Battlefield V controversy
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"Also, any WW2 game has to hook a hardcore group of history buffs. They aren’t the bulk of your market, but they form a core. A core that helps sell your game through their participation and recommendations and word of mouth. Battlefield V pissed off the core, no word of mouth."
— Mark Kern
Battlefield V is the sixteenth installment in EA's Battlefield series. Like Call of Duty: WWII, the game brings the series back to its origins.
Background
However, on May 23, 2018, DICE unveiled the first official reveal trailer for its forthcoming title. And despite promising the exclusion of the "Premium Pass", free DLCs, and implementation of new game mechanics, the trailer was met with a mixed reception, receiving over 230,000 likes and over 215,000 dislikes on YouTube in the first 48 hours, and soon the like-dislike ratio started to decrease and currently sits at 366,000 likes vs 593,000 dislikes. This was a sharp contrast to the reception of Battlefield 1, which accumulated 2.2 Million likes and 42,000 dislikes. Players heavily criticized the game's outlandish character design and customization, the oversaturation of the game's environments, and the over-the-top depiction of combat resulting in a lighter overall tone to the game's WWII setting (which, in gamers' words, made WWII look like Fortnite). Those who did not outright dislike the trailer claim that they felt more confused than excited.
The trailer also contained multiple historical inaccuracies and logical error. Historical accuracy in games based on WWII is considered very much a case where "all or nothing" is the only valid approach, and unless you're making something that has very little in common with the real-life conflict (i.e. the Wolfenstein series), screwing around with the history of the conflict is highly disrespectful to the people who took part in it. Tellingly, the last game to attempt a half-and-half approach like this was Hour of Victory, which was so badly received that it played a big role in killing the 2000s WWII game craze that spawned the Battlefield franchise in the first place.
But the most glaring one of them all is the female British soldier with a mechanical arm who seems to be unkillable and the center feature of the trailer. Naturally, gamers who were expecting a gritty, more or less historically accurate WWII game were greatly upset by this, many also suspect that the one-armed female is a sign of EA and DICE attempting to force political correctness and feminism into this much-loved franchise, they formed the hashtag #NotMyBattlefield to criticize the left-wing decisions in the game and historical inaccuracy. Adding insult to injury, there were female combatants in WWII - mostly in the Soviet military, which recruited millions of women, but many of the resistance movements in mainland Europe contained a large number of women, and both the Allies and Axis powers made use of female secret agents and had women serve in rear-echelon roles including some fairly dangerous ones such as British motorcycle dispatch riders during the Blitz - meaning it would have been perfectly possible to have female playable characters while maintaining historical accuracy.
Aftermath
However, soon their suspicion was proven to be correct. The design director of the game claims on r/Battlefield that his daughter wants to be "represented" in the game and that adding female soldiers puts him "on the right side of history".[1] His post received more than 200 downvotes and was heavily mocked on the subreddit. Patrick Soderlünd, the chief creative officer also claimed his daughter didn't understand the criticism the game was getting and used that to insult the critics of the game. He eventually told players that were upset to not buy the game, calling them "uneducated".[2] Unfortunately for him, gamers took his advice and according to reports, preorder sales for the game were extremely weak and he eventually left EA.[3] It then followed into actual release that it faced "Generally Unfavorable" reviews on Metacritic, where user reviews ranging general user scores ranging in 2.3. Sales of physical copies in the UK were abysmal, down to just 63% compared to Battlefield 1, all of this pretty much securing the failure of Battlefield V, which was considered as the worst entry in the series until Battlefield 2042. EA appears to be aware of this as well, as they've not only put the game on sale just one week after its launch[4], but also offering free 1 week trials in a desperate attempt to bring players back. EA lost $350 million due to this controversy.
Videos
Articles
References
- ↑ https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlefield/comments/8mhkld/comment/dzntoso/
- ↑ https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/8qkh0k/patrick_soderlund_ea_is_also_citing_his_daughter/
- ↑ https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/978bku/news_patrick_söderlund_is_leaving_ea_later_this/
- ↑ https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/a0zp5n/gaming_battlefield_v_selling_for_30_dollars_only/