(Image credit: EA)
When I sat down to chat with Ripple Effect studio design director Justin Wiebe last week, we’d planned to talk RedSec. Wiebe helped lead the charge on Battlefield 6’s battle royale mode developed primarily at the Los Angeles-based Ripple Effect, but on the day, we ended up chatting more about Portal—its expansive feature set, boundless potential, and why Battlefield Studios isn’t currently doing enough to elevate community creations.
It was immediately clear that Wiebe *loves *Portal. He worked on the first iteration of Battlefield 6’s level editing/publishing platform during Battlefield 2042 development, back when the toolset was, in his words, "more like a Battlefield builder than anything."
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(Image credit: EA)
When I sat down to chat with Ripple Effect studio design director Justin Wiebe last week, we’d planned to talk RedSec. Wiebe helped lead the charge on Battlefield 6’s battle royale mode developed primarily at the Los Angeles-based Ripple Effect, but on the day, we ended up chatting more about Portal—its expansive feature set, boundless potential, and why Battlefield Studios isn’t currently doing enough to elevate community creations.
It was immediately clear that Wiebe *loves *Portal. He worked on the first iteration of Battlefield 6’s level editing/publishing platform during Battlefield 2042 development, back when the toolset was, in his words, "more like a Battlefield builder than anything."
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(Image credit: EA)
Wiebe didn’t specify what technical issue is holding Portal back at the moment, but part of the discoverability problem is obvious upon loading the Battlefield 6 main menu.
Players have not held back their extremely negative feedback of Battlefield’s current menus, and one of the biggest losers of its ugly, slow, Netflix-y UI is Portal. Couched waaaaaay down a bloated list of playlist bundles, just above the Campaign that everybody uninstalled two months ago, is the Community tab where Portal lives. Assuming you’ve scrolled down far enough to know it’s there, you might notice the one or two recommended Portal modes, but you’re more likely to just get confused by the obtuse "browse experience" screen before retreating back to Conquest.
The belittled Portal section is a far cry from the core pillar of Battlefield 6 that BF Studios sold it as ahead of launch. People are still finding and making cool stuff despite all the noise, but Wiebe says it’s important that the studio course corrects soon.
"I believe that we have the right ingredients," Wiebe said. "So fingers crossed that we get that resolved really quickly here and start to help Portal thrive for the community."
Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn’t pay him. He’s very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he’ll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don’t, though.
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