The gaming world is once again divided after news of first-person-shooter Battlefield V’s reportedly “weak” pre-order sales broke the Internet last week. Most people point out the “alternate” WW2 setting which places a heavy emphasis on women at war. This ultimately led to noise between extreme feminist groups and the purist gaming community. Unfortunately, all the noise hides the truth of what’s really going on. So that’s what we’re here to discuss.
Battlefield V: Social Justice vs Historical Accuracy
The fiasco began on May 24, when Electronic Arts revealed the first trailer for Battlefield V. The trailer heavily featured a female soldier armed with a mechanical prosthetic limb. Almost immediately afterwards, a minority of “purist” gamers raised complaints that the game was not historically accurate. As soon as the backlash hit the Internet, feminist groups began calling purists out as anti-feminist. This forced EA to intervene. Now former EA Chief Design Officer Patrick Soderlund responded to the backlash, calling the purists “uneducated,” and gave out an ultimatum telling unhappy players to “accept it, or don’t buy the game.”
Flash-forward to the present day, and it seems the fans have spoken. And once again, feminist groups point out the “bigoted” gaming community as the major reason for Battlefield V’s lack of pre-orders. On the other hand, purists in the gaming community points finger back, citing the focus on political sensitivity over realism as the crux.
But here’s the catch. Both sides are wrong.
Losing the Marketing Battle(field)
First things first: some women did see combat in the Second World War. Perhaps the most famous examples are the women who fought alongside the French resistance. Score one for the feminists. But the fear purists have isn’t that there are women in the first trailer; rather, that there might be too many women in the game. Because that would in fact, be historically inaccurate. Score for purists.
That aside, 2016’s Battlefield 1 was a major success despite being historically inaccurate. WW1 enthusiasts know that there is no way so many automatic weapons existed in 1914. Even so, the game’s beautiful graphics, realistic sound, and engaging gameplay pulled players in. This suggests that — among Battlefield fans at least — the playerbase can suspend disbelief in the face of a good game. And from this, one can infer that the problem is not the inclusion of women and mechanical limbs. Rather, it is that the game is doing something (or many things) wrong that prevents the suspension of disbelief in such concepts. And that thing is: marketing.
It is generally a bad business practice to spit in the face of your customers. And EA has a bad habit of doing just that. In the past, customers have called EA out for poor customer relationships and anti-consumer behavior. This all boiled over in November 2017 with the failure of Star Wars Battlefront 2. And while EA has claimed to have learned from their mistakes, the community has never really taken their sights off the publishing giant. All they needed was one reason to bring up another fiasco, and the moment Soderlund called a minority of customers “uneducated,” they had it.
Here Comes the Competition
Poor communication isn’t the only marketing flop here. EA slotted Battlefield 5 for an October 19 release date (16 for pre-orders). This happens to be in between rival FPS Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (October 12) and the long-anticipated Red Dead Redemption 2 (October 26). Couple this with other top tier games scheduled for September to November release dates (Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Valkyrja Chronicles 4, etc). Gamers simply cannot divide their time and money among so many games, and thus, whichever they are most excited for will take priority.
The truth is it had been terribly difficult to get excited for BF5 in the first place. Even the E3 presentation earlier this year boiled down to nothing but multiplayer footage. Thankfully, the recent Gamescom BF5 trailer remedied that to an extent by showcasing the Battlefield franchise as something fans recognize. It also highlighted the new Battle Royale mode and finally had a decent music sample to get the crowd excited. But damage has been done. Talk of BF5’s pre-order failure is currently a bigger topic than an actually decent trailer.
Is Battlefield V Failing?
Despite the weak pre-order figures, there is hardly any guarantee whether or not Battlefield V will fail. This is especially true in the case of EA, which makes more money off of MTX and live services than sales figures. Nonetheless, live services require an active playerbase in order to generate income. If nobody buys the game, nobody performs microtransactions.
In the end, the Battlefield series is still one of the most beloved franchises in the gaming world. And like anything beloved, players already have an idea of what makes it what it is. For BF fans, that is an engaging campaign, competitive and tactical multiplayer, and — yes — a certain level of realism. Alpha testers report that the game is actually a great experience containing most if not all of that.
And maybe that should worry players. Make no mistake, EA did insult their fans. And they were wrong for it. But all this infighting and pointing fingers just shifts the appearance of blame away from EA and towards each other. It’s one thing for a bad game to fail because it’s bad. It’s another for a good game to fail with players never understanding the real reason why.