Your take on Battlefield's V History Revisionism Issue
polycounter lvl 9
I've never looked at video games for accurate depictions of history/reality or else, I would have probably not enjoyed the Ass Creeds franchise but what EA/Dice did to their latest Battlefield title has issued a boat load of controversy, decreasing their fanbase trusts even more and diminishing their sales by 63% in their UK chart since BFOne...
Apparent ''antagonisation'' of white male soldiers, glorification of women protagonists, putting the female genders in role they've never had during WW2, odd twists in depicting actual soldiers (mechanical arms), rewriting of actual past conflicts to pander to the all-inclusive left SJW market.
The list goes on and more developers are considering whether the whole ''Get woke, go broke'' thing to cater to the progressive public is really a good idea.
More insightful video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prcGh6dhgfMBy the way...
Polycount has been kind of dead these past weeks and yet this has been one of the busiest/ controversial season of the gaming industry lately with Red Dead 2 blowing out the open world market, Fallout 76 troubles and BF V controversy...
Replies
Just ask yourself, before you say anything, "is what I am about to say coming from a desire to benefit everybody, or a manifestation of fear?" Really, everything you do comes down to that -- either love or fear. As long as you know what is driving you, you can confidently be yourself and not fear the consequence.
There are plenty of real life examples of noteworthy and inspiring women in the history of armed conflict. If video game designers root themselves more firmly in reality, do the research, and present a narrative people can take seriously, they will benefit and not be swinging the pendulum so far in one direction that it must in turn swing back to the other extreme. But they aren't doing that. They are concocting fantasies born of fear. It's the same as the story they are railing against, just inverted. Good versus evil -- a stupid tale with no grounding in reality. This kind of carelessness strengthens divisions and does nothing to do the kind of mind-changing our noble but misguided quoted dev is hoping for.
Think about it. You've got a redneck neo-nazi who thinks women are worth about one rib from a man. What do you think the best way to convince him that the other 50% of the population is worthy and should be respected is? Create obvious fantastical role reversals that demonize his side? Or choose from any of the many real life examples of women doing admirable and courageous things, making no effort to demonize or shove anything down anybodies throat, but simply exposing a reality that our neo-nazi brother may not have ever been aware of or considered. Change does not happen over night, but if you try to make it happen that fast you are going to get the wrong kind of change, guaranteed.
Concocting fantasies to fight against other fantasies can only lead to division and fighting. When the truth is exposed, however, change happens. When you expose the truth, nobody will be able to deny it.
So, the noble developer who wants to empower young women needs to do so in a way that does not create as many enemies for his young girls to fight. First they need to understand the nature of armed conflict so that they can develop an air of authenticity -- and for that you need honest (important), experienced veterans -- and then when you have the groundwork layed all you have to do is insert your female protagonist, who is essentially the same as any male except she has to avoid melee combat because male primates are stronger. But shooting people with rifles is something almost any woman can do as well as a man. It's no secret that women have a different biology than a man, but in facing challenges and overcoming them the strength of a persons character is revealed. Then there is a character anybody can admire.
People liked Ellie in The Last of Us because she was a weak little girl, but she adapted and survived in a dangerous world ruled by monsters and cutthroat men. So in spite of her challenges, she leveraged her strengths to adapt and survive. Now that Ellie has become a caricature of a badass, I don't know if she'll gain any new followers. I know that I am much less interested in the sequel after seeing her become a ninja that slays grown men by the dozens in the new trailers. It's not that I don't want to see young women kicking ass -- that is the awesome part -- I just want to not have to suspend all disbelief. I want a game world I can believe and thus get immersed in. If you want to make a strong character people will admire, make them weak, and give them serious challenges to overcome. Don't make them a super-hero. Super heroes are dumb.
If you look at the great female combat heroes of history then, you'll notice that they were clever. They weren't wolves or lions, they were panthers. They understood their own weaknesses and leveraged their strengths, and that is what made them powerful.
ANd I know people will say, "but ellie has been through so much, how could she not be a badass?" Well, here is my free combat-veteran consultation about becoming a badass : Nobody is a badass. You stay alive by getting smart. You learn about your enemy, and you make sure you are always 10 steps ahead of them. When they are looking for you, you are long gone. When you are seeking them, you have every advantage. It's that simple. WHen is comes to guns and grenades and rockets, as soon as the first goes off it's chaos and anything can happen. You don't want anything to do with chaos. Too much risk. You need certainty. So being a winner means stacking every advantage so you can get a decisive kill without the bad guys having a chance at all -- and you don't ever make a move without certainty about what will happen once you do.
Contrary to common character archetypes, badassness is not a measure of the strength of one's emotion, but rather by the longevity of one's resolve, persistence, determination, and willingness to adapt to circumstance. Whoever goes the furthest, wins. Whoever can reinvent themselves more times, wins. Whoever is calmest will make the better decisions. Whoever has the broadest perspective will win the war. All the characters you see angrily trying to get revenge or whatever -- they are people who, in real life, will start a fight and die quickly. They are a false fantasy that tells people "if you try really hard you'll win." People ingest all this crap, then when they grow up and move out of the house they can't figure out why they stay poor and can only concoct enemies to put the blame on. Remember this -- you don't gain anything by defining enemies, and you can only benefit whenever you make a friend. So where ever you see an enemy, ask yourself, "how do I make them my friend?"
On one hand, obviously nobody is looking to Battlefield for their history lessons. How accurate is the rest of BF? I dunno. Everybody and their dog knows there weren't many women fighting in WW2, though there were some. Here we have Dice taking some creative and untrue liberties on their WW2 game, but to provide a sense of inclusion, which this industry hasn't historically done well.
On the other hand, to say people aren't going to learn a little bit of history from this game is the opposite of the truth. If they're creating a reenactment of such a massive historical event, one could say they're knowingly misleading others, and pandering too much to people crying out for the industry to be more inclusive.
Obviously this decision has pushed the game slightly into fiction. Dice has the right to do this with their games. I feel like I'm kind of in the neutral standing here. I don't think this decision should have a huge impact on whether people decide to play the game or not.
edit: to add more substance to this, why are people picking on this and not on Tesseract-yielding, red-skull-faced villains from Captain America, another universe that's also based on WW II?
When developers deal with fact, and only bend it a little for artistic purpose, people will know. When you create a new religiion to fight against the old one, everybody will suffer.
I hope more people buy said rhetoric.
If you don't like the game taking historical accuracy out, don't buy the fucking thing. It's pretty simple isn't it?
I'm also pretty sure you don't regenerate health and you don't respawn once you are killed in battle. Where is the outrage on that one?
Reality is that women are worthy and competent and it's basically foolishness to judge a person by much else beyond their individual character. The key is exposing this reality, not creating a fantasy everybody knows is false.
It would be nice to just tell all the cry-babies to STFU and eat what they are served, but these people grow up and they vote. ANd they elect dumb bastards like Trump. And then we all lose. So you can't just dismiss them. If you know better, you have to educate them. Not fight them. Not try to ram their own medicine down their throats. Just show them how things really are.
People aren't buying physical copies anymore, the digital sales figures when released will show the full picture. I'm not going to bother getting into the rest of it about whether I agree with the Stockholm management decisions or not.
Also with regard to the subject being ignored, why would Devs want to post on a public forum ragging other Devs? Seems like a shitty thing to do if you ask me, fuck off to Kotaku why dont you
Blond said:
"By the way...
Polycount has been kind of dead these past weeks and yet this has been one of the busiest/ controversial season of the gaming industry lately with Red Dead 2 blowing out the open world market, Fallout 76 troubles and BF V controversy...
Well, probably incontrovertible evidence that such a 'edifying' discourse of 'viewpoints' hadn't previously rated a mention here is because, at an educated guess, like most creatives using these boards I'd much rather leverage ever decreasing spare time devoted to progressing an attainable competency in my chosen field.
FFS...it's only a game! which by sheer definition this medium hardly has a reputation for generating output that'll typically correlate accurately with historical events.
Anyway as mentioned above, women had indeed fought on the front line in the Red Army, employed in divers roles ranging from pilots, tank crew, snipers, machine gunners...etc. Also SOE deployed highly successful female operatives, one example is a national heroine (fellow ex-pat Kiwi) Nancy Wake due too her effectiveness as a spy master, hence in 1943 she became the Gestapo's most wanted with a 5million franc price on her head.
So, here's an insight from someone who served in the forces 30yrs ago...really takes more than being born with a penis to make it as a soldier.
BIGTIMEMASTER said:
Most gamers are kids who spend most of their time playing games. Their minds are highly malleable.
I think you'd be surprised too learn that statistically worldwide it's actually 35yo, so diametrically opposed attitudes are not the sole purview of your average archetypal puerile gamer.
Ashervisalis said:
Everybody and their dog knows there weren't many women fighting in WW2, though there were some.
Not quite, their contribution was not only sheer numbers (refer to my earlier comments) but also diversity of frontline roles. Additionally the RAF employed female pilots, ferrying aircraft from the factory to the end customer and in some instances straight to the front, though the job itself was deemed a "non combat" designation nevertheless entailed hazardous working conditions.
Some sobering facts to bear in mind is that these aircraft were unarmed plus without navigational instruments, so flying solo by basic map/compass reading whether four engine bomber or single seat fighter either across the Atlantic or too the local air station, had acquired over time a commensurate attrition rate.
Pretty much an unsung extraordinary endeavour, in my book.
Easy boy.
The fact that you are working in an industry doesn't mean you cannot denounce or point odd practices, weird marketing decisions and product/brand mismanagement,
Especially if said mismanagement will hurt the sales of said products, directly affecting the employments and job stability of the artists who worked on it.
I'm not criticising the artists who worked on these games, they probably had no input at all concerning the issue. This is a Publisher/Editor criticism. It's extremely weird to be working in an industry with that type of mentality you have;
''OMG don't criticize, we should not talk about issues affecting the gamers and our consumers since we're working in this industry (????!) ''
This is something I've been seeing a lot on PC unfortunately.
As mentioned, I am in full agreement that the controversy surrounding BFV has nothing to do with a need for historical accuracy in games. It's jus ta matter of execution. Historical accuracy is not the argument at all. The argument is one being made by sexist, who are saying "why do you have to concoct fantasies to push your SJW agenda?" And I am in full agreement, though I am no sexist. WHat I am saying is you don't need fantasies to show ignorant people that women are just as worthy as men, you can do so by planting your story in reality and only stretching reality for artistic reasons. If this had been done, there would not be so much controversy. There would be a few sexist saying, "how come they always got to put women in my war games?" and a bunch of other people saying "yeah but that shit is real dawg."
My post is highlighting that you didn't dig into the bullshit you posted... decreasing fanbase trust? Got a metric for that? The sales percentage you posted is half arsed.
What do you expect us to do? Run around screaming for the head of Andrew Wilson based on a youtube video you found?
I did work on the fucking game which is why I wont comment on the management decisions, not for fear of being blacklisted because of publisher criticism but because I could be interpreted as biased, and I know the full story behind those decisions. Again get the facts before you decide what my mentality is for me, child.
*edit*
To put it a better way, yes I have opinions on the matter and have discussed it with people, I just don't want to discuss it with you, not because of an industry backlash, but because when I do discuss this sort of topic, I like it to be with people with informed opinions or an understanding of the industry and its mechanics... I don't consider you to be either.
Accuracy above all else when one is butthurt over feminism?
( perhaps I am wrong and there was actually an army of the undead unleashed after the invasion of Normandy? )
I think their mistake was to make it a WWII game, mixing real events with too fictional characters, I'm pretty sure very few people would have said anything if it was a "normal" post apocalyptic game, and you have people who are forced to fight with everything they have, even enrolling a woman without an arm in their infantry division.
The way i see it. They decided to push an agenda that a majority of their old target audience didn't care about. When they complained they were met with the response of being told not to buy it. They changed their target demographic and told the old one to fob off and they did. Their new demographic they catered to didn't pay off in sales enough to counter those lost from telling their old audience to bugger off.
Devs telling people to not buy their game or just insulting their consumer base is just a bad business. It usually follows with a tank in their stock and then sales. Treat your customers like shit and you'll be paid back the same kind of response.
Tejay said:
They decided to push an agenda that a majority of their old target audience didn't care about. When they complained they were met with the response of being told not to buy it. They changed their target demographic and told the old one to fob off and they did. Their new demographic they catered to didn't pay off in sales enough to counter those lost from telling their old audience to bugger off.
Devs telling people to not buy their game or just insulting their consumer base is just a bad business. It usually follows with a tank in their stock and then sales. Treat your customers like shit and you'll be paid back the same kind of response.
Shit! wasn't aware of THAT.
Gotta link for clarification?
The articles about response from EA/DICE 'Accept it or don't buy the game':
https://www.pcgamer.com/backlash-against-women-in-battlefield-5-is-not-ok-ea-executive-says/
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/271407-ea-on-the-battlefield-v-backlash-accept-it-or-dont-buy-the-game
https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/13/17458286/battlefield-women-star-wars-rick-morty
The title from polygon doesn't reflect the link at all. The article title is : Creatives are finally telling manbabies to stay home.
The press really rubbed home the insults on the disappointed audience , fueling the fire.
Ea exec departs the company too at this point.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/battlefield-v-pre-order-numbers-disappointing/
https://www.vg247.com/2018/08/16/battlefield-5-weak-pre-orders-report/
They delayed the game so as not to compete with COD and Red dead:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-30-battlefield-5-delayed-a-month
http://fortune.com/2018/08/30/ea-electronic-arts-stock-battlefield-5/
In the end this is just a hot mess.
Gawd!
I would've thought we could all play nice by now, poised at the very cusp of a third decade into the 21st century.
Makes one want to rewind the clock back to a more genteel age, when my cousins and I were simply blowing our minds playing Pong.
All this kerfuffle over, as I'd expressed further up this thread, that...
"FFS...it's only a game! which by sheer definition this medium hardly has a reputation for generating output that'll typically correlate accurately with historical events."
Though I have too say, despite everything and as an enthused fan of the franchise happily the art remains a feast for the eyes, so kudos to all involved.
EDIT:
Oh...yeah, thanks for the links BTW was quite a read, particularly this bit:
"Why the Whining Falls Flat
The problem with the “historical accuracy” argument is simple: Battlefield is not, and has never been, a historically accurate game. When PC Gamer sat down with a historian to ask about Battlefield 1, said historian noted a laundry list of historical inaccuracies, including:
•Incomplete weapon operation animations
•Improperly decorated uniforms
•Inaccurate depictions of house-to-house fighting
•Far fewer weapon jams than in reality
•Inaccurate depiction, use, and availability of automatic weapons
And that’s before we get to the really big stuff, like, say, using a wrench to repair a horse. This was later patched so that you can only repair a horse with a wrench if someone else is riding it, because obviously that was the problem. Dice’s firm commitment to historical accuracy demanded nothing less."
...had me rolling on the floor in bellyach guffaws, no less.
Just proves my point, it's only a game folks.
I expect dealing with the man-babies day in and day out is tiresome, but I wouldn't expect the directorial team is making decision that emotionally. I usually expect these guys to have really solid long term plans developed over long experience and massive data, but I can't see how this is beneficial in the short or long term. I am sure they know a lot of stuff I don't know, but usually when you watch what the successful people are doing, it makes sense.
Sure some comments to customers was made that wasn't in anyone's best interest, which triggered the shit show we are looking at now, but even before that with the first trailer there was a lot of shit talking going around, I would say it wasn't as focused and well made as previous trailers, so I can understand some people not liking it, but if the first thing you got from that trailer was that there was women in it and it wasn't historically correct, then your priorities are clearly visible.
There was women on the battlefield even if not many, so you are still looking at a possible scenario, while in that trailer you can probably spot 100+ things that are not even close to being possible or believable, so maybe not the thing to highlight?
I dont really care either way, I am getting the game and am going to have a hell of a lot of fun blaaaaastin' people and blowing shit up.
But this was all on the list of things people complained about, over and over again. The fact that battlefield has never been very historically accurate doesn't mean that people don't complain about that all the time. Of course there is a big part of the community who wants exactly that, and always wanted that. How many competent military games with this kind of scope are there?
I re-posted the comment because I thought it absolutly funny when read in it's entirety, especially the part about repairing a horse with a monkey wrench.
Such uneccessary aggressiveness over nothing, giving a kind of Monty Python'esq feel to the whole episode.
Anyway I invite you too read them, they may provide additional insight behind the controversy.
Dice was really hard on the virtue signaling there, the entire thing they pulled was just poor and ridiculous. Mocking their fans on a large panel afterwards shows that they apparently didn't learn a thing from it either
Then come all the typical identity politics loud mouths and spin it as people were hating on women, despite the easily provable fact that no other game is getting the same criticism. Nobody wanted a realistic battlefield but a authentic one, that is a big difference. If they made steampunk WW2 that would have been perfectly fitting. The plane flying 5m above ground and the katana guy was equally ridiculous.
I have BF5 and classes are 1:1 male female by default and I would not really mind if it weren't for the voice lines which completely take you out of the experience. The female death voice lines are insanely penetrating and loud, often comical, and you think WTF or jesus christ every time. The first time I heard one I thought I was in a scripted side-quest with some action off screen, I was so confused.
Id say its much more about the attitude about pushing identity politics into a quote authentic WW2 game from dice than the actual game content as it stands.
Business as usual for the bf community
On a side node, 70% of people disliked on youtube. Thats not the 0.1% of "miniature collectors". Its not about what is in the game, its about attitude, and those 70% of people did not want to be shoved 2018 identity politics in their face in a video game, let alone a WW2 game and be mocked and insulted for disliking it. RDR2 has many more strong female characters in a authentic historic setting and nobody complained one bit.
"Here's how I see it: it's a game, they wanted to include more people (women and girls), so that more people could enjoy it. And you want to take that away because... what? "
So, to be fair that's not really the issue here. The problem is Dice/EA reacting very defensively to their audience disliking a trailer featuring robotic prosthetics, a katana wielding soldier and a main protagonist with Scene Kid facepaint. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and it's okay to not like something (I personally think that the trailer was pretty cool from a visual standpoint - almost like a steampunk retelling of ww2. The work by the guys at Dice is always pretty damn impressive !). But the EA CCO calling the audience "uneducated" was an awful PR move especially since a good chunk of their audience is actually pretty well educated on the topic of WWII history.
They could have just branded the game as Bad Company 3 and then everything would have been a fit. Heck, the trailer could have ended with Terry Crews and Sly jumping in to blow shit up in style wearing Steampunk WWII cosplay outfits and it would have been awesome.
On top of that, what makes it worse is the fact that they called people "uneducated" ... while themselves had no problem genderbending a war episode that actually happened. This alone is quite a slap in the face of the people who died on duty imho. Again nothing wrong with genderbending in and of itself, it's a fun trope and can be refreshing ; but they shouldn't bring "education" into the mix at all then.
In short I don't think the backlash comes from having a female player character option in a Battlefield game. The problem was the arrogance of the devs/publisher around the issue - and from there customers just voted with their wallets.
(Lastly I personally never understood the whole "I want a protagonist to look like me in order to relate to the story". Heck, my favorite movie is about a girl going to impossible lengths to straighten up for the mess her boyfriend put himself in ... and I identify with neither of the characters. I understand that little boys and girls want to project themselves into cartoon characters, but this is not the demographic here to begin with since the game is 17+ so imho that's a moot point.)
If anything this is a pretty interesting case of bad PR in the age of social media whining.
[edit] for those curious, some info about the rewritten event in the campaign :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage#Fiction,_film,_and_video_coverage
The developers made a bad miscommunication, creating conflict from nothing, and then escalated the conflict by exercising less than skillful conflict resolution. The point in discussing this isn't to point fingers and shame anybody. The point is to identify what can be learned. How can shit like this be avoided? What practical benefit can I pull away from it?
If you draw a line in the sand and choose sides, you aren't going to learn anything useful. And if you try to simplify it because the whole thing stinks and you just don't want to hear about it, again you won't learn much. Any opportunity you have to learn something useful, you shouldn't pass up. Especially if it challenges you. You don't want to shy away from things that make you uncomfortable, because someday they may come back a lot bigger and badder if you don't figure out a way to deal with them.
So if you throw your opinion out there, the goal is get some counter opinions to challenge your own, and be ready to drop whatever you think you knew if it goes that way. There is really nothing to get upset or heated over as long as you stick to talking about the idea's and not the people. We all know the people involved are very intelligent and have a track record of proven success -- but we also anybody can make mistakes, be misunderstood, and so on. So the only question is "what can be learned?"
In 2018, good conflict resolution skills, patience, and an attitude of respect for others are as important as ever.