of one’s behavior.*

Driving Forces

Instead of saying that any person spending large amounts of time at any one activity is an addict, we should rather look for symptoms of addiction before crying foul.

Just saying that a person is addicted over sheer quantity of item doesn’t quite qualify by today’s standards.

(if that were the case, I’d be addicted to work, writing, surfing the net, and hey, various life factors in general)

We should look for key signals of a forming addiction rather then applying a blanket statement.

I’ll be the first to admit. When we talk about video game addiction it’s far easier to see the effects in adults, then it is in children – The example below is taken out of context of a full article.

• Most of non-school hours are spent on the computer or playing video games.
• Falling asleep in school.
• Not keeping up with assignments.
• Worsening grades.

It wasn’t that long ago that this could be attributed to TV, or even other things – Just because that these problems are cropping up in children, we should look beyond the game before we start crying addiction.

Instead of saying crying Addiction – perhaps we should look deeper into the problem, is the child happy? Is there problems at home that are driving them into the world of video games?

Applying blanket statements is often a way to generalize a problem, and since video games won’t go away anytime soon (If ever) we really need to be far more clear.

Closing Statements

Several years ago, I had made the statement (In ironically an article about game addiction) that by 2005 there would be 15 million online game accounts in the world
(Massive Online Gaming, 1st edition)

By today’s figures there are at least 30 million accounts worldwide

A simply astounding figure

In fact, when you look at It in one way – there is 1 person playing world of Warcraft for every 1 million people in the world. There are better odds of meeting a person playing wow then winning any lottery.

The problem we had, and now have isn’t going to go away anytime soon – Instead of applying blanket statements for the future we should be educating people instead of causing needless worry and panic.

I’m not going to go into key signs and signals of game addiction; if you follow my source material you’ll find ample enough warning signs and blanket statements.

The only thing I can really say to this is to educate your-self on game addiction – recognize it for what it is, instead of what the masses want us to think.

-Sources-

City News : Recognizing gaming junkies – US Doctors

China – Money – Online games

Massive Online Game magazine – print edition – Moral Grounds: Addiction

Real Love