Battlefield 5's Poor Sales Numbers Have Become a Disaster For Electronic Arts (seekingalpha.com)

dryriver writes: Electronic Arts has mismanaged the Battlefield franchise in the past -- BF3 and BF4 were not great from a gameplay perspective -- but with Battlefield 5, Electronic Arts is facing a real disaster that has sent its stock plummeting on the stock exchanges. First came the fierce cultural internet backlash from gamers to the Battlefield 5 reveal trailer -- EA tried to inject so much 21st Century gender diversity and Hollywood action-movie style fighting into what was supposed to be a reasonably historically accurate WWII shooter trailer, that many gamers felt the game would be "a seriously inauthentic portrayal of what WW2 warfare really was like." Then the game sold very poorly after a delayed launch date -- far less than the mildly successful WW1 shooter Battlefield 1 for example -- and is currently discounted by 33% to 50% at all major game retailers to try desperately to push sales numbers up. This was also a disaster for Nvidia, as Battlefield 5 was the tentpole title supposed to entice gamers into buying expensive new realtime ray-tracing Nvidia 2080 RTX GPUs.

Electronic Arts had to revise its earnings estimates for 2019, some hedge funds sold off their EA stock, fearing low sales and stiff competition from popular Battle Royal games like Fortnite and PUBG, and EA stock is currently 45% down from its peak value in July 2018. EA had already become seriously unpopular with gamers because of annoying Battlefield franchise in-game mechanisms such as heaving to buy decent-aiming-accuracy weapons with additional cash, having to constantly pay for additional DLC content and game maps, and the very poor multiplayer gameplay of its two Star Wars: Battlefront titles (essentially Battlefield with laser blasters set in the Star Wars Universe). It seems that with Battlefield 5, EA -- not a company known for listening to its customers -- finally hit a brick wall, in the form of many Battlefield fans simply not buying or playing Battlefield 5.

Comments

Who would have thunk?

[Kohlrabi82]

Catering to the perpetually offended instead of your loyal gamer fanbase did not work out for you, EA? How surprising.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you know... it's just not a very good game. Couldn't have anything to do with it, though, no - it's just those SJWs getting their just desserts! Of course!

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you know... life is more complicated than that and for a variety reasons such as being a shitty game or bf3/4 being meh or the dumb ass sjw crap the consumer made a decision not to consume.

But no, it has to be black n white and only for the one reason that matches your world view. Right.

Be a dear, wipe your face, wash your hands and set the table for dinner.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Rockoon]

It may not be a good game because of catering to the perpetually offended.

There is one fact I know: If you cater to the people that arent your customers at the expense of your customers, then you will absolutely lose customers, and the people you catered to will move on to fuck with something else.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Luckyo]

That moment when you're so deranged by social justice ideology, you link to an article that debunks your point, while pretending that it reinforces it.

Quote from the article:

>Only a limited minority took part in the armed battles. Although women were typical partisan resistance fighters in Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia and the occupied USSR, feared and as numerous as men, they were a small minority in the maquis in France.

Social Justice Warrior in action. You could have quoted Italy, Greece, Yugoslav and Soviet women, who actually were fighting in large numbers. Instead, being properly deranged by social justice ideology and made utterly ignorant of reality by it, you literally quoted the one resistance force that had but a token amount of women combatants.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Mashiki]

Or, you know... it's just not a very good game. Couldn't have anything to do with it, though, no - it's just those SJWs getting their just desserts! Of course!

No, they went out and catered to the SJW's then told people that "if they didn't like the agenda. To not buy it." So it looks like people didn't buy it. Then the guy who pushed it "left" the company. No no, it wasn't telling people to fuck off that cratered sales. It was just a bad game...or a combination of it was a bad game and telling their market to fuck off.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Mashiki]

Can you tell me how many black females with amputations and prosthesis were fighting in WWII on the front lines? Cause that's the message EA was trying to push with BFV. Give you an example of proper marketing. If I'm playing The Witcher 3, the story may be about Ciri but it's driven by Geralt. If I'm playing Metro, Anna may play a key part but it's driven by Artyom. BFV is not driven by the tiny minority of people that had lost limbs. If so, a better representation would have been geriatrics post-cataract surgery sitting on the English shoreline and watching for Morse-UV flashes from operatives in France.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear, aren't you the special snowflake. Making a third of the game's main storyline about a woman, when as you pointed out at best only 15% were women is not statistically representative. I guess in your women's studies course they taught you reasoning and math through your feelings instead of facts. See how easy it is to interject a ton of hyperbole to get your point across? Perhaps instead of slinging mud like an NPC, you could tone it down some.

People have come to expect the games from this franchise to be reasonably accurate in portrayal. Going with statistically significant over representation doesn't come close to that. It's a game of course, so some leeway needs to be given in gameplay mechanics, however, this doesn't mean leeway needs to be given everywhere else. Believe it or not, the core of their fanbase has always enjoyed the other details that the BF series did get correct.

The slippery slope is real and people love to ignore it in the name of "progress". Games have not become better as a result of ensuring that "everyone is represented". They might appeal to some wider audience, and for some that's a good thing, but the tipping point has been hit and you're seeing huge companies like EA and Blizzard taking nose dives in stock prices. There are indie games out there now, who don't have great graphics, making small teams incredibly rich due to their ability to focus on gameplay and not worry about catering to your type of person. They honestly don't give a shit if you'd never buy their game. The sales figures always speaks for themselves.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Boronx]

Also tanks in these games form out of thin air. Does that upset you?

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Luckyo]

>I only have historical truths

You have them, but you reject them, as I demonstrated above. As you are so zealous in your convictions, that you're unable to see past it even when faced with the moment when you lied in a situation where truth was literally right there for you to use instead of a lie, you're beyond help.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Luckyo]

No, I'm saying that he's so deranged and used to rejecting observable reality, that he literally gave an example that was a lie when several examples where his statement was truth were literally in the same story.

Which is a major problem with people who hold deeply religious convictions. They are so utterly deranged, they are no longer capable of differentiating between reality and their dogma. As a result, they'll quote a complete and utter lie as if it supports their views, when truth is right there next to the lie they utter. Because they are so used to lying in the name of their ideology, they cannot differentiate between the lie and the truth.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ashthon]

So instead they should cater to the misogynist, historically challenged incel gamers out there?

I think you need to get a clue. Let me explain what actually happened.

EA claimed they were "telling the untold stories of WW2," but what they instead did was to rewrite history to push feminist propaganda. The game tells the story of Operation Gunnerside in which a team of Norwegian commandos destroy a Nazi heavy water production facility. However, in the game EA/DICE have written the Norwegian commandos out of history. Instead, the team who destroy the Nazi facility is a strong, empowered, educated mother and daughter team, who are not only scientists but unstoppable soldiers who can physically overpower any man. Clearly, this isn't "telling the untold stories of WW2," but rewriting history to push an agenda. There's a video here which shows the game scenario and then explains what actually happened during WW2. It's quite long, but you only need to watch the first five minutes and you'll get the point.

The whole game was a work of propaganda, designed not to appeal to gamers, but to force feminist propaganda on players. Then, despite completely rewriting history, they told gamers they were "uneducated" and said, "if you don't like it, don't buy it," which is why so few people bought the game.

But hey, don't let reality get in your way. Just keep claiming it's all the fault of "historically challenged incel gamers." Moron.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[teg]

So instead they should cater to the misogynist, historically challenged incel gamers out there?

I think you need to get a clue. Let me explain what actually happened.

EA claimed they were "telling the untold stories of WW2," but what they instead did was to rewrite history to push feminist propaganda. The game tells the story of Operation Gunnerside in which a team of Norwegian commandos destroy a Nazi heavy water production facility. However, in the game EA/DICE have written the Norwegian commandos out of history. Instead, the team who destroy the Nazi facility is a strong, empowered, educated mother and daughter team, who are not only scientists but unstoppable soldiers who can physically overpower any man. Clearly, this isn't "telling the untold stories of WW2," but rewriting history to push an agenda. There's a video here which shows the game scenario and then explains what actually happened during WW2. It's quite long, but you only need to watch the first five minutes and you'll get the point.

The whole game was a work of propaganda, designed not to appeal to gamers, but to force feminist propaganda on players. Then, despite completely rewriting history, they told gamers they were "uneducated" and said, "if you don't like it, don't buy it," which is why so few people bought the game.

But hey, don't let reality get in your way. Just keep claiming it's all the fault of "historically challenged incel gamers." Moron.

Not having played the game, a historical representation of "Operation Gunnerside" would have been a poor match for Battlefield. No shots fired, no Germans killed. Just patience, a bit of stealth and coming in and leaving over the mountains in wintertime. Women being part of it is the least of the problems in a BF V representation... so why so much hate on that point?

Re:Who would have thunk?

[stealth_finger]

Can you tell me how many black females with amputations and prosthesis were fighting in WWII on the front lines?

Can you tell me how many made it into the final game? Oh yeah, zero. That shit was cut fast but you wouldn't be able to tell from all the people seemingly still frothing at the mouth over it.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

huehuehue orange man bad

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ashthon]

Not having played the game, a historical representation of "Operation Gunnerside" would have been a poor match for Battlefield. No shots fired, no Germans killed. Just patience, a bit of stealth and coming in and leaving over the mountains in wintertime.

What they should have done is to chose a different incident around which to base the campaign. Instead they chose to rewrite history and make it so a mother and daughter team completed the mission. Rewriting history in this way is not only extremely disrespectful to the Norwegian commands who risked their lives, but also highly sinister. It tends to be the most evil people who rewrite history to push an agenda, and they do it because they believe their cause is right and just. Such people tend to be very dangerous because they believe anything is acceptable if done for the right reasons. This isn't something to be taken lightly and must be called out before they start taking more radical steps. Historical revisionism is already pretty radical and it's important to call it out whenever anyone tries to use it as a tool to push their agenda.

Women being part of it is the least of the problems in a BF V representation... so why so much hate on that point?

There are a great many things wrong here:

1) When you're selling a product you determine who your customer is and tailor the product to meet the needs of that customer. What EA/DICE did was to tailor their product to meed the needs of people who aren't their customers and who aren't going to buy the game. It's like the author of a female romance novel inserting some action scenes to try to appeal more to men. Men still aren't going to buy their romance novel, and all it will achieve is to ruin the book for the women who will buy it.

2) When I play a game I want to have fun, not feel like I'm watching some heavy-handed propaganda. Yet in Battlefield V the propaganda was clearly the focus and the game took a back seat. The heavy-handed propaganda distracts massively from the game and prevents players from enjoying it.

3) Patrick Soderlund called gamers "uneducated" for objecting to their of rewriting of history. Insulting your customers tends to go down poorly, particularly when the customers were actually right.

4) At the launch event they continued to ridicule their customers, showing quotes complaining about how they were rewriting history. It's a provable fact that they rewrote the history of Operation Gunnerside, yet EA/DICE keep pointing the finger customers and telling them they're stupid. This isn't the way to sell a product and is obviously going to generate hostility.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[NettiWelho]

The first trailer yeah, but that was cut hard and fast. Is that not what you wanted?

They didn't bother announcing that then, also, I never went to see what they actually have in the game after reading about the whole "saying 'white man'" being censored in-game. Is saying "white man" still being censored in in-game chat?

I don't want to pay a single cent to people putting that kind of censorship on their platform.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[NettiWelho]

Can you tell me how many made it into the final game? Oh yeah, zero. That shit was cut fast but you wouldn't be able to tell from all the people seemingly still frothing at the mouth over it.

Why should any of us buy a game made by literal racists to verify their racism? Just look at this image originally published by DICE developer: "WHITE MEN! WHITE MEN! WHITE MEN! (top left corner of screen)" The image is unaltered.

That along with this is a dealbreaker.

The responsibility is on the developer and publisher to communicate clearly. They dropped the ball big time on this.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[NettiWelho]

I never went to see what they actually have in the game after reading about the whole "saying 'white man'" being censored in-game. Is saying "white man" still being censored in in-game chat?

Never heard of that.

So you're saying you got no clues about what you're talking about?

Never heard of this?

Just look at what the developers published on twitter: look at top left corner: the image is unaltered. WHITE MEN! WHITE MEN! WHITE MEN!

Re:Who would have thunk?

[NettiWelho]

an issue with the chatbox of all things.

You're being deliberatelly dense, thats not an "issue with chatbox"; it is outright censorship, every word and phrase on the blacklist is entered manually and reveals the bias.

EA is not getting their moneys worth with your shilling.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Nidi62]

Women served as tankers, artillery crew, fighter pilots, and even frontline infantry for the Red Army in WWII. Quite a few became highly decorated. And of course women also played significant roles as partisans on the Eastern Front and the various resistances in Western Europe.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is nowhere same as regular army.

My Grandma walked through Second World War with Soviet Army, as medical personnel.
She told me many stories about THE war, yet not one was about female soldier.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[RedK]

Who are the perpetually offended ones here?

It's a WWII game. Why the heck would it have women soldiers with cybernetic prosthetics in it ?

The offended ones are the ones complaining every video game needs a token character of every race and gender (all 10,000 of them) in them. The same ones who made it so we now have unskippable disclaimers that says "This game was developed by a diverse team of different genders, religions and sexualities" as if that matters at all. What happened to just listing the names of the team in the credits ?

People wouldn't make a fuss about all this crap being added to video games, if there wasn't a bunch of offended people forcing companies to add it in the first place. It's not like firing up a text editor and compiling code is something only men can do. If women or minorities or whatever want to make games, they can. Co-opting established properties instead of making their own is the issue here.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Mashiki]

Thanks for `splainin that. I hope your legs were the maximum distance apart as you typed that.

From Ford, GM, Chrysler, and AMC pulling a "fuck you plebs, you'll buy what we make" in the 1970's, to New Coke, to movie studios attacking their audience when a movie flops hard today, their point is right.

Of course, it takes a special kind of sexist to make a comment like that in the first place.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Shadow of Eternity]

Right because there's absolutely no difference between things that literally make this a playable videogame and politicized sexist racist tokenism shoved in people's faces followed by attacks that if you don't adore it you're an alt-right russian bot nazi.

You realise that well over 80% of the population is outright sick or your shit, right? Particularly the very minorities that you, the single most homogenously rich and white group in the US, insist you speak for.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[OwP_Fabricated]

Please try to learn to separate the actual game mechanics from the situation it's supposed to present.

The idea is that it is at least supposed to look/feel similar to the actual thing, with the game-parts ironing over the realism bits that wouldn't be that fun (i.e. marching for hours through a field and then getting shot once and dying of sepsis, actual battlefields being miles and miles and miles of nothing, etc). The guns, uniforms, soldiers present, the equipment, the general settings are supposed to be at least mildly authentic.

There were women and people of color who fought in both world wars but for some reason they don't get a map/proper campaign setting of their own where they would have historically been present. Instead we got some lily-white blonde with a hook-hand who fought in a place where no women were recorded to have fought. The representation isn't the problem- the utter lack of effort in it is what makes it kinda pathetic to me.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to include women in a WW2 game then show them where they really fought, in the Soviet army. In the red army women were tankers, snipers, pilots just about everything really. Other WW2 games depicted this and it wasn't an issue. Why? because its accurate.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[OwP_Fabricated]

I don't get why doing what you said seems to be so difficult for people who want diversity to be shown in-game.

The Night Witches are cool and badass as fuck. They flew wooden fucking bi-planes in WWII for god's sake.

It's a fucking layup. Just make the goddamn map/campaign and you've got tons of opportunities to put women and POC in and maybe teach some idiots some real history.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[RedK]

and where the objectives have nothing to do with actual historical events

Why are you lying ?

Your first 2 elements are game mechanics, while we're discussing design and narrative concepts. Mixing up the 2 is dishonest.

But this last one, where the heck do you get off literally lying. The story of BF V's single player campaign *IS* a historical event. They way they portray it is ahistorical though, because instead of actually telling you how the Norwegians dealt with the Nazi heavy water plant, they made up a Mother/daughter mary sue scenario.

That *IS* part of the issue with BF V's entire design : it's ahistorical. If you wanted to play a Fantasy War game, there are a metric ton of those that exist. There's even one about a little girl that tames huge dinosaurs and it's pretty great (Horizon Dawn). The point is BFV is a WWII game. Not a "Fantasy War" game.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Pyramid]

Yeah, it's only the "right wing" that oversimplifies things.

Careful, your bias might be showing.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[asylumx]

Seriously! I don't get when people complain about insignificant crap like this because it's "not realistic" while they're playing a game where you can not only survive getting shot in the head, you can even keep fighting. BF5 lets you change your character (and they don't charge for new characters), so if you don't like the one you started with JUST CHANGE IT. The game has enough real problems, like how it crashes every other round. We don't need to be manufacturing social problems.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[mjwx]

Or, you know... it's just not a very good game. Couldn't have anything to do with it, though, no - it's just those SJWs getting their just desserts! Of course!

I found that out after Battlefield 3. The gameplay had been removed and replaced with a grind system that ensured as long as you played for long enough you got the upgrades to make you unstoppable. It stopped being a game where skill mattered and all you needed to do was suck long enough to unlock the upgrades.

But facts won't stop the morons bleating "SJW".

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, horseshit.

The number of BF gamers who actually care about whether it is a realistic WWII environment is small.
The number willing to pile on and complain about SJW stuff is large.
The number willing to pile on and complain just for the luls is large.

Why isn't BF5 selling well? EA has sucked for a long time. The game is fairly generic. There are LOTS of games to choose from and dropping $60+ on everything isn't possible for a lot of people.

I bought it. Maybe played 4 hours so far because it isn't that great.
Wasn't at all traumatized by characters that are female...because I'm not a child.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ol Olsoc]

Catering to the perpetually offended instead of your loyal gamer fanbase did not work out for you, EA? How surprising.

This! There is a saying - Get Woke, Go Broke. It's real, at least for the 21st century version of woke, which for all of it's presumed "inclusiveness" is really just racism and sexism directed at a different target.

And unfortunately the target the social justice people are demanding these companies to go after is the very market that buys and plays games. When surrendering to their demand for whatever they are offended by today, you only get the privilege of getting targeted by what offends them tomorrow.

And the social justice crowd that you suddenly have to have approve your every move is only going to control your every move - they certainly aren't going to buy and play the games that you have designed.

And the great irony is the new rulers over EA would be all too happy if EA went out of business. Because the perpetually offended crowd's real target is your present customers.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[mjwx]

Can you tell me how many black females with amputations and prosthesis were fighting in WWII on the front lines? Cause that's the message EA was trying to push with BFV.

Can you show me how many soldiers in WWII respawned? because that's the message EA was trying to push with BF V...

Battlefield was never about reality, reality makes for really crap gameplay (most historical battles are so lopsided that any recreation will always end in the same result, forcing one team to always lose does not make for a fun game).

The problem with BF 5 is that it's a shit game, gameplay wise. the Battlefield series has been since BF 3 (the BF game that made me abandon the series). The problem all the whiners shouting "SJW" have is an inferiority complex, the notion that somewhere someone you consider inferior is being treated as your equal. That is completely different and almost totally unrelated to the problem EA is encountering with BF 5. Battlefield is about multiplayer gameplay, had they got that right no-one would care. No-one buys a Battlefield game for it's story, the original Battlefield 1942 didn't even have a single player campaign (I believe that was added in BF 3). Ultimately the game is floundering because the gameplay is crap and everyone is finally realising it.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[RedK]

I was talking any the multiplayer. Where the tanks materialize out of thin air.

Game mechanic. It's a video game, some elements are purely there for the sake of the gaming actually being playable.

Women with Cybernetics attachments that couldn't possibly have existed in the WWII era are not gameplay mechanics. They're design elements.

You want Women with Cyborg arms fighting in wars ? Make Women with Cyborg Arms Warfare V. Don't pollute Battlefield, a WWII era franchise with that crap.

How is this so complicated ?

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Mashiki]

Oh boo fucking hoo.

We're looking for intelligence, and it's all downhill.

Gamers rise up amirite? Because cishet white males are the most oppressed demographic in the world right?

It's like, progressive buzzword salad! Not only did you assume my race, but my gender too! How unprogressive, sexist and racist!

You pathetic incels do love to cry victim at every turn, you're clearly the perpetually offended ones, you create a narrative of victimhood to protect your hegemonic masculinity because otherwise *gasp* you might have to actually share your toys with women and minorities, oh the horror!

Oh boy, you hit nearly every buzzword. So, when are the female front line forestry workers starting, cause I'll tell ya it's a shit job for low pay, in super hazardous conditions. Not as bad as ~20 years ago, but being crushed to death, losing limbs, and head injuries(among the top) are pretty hot on the "you're gonna get fucked up" right behind working as a fisherman on a Great Lakes fishery vessel. You're gonna love it(please note that fucked up fish with eaten holes from sea lampray's is common at times - try not to vomit on the fish).

You know what? Fuck you, just, fuck you. I can't wait for you reactionary pissboys to get put in your place.

Are you upset that egalitarianism is being applied? Isn't that what you wanted? Or is it that you wanted all of the benefits and none of the consequences. I'm sure you're just a-linin' up to protest the court over a 30 year old teacher raping a dozen 10 year old boys. Is that a no?

Re: Who would have thunk?

[RedK]

imagined victimhood.

"This game doesn't cater to my particular sexual preferences and state of being even though it has nothing to do with sexual preferences or states of being" = imagined victimhood

"We changed the game to pander to this group's particular sexual preferences,at the detriment of design elements that drew in our target audience, completely changing the game for the worse" = actual "victimhood" (aka, actual reason to dislike what is happening, not "victimhood", no one is pretending they're EA's victims here).

Why is it always about being a "victim" with folks on your side ? You can dislike things and events without being a frickin' victim.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ol Olsoc]

It may not be a good game because of catering to the perpetually offended. There is one fact I know: If you cater to the people that aren't your customers at the expense of your customers, then you will absolutely lose customers, and the people you catered to will move on to fuck with something else.

This has been learned the hard way in more than just EA's case. The destruction of the Star Wars golden goose by Kennedy and Johnson. Especially when they not only refused criticism, they attacked and ridiculed anyone who disagreed with them.

How'd that work out?

In the world of entertainment, it is pretty important that you produce entertainment that your customers want.

And if you produce a game based on a event like WW2, it needs to be accurate, because the customer is pretty well versed.

And yeah - an alternative universe WW2 game could be made. And as long as it's known as an alternative game, its all good.

But speaking to that - you get interesting things when you cater to those people. The latest Wonder Woman movie which did indeed have a war setting, which did indeed have social Justice oversight - still outraged some of the easily offended.

They were outraged that Gal Gadot raised her arm - and horrors!!! To Twitter and scream!! Wonder Woman Gal Gadot had no armpit hair!! https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/...

What is worse, Wonder woman as a member of an immortal race of only women could not give true consent, therefore she was raped!!! https://slate.com/human-intere...

The point is good people, if you are dealing with a group who cannot be satisfied, there is no point in dealing with them at all.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[RedK]

Game mechanics vs design.

Spawning tanks materializing out of thin air = Game mechanic.
Women with Cyborg arms that single handedly took down a Nazi heavy water plant = Design element that contradicts the historical setting.

One is required for gameplay, the other is pandering. Not a hard concept, except for ideologues trying to pretend this shit is normal and acceptable. It has nothing to do with "wahmen in games". Some of the best games feature women protagonists. It has to do with shipping a WWII era historical shooter literred with non-game mechanics anachronisms.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Z80a]

The problem is not catering for em, its hiring em.
Because as soon they're in, they will get offended by everyone with talent in the studio and try their best to get em fired and replaced by more people of the same religion.

Re: Who would have thunk?

[Nidi62]

Which is nowhere same as regular army.

My Grandma walked through Second World War with Soviet Army, as medical personnel. She told me many stories about THE war, yet not one was about female soldier.

I've read monographs and firsthand accounts from Wehrmacht soldiers(if you are interested in the subject Eastern Inferno by Hans Roth is incredible about the Eastern Front that specifically mention female combatants multiple times. One particular one that stood out is about a tank with a husband/wife crew where the wife, after the husband was killed, continued to fight on with her tank. Another was Red Army medics defending a bunker with hand grenades and female soldiers found dead next to anti-air emplacements. Then there are the mobilized workers at places like Stalingrad, a female foreman leading her workers into battle was explicitly mentioned. Sounds like your Grandmother was a nurse and most likely served behind the front lines and later in the war when Germany was on the retreat. I am sure she went through a lot and had some incredible stories, but women fighting on the frontlines is an established fact.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[CronoCloud]

Putting female avatars to play in a game is an "agenda"?

It's an unrealistic game! It's never been historically accurate. Does having women in the game bother you that much? If you don't want to play a woman, don't. But wouldn't it be nice to have female avatars for those who DO?

Re: Who would have thunk?

[HornWumpus]

Movies show comic book history.

They also don't show the Ruskys and the Germans as _allies_ invading and splitting four nations at the start of the war.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[lgw]

That's a good point, though I think both affected sales. Had BF5 been a better "realistic WW2 game" it would have given it at least something less bland. However, injecting SJW nonsense was pretty far down it's list of anti-consumer behaviors.

Had the gameplay been new or interesting, they might have gotten away with the rest. It really didn't help that a variety of anti-consume injections were also immersion breaking. Wasn't this the game where loot boxes would parachute down to you mid-fight? Geez. Way worse than cyber-arm, though cyber-arm wasn't helping.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. My favorite character to play is a black woman with a hitlerstache. Best played on the side with the hindu good luck symbol!

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ol Olsoc]

I'm sure those directors are pretty upset about the bookings billions of dollars their movies took in. The failure of Solo was surely because fans had no money left, not because it was shit.

You might want to do some research. Aside from painting critics of The last Jedi as racist, sexist, and toxic nerds, the Rsponse of Kathleen Kennedy the honcho of today's Star wars movie is "I have a responsibility to the company that I work with. I don’t feel that I have a responsibility to cater in some way. I would never just seize on saying, 'Well, this is a franchise that’s appealed primarily to men for many, many years, and therefore I owe men something.'"

So here is the questyion to you framed in a differnt way. Let's say you are the CEO of the Hallmark channel. An overwhelming majority of the patrons on the Hallmark channel are women. The movies are the standard woman meets man/conflict/girl loses man/resolution romance model. They are making a lot of money with this.

So now someone new comes in and tells you that you have to start making movies to cater to a standard male preference. That you need to change your movies to have chase scenes, some violence, and sexy women in bikinis. And add some war into the mix. Then they tell you "I have a responsibility to the company that I work with. I don’t feel that I have a responsibility to cater in some way. I would never just seize on saying, 'Well, this is a franchise that’s appealed primarily to Women for many, many years, and therefore I owe Women something.'"

Do you - Animojo - who is heading the Hallmark Channel, change your movies to men's preferences and incorporate war and violence and hotties in bikinis in movies because it it right and just to not cater to women? Are you prepared to lose money via an attempt to abandon one audience to curry favor to another?

Then if women complain that the romance movies they enjoyed so much are now awful, do you ridicule them and call them names?

Yes - Star Wars had a lot of male fans. It had a lot of female fans too, but yes the majority are male. Just as the majority of the Hallmark Channel fans are women. And both support the things they like with their wallets.

And while there have been many excuses as to why Solo failed - your idea that the fans were indigent is pretty funny. Another is that everyone was suffering from fatigue, that Solo was released too soon. Marvel movies might have something to say about that. The rumblings started a few years back.

After The Force Awakens, a number of the fans were grumbling a bit. With The Last Jedi, the complaints grew louder. But instead of taking a complaint as a gift, Disney's folks ridiculed the fans, calling them racist, sexist, and being unable to handle "strong women". Which is pretty strange, every SW fan I know is seriously enthusiastic about Sigourney Weaver in the Alien trilogy, and Linda Hamilton's Sarah O'Conner part in Terminator, in which she grows from a Timid housefife into a reall badass take no prisoners person. Those are just a sample.

But the Force Awakens and Last Jedi toys languished on toy store shelves. The archetype Star Wars fan is going to go to the movies several times, and buy a lot of the promotional merchandise.

And after the treatment they got, the word went out to show Disney that if you want to make movies, you cater to the people who go to them. So for lack of a better term, they boycotted them.

You see, the people demanding the "inclusivity" and what passes for a "strong woman" these days don't usually go to Sci-fi movies. And they definitely do not spend money on promotional merchandise. Most people who go to sci-fi movies don't want to be preached at, and they consider a strong woman character to be someone like Weaver and Hamilton, not just women with bad attitudes. No one told us that Ripley and O'Conner were strong women - it was obvious.

But you are right about one th

Re:Who would have thunk?

[squiggleslash]

The vast majority of people loved TLJ. It's consistently polled high, it had extremely high ratings when viewers were polled on opening day, and Blu-ray sales are through the roof.

There's a long standing myth it did badly, largely because a small but loud group of "fans" kept posting the same ten page essays on "Why I didn't like TLJ" because they were upset by.... I'm still unsure what by, I mean, they claim it's not the purple haired woman, but then they call her "Admiral SJW" so there's that. Interestingly there's at least some evidence the IRA (the Russian troll outfit, not the Catholic Terror organization) had a hand in early trolling on the subject.

Bottom line: TLJ did well and was well received. Solo did badly because... to be honest, it wasn't a movie I heard anyone say they were looking forward to, and I also watched it and thought it was awful and told my friends the same thing, but there are some people out there who liked it, which is fine, good for you I guess. But TLJ? Stop beating that dead horse. If BD sales had been terrible I'd have assumed people were right about it generating some kind of backlash despite huge audiences, but BD sales are great. Audience polling is great. It did well. Not surprised, it was a great movie.

Re:Who would have thunk?

[Ol Olsoc]

Are car chases and bikinis the only way to appeal to men?

You would have to call up the Hallmark channel and ask why they don't include them in their movies.

Do women not like car chases?

And you step into the trap with both feet.

The reason that HallMark doesn't have car chases or politics in their movies is because of two things. Because the genre of movies that is attractive to a large set of women is romance, and they cater to that genre - as opposed to action movies. The second reason is that they don't want car chases and politics in their romance genre movies. That sort of thing really dilutes the whole concept of genre.

Women who enjoy watching movies with car chases or women in bikinis will enjoy watching action genre movies. And that's cool. You can have a love interest in an action movie, but you don't explore that to the depth that a romance movie does.

It is really quite simple. Stick to the genre. pay some attention to canon if you are making series. Do not kill the golden goose.

Allow me to simplfy this for you. Changing movies deliberately to antagonize your customers is a very risky thing to do. Kennedy's statements indicate she felt no obligation to her fans. And the ridicule, belittlement, and even claims that these fans simply do not exist. Some claim they are Russian bots.

It is up to the new audience of the new socially woke Star Wars to step in and take the place of those fans that they feel no need for. Hopefully the new fans will increase profits and show those horrible sexistracisthomophobicRussian bots theey are not only not needed, but Disney has increased profits by telling them to get the hell out of their theaters, there's a new boss in town, and she's kicking ass and taking names.

"EA's shitty business policies ...

[Qbertino]

... and practices are coming back at them."

FTFY

Nvidia's problem...

[jools33]

Nvidia's problem wasn't the tie in with Battlefield, more so the pricing, if you decide to add 30% to the price, expect sales to not be quite so hot.

Re:Nvidia's problem...

[Luckyo]

If anything, nvidia got used to the cryptoboom pricing. It almost seems like people up top the company convinced themselves that those prices were the new normal.

And this has been a harsh wake up call. They price RTX cards as if they're the hottest cryptomining kit that gamers would have to compete with miners for, as happened with many of the GTX series cards.

Re:Nvidia's problem...

[serviscope_minor]

And this has been a harsh wake up call. They price RTX cards as if they're the hottest cryptomining kit that gamers would have to compete with miners for, as happened with many of the GTX series cards.

Everyone seems to have forgotten about deep learning too. Deep learning is big and getting bigger. The bloody miners nabbed all the best cards and it's been hard to get anything decent. Recently, Dell RAN OUT of 2080 Ti's and literally conldn't supply a machine with one.

Re:Nvidia's problem...

[Luckyo]

Unlikely. Apple's strategy is to ignore about 90% of market and go for top 10%.

In case of nvidia, that would be conceding almost all of their market share on gaming hardware market, while gaining next to nothing. They already have almost 100% of top end cornered due to AMD's lack of ability to compete in that segment at the moment. But their lion's share of sales is in the mid end market, which they are currently in an excellent position to concede to AMD with their current pricing model.

Re:Nvidia's problem...

[Mashiki]

The bloody miners nabbed all the best cards and it's been hard to get anything decent. Recently, Dell RAN OUT of 2080 Ti's and literally conldn't supply a machine with one.

You mean it has nothing to do with the fact that nvidia was all-in on the crypto mining market, misread it, are sitting on assloads of devalued GPU's and OEM-PCB's, that were optimized for mining. And they were so all in that they cut GPU's to non-reference makers like evga, msi, and asus. And with multiple shareholder lawsuits, and prior to the holidays their stock had dropped 49% that they're trying to recoup lost valuation prior to the end of the 2018 fiscal year and show shareholders that "they really haven't fucked up" by raising their current gen card prices or anything like that?

Just remember, that in the pre-manufactured market cards are bought in allotted amounts at x price. Dell could have bought more cards through a 1st tier distributor like Ingram Micro or Supercom, but that would have likely driven the end-price up by 30%

Re:Nvidia's problem...

[Luckyo]

2060 is not a mid end card. The only people who claim it is are marketing people working for nvidia. It is priced like the sweet spot cryptomining kit that was 1060 6GB mid end card when cryptomining craze was at its peak and those cards commanded 50-75% price premium over MSRP, as 1060 was being sold at x70 high end prices.

2060 is being sold at approximately x70 card price point in the past, the nvidia's high end model throughout many generations. Ergo, it's a high end card. Mid end is in the 200USD MSRP range, topping out at around 250. It is by far the most sold segment in discreet cards in terms of volume. It is where 1060, 960, 760 etc were at launch.

Now whether nvidia is doing this because their top brass bought their own cool aid and think they can make cryptoboom prices the new normal, or their well documented catastrophic situation with warehouses full of unsold 1060 chips that board partners had to return because after cryptoboom crashed, no one wanted to buy them is anyone's guess. My guess is that it's a mix of both. But none of it makes 2060 a mid end segment card. It's a high end card, replacing 1070. 1060, the actual mid end card in nvidia's portfolio doesn't have a 20x0 model equivalent (yet?). My guess, one isn't coming until they finally manage to sell as many of the warehoused 1060s left over from the cryptoboom production peak, which is likely to take a while, as no one in the production and retail chain is willing to take a massive hit from selling them at much lower margins than was reported to their shareholders, or perhaps even at loss.

DICE is the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

EA bought DICE, the scandanavian ENGINE company, back when it seemed their work was good. The EA turned over most of their other IPs to this increasingly awful engine. Worse, being scandanavian, DICE is sjw to the power infinity.

Anyway EA combined the complete lack of game play design skills exhibited by DICE (DICE's Mirror's Edge 2 was a critical and technical disaster) with the whole lootbox/microtransaction 'gaming as a service' nonsense to create a perfect storm of fail.

BF V, initially stripped of lootboxes after the pervious year's Star Wars Battlefront debacle, had to lean 100% on the SJW 'strategy' which boils down to calling your core playerbase 'racist' and/or 'sexist' scumbgas that the company sincerely hopes will not purchase their products.

Well Battlefield has also been significantly dumbed down since the first, and the last good one was BF2 (or Bad Company 2). In chasing the stoned/drunk couch potato console casual market, gameplay has to boil down to the worst kind of 'pew, pew- you're dead' dribble.

This at a time where thanks to Indy and Steam, good gaming has never been more diverse. It's just the AAA crap from Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision and EA that is this lootbox casual brainless cr-p now entirely marketed at dribblers. See Fallout 76 for an even worse example.

But as I said, DICE is at the heart of all of this. As a company of programmers who cannot program or ever create new gameplay mechanisms, they fixate on the things they can achieve. Games that use photogammatry rather than excellence in engine work. Games that focus on microtransaction mechanisms. A complete loss of quality.

Whaty killed BF V's sales was SJW sh-it in place of good game design, rather than SJW sh-t ALONGSIDE good game design. And having the voice of women screeching and screaming as they kill and die in every online game was a psychological idiocy beyond words.

Fortnite is all SJW, with no impact on usage cos the game is perceived as excellent by the audience that plays it. Nothing DICE has done in many many years comes close to good, let alone excellent. And DICE infects 90% of current EA- even the new Titanfall 3 may be on their sh-it engine.

The mantra- make good games- would fix the current woes of these publishers. But they are doubling down on 'gaming as a service' instead.

Re:DICE is the real problem

[Kokuyo]

" And having the voice of women screeching and screaming as they kill and die in every online game was a psychological idiocy beyond words."

No shit!

Men are hardcoded to want to protect females. SJWs think that's a bad thing because this is triggered more the more feminine a female is. The war against femininity and beauty is very openly fought among those people...

And then you want to sell a game that is primarily directed at males (because females aren't interested in war... even the suffragettes were fighting for a right to vote for females without being under threat of a draft... women are not dumb enough to want to go to war) and fill it up with deus ex machina female characters who can do all that men can even though they have way less muscle mass that is way less efficient than men's.

Meanwhile, you get to hear them dying around you, which triggers very different feelings of failure in men than hearing males perish.

Who could have foreseen that THAT would not sell?!

The worst and most blatant sign of total incompetence is the way they portrayed females in wars. There have been many examples of tried and true female war heroes. There was no need to embellish (and implying that women need embellishment to have a place in the scenario).

I don't know about the US, but god damn it, the French Resistance was full of women, wasn't it? What about Russian sharpshooters and nightwitches?

It is not hard to find examples of capable women in war. They are so easy to find, in fact, that there are memes about them! To not work with that is either an unrealistic amount of stupidity or done on purpose.

Re:DICE is the real problem

[dunkelfalke]

Come on, DICE can make awesome games. Take Pinball Fantasies for example. The problem is clearly EA.

Re:DICE is the real problem

[Rockoon]

The, lets say. female vocalisations are barely noticeable at best.

Stop being a lying fuck.

For fuck sakes.

Re:DICE is the real problem

[AmiMoJo]

Meanwhile, you get to hear them dying around you, which triggers very different feelings of failure in men than hearing males perish.

Who could have foreseen that THAT would not sell?!

Strange that Mortal Kombat sold well then. The women scream a lot as you hack their limbs off and burn the skin off their faces. They are mostly wearing pretty sexy outfits too, really going after those male hormones.

even the suffragettes were fighting for a right to vote for females without being under threat of a draft

Actually they opposed the draft for everyone. Later feminists in the US tried to get it stopped by arguing that women must be drafted too, and took it all the way to the supreme court where the predominantly male judges ruled against them.

Re:DICE is the real problem

[Mashiki]

Strange that Mortal Kombat sold well then. The women scream a lot as you hack their limbs off and burn the skin off their faces. They are mostly wearing pretty sexy outfits too, really going after those male hormones.

Think you're talking about DOA. Mortal Kombat has had moderate sales over the last few titles.

Actually they opposed the draft for everyone.

That's why those groups supported things like white feather campaigns. That sure makes sense, for those that are historically unaware. That was a feminist attempt to label men who refused the draft, or where "on the home front" instead of the front line as cowards. You can find plenty of news articles from both WWI and WWII where feminist mobs attacked men, or instigated near riots trying to shame men, including a few high profile cases where men were on leave and/or receiving medals and they tried the same bullshit too.

Later feminists in the US tried to get it stopped by arguing that women must be drafted too, and took it all the way to the supreme court where the predominantly male judges ruled against them.

1981 is a far cry from 1917 or even Korea and Vietnam.

Re:DICE is the real problem

[Mashiki]

X sold very well, the best of any game in the series. Well enough to get a special edition and sequel. This is a franchise that has been going since the mid 90s.

Looks like 1.8m sales for X over 10 weeks. While DOA5 was 2.2m over 10 weeks. Nothing on DOA6 yet of course. X is probably the best selling of all MK titles, and that's because it became a very big thing in the semi-pro and pro fighting game circuits, especially since DOA5 is very dated.

During WW1 the feminist movement in the UK was pacifist and campaigned for an end to the fighting, supporting those who chose not to participate. It actually got a few of them threatened with charges of treason by the government for helping men make the conscientious objector applications. Many of those men were illiterate or at least had little chance at the tribunal on their own.

So, why did the white feather movement start there. And why did it become increasingly popular with the various feminist movements of both WWI and WWII.

Zeitgeist Market

[mentil]

Marketing no longer has a stranglehold on the zeitgeist. Free/cheap multiplayer games are in at the moment; why pay $60 to play that new game some people are playing, when you can pay $0-$30 to play that game everyone's playing? It's like the WoW network effects, only if it were F2P. There were plenty of comparable F2P MMORPGs but they never rose to the prominence of WoW.

Another interpretation is that gamers are burned out on cinematic FPSes or deathmatch. Remember when Horde Mode was all the rage a few years back? Battle Royale is the same. If anything, this is proof that graphics don't automatically sell games. If this translates into publishers no longer thinking of shooters as a 'safe bet' then I see that as a good thing, as they are a huge portion of AAA action games.

Re:Zeitgeist Market

[JaredOfEuropa]

Maybe. Though I think that the network effect plays a much bigger role in an MMO, where people are much more socially invested in the game than in a casual shooter with short rounds and little if any social interaction. Total number of player also matters a lot more for MMOs, where insufficiently populated shards tend do die out. In games like BF or Fortnite, you can basically grab the next 24-64 players off the global queue and populate a game with them (doesn't work quite like that, but it almost amounts to the same thing).

What brought Fortnite to prominence is not a network effect, but word of mouth about a really fun F2P game. Not the same thing.

This is Patrick Soderlund fault

[slashmydots]

He literally said if you don't like the inclusion of a woman with disabilities (very inaccurately) on the front line then you're ignorant and shouldn't buy the game. So nobody bought the game and he took a big bonus and quit. They also added in mission where the French are seen as racist against black people, which is completely and utterly inaccurate to those two groups actually working together during the war. Then they took a special ops mission and replaced the actual heroes with women and claimed it was historically accurate. This disgraceful lunacy in the twisted version of reality that these SJW assholes live in is so vast it can crash and entire project/company/product. Every SJW and far left liberal nut job needs to lose their job after this wonderful public display of how crazy these people are.

Re:This is Patrick Soderlund fault

[NettiWelho]

a woman with disabilities

The lady in trailer is not disabled, thats not a prosthethic as WW2 era prosthethics can't do things like reload a bolt-action rifle, machine gun or artillery piece.

That lady is cybernetically enhanced . Too bad its not a cyberpunk game.

Re:This is Patrick Soderlund fault

[Mashiki]

I'm confused. It sounds like you're hating on SJWs while simultaneously being outraged at the historical misrepresentation of various groups of people. Isn't that how SJWs react?

It's not hard to understand why you're confused. They want to play their product that's tailored to what is has been previously, and keep playing it. SJWs want to change the product to suit them, and not play it.

Need an example? Look up Rimworld, where it catered to the market and the people that were the audience, but SJWs went out and attacked them but "transphobia" and so on.

Religion is more important than money

[Jarwulf]

It doesn't make sense on the surface. Its not like purple haired womyn's studies majors are a sizable demographic for FPSs. Its bizarre how so many companies like outdoors stores, comics, and gaming that are do not have SJWs anywhere near their target audience are so obsessed with currying their favor that they're willing to lose out on billions and antagonize their actual core audience. Then you realize this is a religious ideology to them. Theres now a sizable number of people in power who hold the philosophy..or religion of 'social justice' as strongly as the most zealous priest or mullah. They don't care about losing money anymore. They are completely unrepentant the usual corporate spin apology is now replaced with the company continuing to double down on blaming the fans. All that matters is spreading and putting the ideology into power. Looks like we've finally found the one thing corporations appear to love more than money and it seems to be bowing down in worship of SJWism.

Re:Religion is more important than money

[Pinky's Brain]

Upper layer management are still sociopathic capitalists. They let the SJW run amock to keep the peace.

If EA starts to perceive the costs of driving through a more traditional feel for the games to be less than the cost/churn of unhappy employees they'll do the former.

So before anyone judges those evil gamers...

[AbRASiON]

The article is slightly off, in that itâ(TM)s implying that gamers took issue with EA misrepresenting women in historical battles.
Well, look, some of them did, for sure.

However, as usual, if I recall, the backlash was due to EA / DICE responding, effectively that anyone who takes issue with women in gaming, in any capacity is clearly a basement dweller, behind the times, gamergater or some other thing. (Something, to this effect, was said, if I recall correctly)

So much like GameGate itself, what happens is some idiots shout and whine and then, in response to this, someone says something over the top, in a blanket generalisation kind of way, next thing you know, youâ(TM)ve pissed people off who actually werenâ(TM)t that bad. So begins divisiveness *(ie: skub vs anti-skub)

So to go back on topic, /some/ people probably just said âoeGee, this seems a little historically inaccurate, why canâ(TM)t you just make the women in this be X, who were actually in the war and were badass!â And those guys (or even girls) were called chauvinists.

This keeps on going on, on the internet, as much as it sucks to walk on eggshells, people continue to not be careful and end up inciting this kind of thing.

Also, free âvirtual signalâ(TM) points for EA if they appeal to the far left crowd (ie, generally the journalists)

A mess, as usual.
Oh one last thing, worst of all really.

1 game, getting bad sales numbers impacting the company this much? Someone needs to re-evaluate their budgeting!

Re:"BF3 and BF4 were not great from a gameplay..."

[Jarwulf]

Those "perpetually offended" that people are talking about aren't the "real gamers".

Who went after Rimworld? Who went after Doom Eternal? Who went after Cyberpunk's twitter for a joke tweet they made?

Real gamers don't get offended by these kinds of cosmetics. We are in it for the fun and the gameplay.

Its not about just this one incident but the trend of a vocal minority of activists. (Yes the proportion of people who want gender balanced armies for the sake of inclusiveness are still a minority among gaming audiences.) pursuing men into every hobby he takes refuge in and despoiling it with their neurosis. Its not enough for you to rule over us during work. You want to rule over our play too. Since we should all be good humored why not make a movie about MLK where you turn him into a white man or take a beloved historical female figure and make her into a man?

The "perpetually offended" are the basement dwelling internet trolls that just wants to destroy something for the lulz. They are mad about some game grabbing attention of a part of the player base and not playing their favorite shitty game.

Kinda like how activists destroyed the previous creative landscape and now 80% of female protagonists and growing in the arts are variations of the asexual androgynous Rey archetype? Or how they launch a media inquisition against every game that has females that are considered 'too sexy' especially if the character does not have enough masculinity to counter this. Female characters must conform to this narrow behavioural pattern or be unremarkable or they'll be targeted ie DOA, Dragon's Crown, etc. Its gotten to the point that games with major women outside these approved archetypes are now very rare outside of Japanese studios. And this is just the craziness related to feminism.

Re:1942

[stealth_finger]

1942, Vietnam (also known as bfv), 2, 2142, Bad Co, 1943, Bad Co 2, 3, 4, Hardline, 1, V

That's how you number a series!

I'm baffled

[Anonymous Coward]

I really can't understand how people don't understand that getting woke is what got EA broke. I mean, if nothing else, they are the masters of rehashing old content and making it profitable. Look at FIFA. People buy this shit every single freaking year, paying full price for literally the same game with refreshed teams. Something that a patch should've done. Imagine if FIFA team adds mixed gender teams. Imagine for a second that FIFA 2020 has Real Madrid with both males and females and tell me if that game would sell like a hotcake or it would flop.

This is what happened to Battlefield V. It could've easily reached the sales numbers of 3/4 or 1. But it didn't. Nowhere near close, and it's not because the game is not vastly different from Bf1.

They'll probably recover and get those stock numbers up again with successful Anthem, it's their best people working on it. Bunch more FIFA releases and the shitshow that FUT is. But I hope they take this as a wake-up call. The same that the likes of Activision/Blizzard are taking right now, and they better start focusing on their core audience, or yet another game crash is coming upon us.

Gaming can be the highest grossing form of entertainment, but it has to be done right. Look at Red Dead Redemption, or hell, the latest God of War. They didn't spend their time dealing with political correctness bull*, they targetted their core audience that keeps those titles in borderline religion sense, and it paid. Those 2 are the highest grossing games of 2018, if not all time. RDR at least is. And GoW is a platform exclusive, so a lot of gamers simply couldn't play it on their platform of choice. And it still sold freaking well.

Historical authenticity got me

[DrXym]

I don't believe that people didn't buy the game because people can choose a race / gender in multiplayer. More likely they didn't buy because the game feels stale and the ongoing belief that EA would rape players the way they had in the past.

It wouldn't hurt if companies like EA, Activision et al suffered a backlash and financial shock for acting like greedy jerks. It might remind them that they're supposed to be producing games, not skinner boxes.

Re:Historical authenticity got me

[RabidStoat]

I think this is the key reason, yeah, all the stuff about catering to minorities is going to affect some people, but not most. EA have been churning out the same game for years now - is their policy going to be rotating around releasing WW1, WW2, Vietnam (60s/70s era) and modern day games that are increasingly similar and have annoying in game and DLC costs? It's a stale model that I think people are tired with it. Go and find a new game genre EA then you'll get sales again, until then stop regurgitating the same old content.

Far Cry 5 had similar controversy

[rsilvergun]

Far Cry 5 had similar controversy and ended up the best selling entry in the series. It's not the SJWs ruining things, it's the BF3 launch all over (minus the worst of the bugs).

BF5's missing key modes that have been around for ages with a bunch of promises to fix it later. Oh, and the single player is another 3-4 hour snoozefest (though at least it has one).

If they wanted to do early access they should have called it that. As it is they released a $60 title with about the same content you can get for free from Fortnite. The realistic art style might have carried it if they'd released a finished product but, well, they didn't.

And besides, that SJW controversy was mostly cooked up by the Youtube outrage engine looking for something to complain about. If EA's numbskull marketers had just kept their mouth shut it would have fizzled out, but that was the point. They got a ton of free publicity on what's little more than this years entry into a tired genre.

Re:Far Cry 5 had similar controversy

[Mashiki]

Far Cry 5 had similar controversy and ended up the best selling entry in the series. It's not the SJWs ruining things, it's the BF3 launch all over (minus the worst of the bugs).

I seem to remember the main complaints were SJWs complaining that it really wasn't a "time to shoot racists" simulator full of backwards Christians in KKK regalia(instead it being a drug-running cult), and then went out of it's way actually portray Montana as really not a racist shit hole. Montana still being partly shit is up for debate. You can find the mainstream game site complaints on that on sites like Polygon or RPS if you really want.

Re:Far Cry 5 had similar controversy

[Shadow of Eternity]

BF5 pandered to SJWs, FC5 pissed off SJWs. That's the difference.

Re:Far Cry 5 had similar controversy

[RedK]

Far Cry 5 had the absolute OPPOSITE controversy, and it's easy to see by the fact the "complaining" is coming from the people praising BFV. Namely, TheVerge, Vox, Polygon and other SJW pandering "gaming" blogs suddenly writing negative pieces about Far Cry 5 :

https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

Literally :

Ever since its reveal nearly a year ago, Far Cry 5 has invited controversy. Whereas most shooters have players aim their weapons at zombies, demons, or Nazis, Far Cry 5 takes place in Montana, and its enemies are American citizens who bear a strong resemblance to the stereotypical image of a modern, young white supremacist. The first piece of art for the game was a re-creation of The Last Supper, but with Southern hipsters wielding guns and knives and a tablecloth that was an alternate reality version of the American flag.

In the months since, the developers at Ubisoft Montreal have been hesitant to draw any true parallels between the gameâ(TM)s world and the real world. And after playing a few dozen hours of the game, the reason for their reticence is clear: Far Cry 5 doesnâ(TM)t have anything to say about race in America. It doesnâ(TM)t have much to say at all. Itâ(TM)s a big, dumb action game with an artificial sheen implying depth.

How disingenuous to you have to be to pretend both games received the same kind of "controversy".

I think it's more the devs fault

[rsilvergun]

for not getting the finished game out in time. Half the modes are missing and there's not a lot of reason to stop playing BF1. Also they're the first to market with ray tracing which probably took a lot of development time away right at the end, but then that tech turned out to be a dud with $1000 cards that struggle to maintain 60 fps at 1080p with the feature turned on.

Far Cry 5 showed that if the games good gamers will buy it anyway, controversy be damned.

Re:I think it's more the devs fault

[Mashiki]

Far Cry 5 showed that if the games good gamers will buy it anyway, controversy be damned.

FC5 is a rather poor example, even though the gaming press tried to tank it several times, finally giving up. Kingdom Come: Deliverance would be a far better example. The mainstream gaming sites? Kotaku('gamers want to keep medieval games white!' Polygon(blahblah misogyny, gamers want to keep it white!') Giant Bomb(we refuse to review it!) and so on. A title that was attacked by SJWs for having white characters, not being diverse, rampant complaints of misogyny, was blacklisted by other members of the gaming press, was topic banned in several gaming subreddits to boot. Which went on to sell around 1.5m copies.

It's very easy to sell an established title, on a storefront you already own, with 5ish prior titles to build off of. Far more difficult to go from nobody studio to holy shit this is awesome.

It's not about the "historical accuracy"

[gotan]

... players wouldn't care about historical inaccuracies if it's due to an oversight or to benefit the game in some way. But if there is an inaccuracy willfully introduced in the game, then one may ask why. The answer in this case is: to take up the cause for diversity politics.

And that's (in my opinion) what at least some gamers dislike: buying a product that force feeds you thinly disguised political propaganda. It's like in game advertising, only with politics: If you want to get away with it at least make it unobtrusive.

But maybe the EA developers didn't want to be unobtrusive, maybe they wanted to make a blatant statement. In that case they should expect some opposition, especially on a subject as polarizing as the diversity agenda is.

So it sparked a debate and probably factored in buying decisions for those undecided after considering more important aspects, like gameplay, pricing etc.

If the game is as mediocre as seems to be the case, then maybe the developers should have put more effort in the game itself and less in the "correct" political message though.

The SJW complaints are mostly with story mode

[rsilvergun]

but you know what, only about 10% of Call of Duty players finish story mode. I couldn't find BF stats but I'm guessing it's the same (they're in the same genre and are basically the Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter of the military shooter world, discuss among yourselves which is MK and which is SF).

The sales suck because:

1. It went up against Rockstar's Red Dead. Everybody was gonna take a bath this year no matter what. It's like when a new Elder Scrolls comes out, there's only so many hours in the day and everybody is busy playing that.
2. The game's unfinished (it's missing half it's modes) so folks are playing BF1, which was $5 bucks on Origin recently. I'm guessing the last minute push to put Ray Tracing in is to blame.

There's no such thing as bad publicity. Far Cry 5 had similar controversy and managed to be the best selling Far Cry in history. Gamers will put their dislikes and politics aside if you bring a good game. But if you bring a mediocre one while they're 50 hours into a 200 Red Dead play through expect to get hosed.

On the plus side no Rockstar games in 2019 (I'm not a fan of Red Dead & GTA) so there's a ton of great games coming out. The rest of the game industry noticed a new Rockstar game and planned their releases accordingly, but that doesn't work for annual & bi-annual franchises. You can't risk your player base getting out of the habit of buying this years release. Hell, if the community should be mad it's about that crap.

The damage of shit talking.

[Computershack]

Unfortunately most of the damage has been down to people shit talking the game before it even came out and then continuing, the majority of whom have never ever played it but are merely regurgitating comments made by others. A lot of the videos on Youtube which were apparently "reviews" didn't contain the reviewer playing it but merely showed clips of gameplay mostly from promo videos. Fortunately for me I'm old enough to ignore such bollocks from people who would never get a job reviewing a turd in the real world and I'm glad I did because I enjoy playing the game.

Re:The damage of shit talking.

[NettiWelho]

Unfortunately most of the damage has been down to people shit talking the game before it even came out and then continuing, the majority of whom have never ever played it but are merely regurgitating comments made by others.

If you cannot trust the game devs whos word can you trust? The following picture was tweeted out by devs and is completely unaltered: https://i.imgur.com/Yu2ms5k.jp...
Also those are not just their opinions, they included their personal biases into the game as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lives...

How to make a game

[AHuxley]

Remember who is going to be buying the game.
What the users expect to play during a game sold as been historic.
When a game is set in a historic setting don't add large amounts unexpected of pure fantasy.
A fantasy game can be sold as a fantasy game.
A game promoted to be about history, sell the content as such.
Always listen to your fans and reviewers. Be nice to all reviewers and fans.
They are the real people with money who will be buying and promoting the game.

Get the talked about CPU and GPU support correct before selling a game.

No one gives a sh*t ...

[Qbertino]

... about wether a game is catering to diversity or social justice or not. Absolutely positively no one at all. People do care if it's a good game or not. And my assumption, knowing EA, is that it's probably a shitty and utterly pointless game. For all I care EA along with today's ActiJizz can go die in a fire and I figure most games think the same of today's triple A industry.

Shocking!

[Pyramid]

Too bad it was utterly impossible to predict this would happen...

Battlefield V?

[artemis67]

I just finished Battlefield I, now I have to play through Battlefields II, III, and IV.

EA is just a bad game company

[Toxiz]

I haven't bought an EA game since 2013 and it has nothing do with politics. I have three main issues with EA, not in any order. The first is reskins. Every AAA title they release for AAA prices is just a re-skin of a game they already made years ago. The second is the Origin Storefront. They force you to use the Origin store for their games, when they don't have anywhere near a big enough game catalog to force another store on me. The thrid is the complete wasting of prime IP. They have some of my favorite IP tied up in licenses and refuse to make decent games.

NFL keep cranking out those crappy madden titles
PGA tour golf they haven't made a decent game since 08
Harry Potter - how you waste this with a single crappy quidditch game i don't know
Star Wars - Only made battlefield reskins, never even made a real game for it
SimCity - acquired, made one crappy attempt at some online BS and killed it
I'm ready to see this company go away, and stop wasting prime IP.

Did not buy

[Hadlock]

I ran a series of very popular Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 servers for four years, we had a pretty complex signup process (used both steam and origin systems, as steam had a better event popup system) and still had over 3500 people sign up... for Battlefield 3 we had the #2 most popular server according to gametracker (cantaloupe island). I would qualify as one of the most dedicated fans of the series, perhaps.
 
Did not buy Battlefield 1 until a couple weeks before BF5 was supposed to come out, Battlefield 1 gameplay was so awful that I never bothered to keep track of when BF5 was eventually released. I never bought Battlefield 5. Also there's the whole problem of having to know which version of Battlefield 5 to buy that will have all the map packs built in from the beginning. I just don't have time for that anymore. I even bought a new gaming laptop before it came out, but.... changing release dates and spending time looking up which versions actually ship with all the maps... not worth it. I might buy BF5 in a couple months when all the bugs have been worked out and maps have been released. Maybe.

There's a lot of irony here. And maybe a lesson.

[urbanriot]

Prior to release, concerning the game's backlash re: historical accuracy with so much inclusivity, from Wikipedia, "EA chief creative officer Patrick SÃderlund said the developer was uninterested in taking flak for diversifying the gaming space. "We stand up for the cause, because I think those people who don't understand it, well, you have two choices: either accept it or don't buy the game," he said."

From this Slashdot post's summary at the end, "It seems that with Battlefield 5, EA -- not a company known for listening to its customers -- finally hit a brick wall, in the form of many Battlefield fans simply not buying or playing Battlefield 5."

... maybe now EA will start listening?

Loved BF2

[irp]

I loved BF2. Played it until they closed the servers.

BF2 was primitive with today's standards (and the plane/choppers was difficult to use and FAR too powerful in the hands of those who mastered them!).

Its strength - in my opinion - was a nice balance between being sufficiently slow paced that you could act strategically, while still have enough close quarters action that it wasn't boring. The snipers worked well. They were annoying but not that dangerous if you were aware. Could hide fairly well (not like in BF3 where the choppers had infrared vision). Generally if a team started winning too much, people would start sniping, which automatically would leveling the game back, until the winners started loosing again. It balanced itself out. I loved playing as a counter-sniper sniper :)

But the best part that it actually tried to make the squads cooperate. 90% of all squads were bad, but with some luck (and I soon started to recognize the good leaders) I could get on a squad which really worked together. When that happened we could CRUSH the other team. Of course there were a good change that the other team had the good squads. In that case it was just a matter of playing cannon food for the round, so at least the other team could have a great time - and hope for a better next round...

With the servers offline I bought BF3. What a waste. Felt far to arcade-like. The squads did not work. If you were on one, you were randomly assigned as "leader" - so with a squad of 5(?) there was a >80% change that the squad leader DID NOT want to lead... :-(

Then the BF2 servers were resurrected, and I played until EA forced them closed.
After which I swore never to buy from EA again! Good thing they are making it SOO easy! :-)

EA has shot their feet off and need a medic

[CareBear-Killer]

I don't think most core BF fans care about the game having female amputees fighting... because for one, it's a fucking game. Two, it's Battlefield. and if you want to start in about inaccuracies, then you better go back and replay 1942 all the way up to V, because you've clearly missed some inaccuracies over the years. The only thing that's ever been accurate about Battlefield is the year of the game. Where they shot themselves in the foot is how they handled the situation. They handled it poorly. If they had the right PR people in place, most people would have just moved on. They shot themselves in the foot with a freaking RPG when they gave Origin Premier users access *BEFORE* Pre-orders. Essentially, they let millions of people try the game for $15. Thousands of people returned their pre-orders in favor of Origin Premier. When the game didn't pan out well, everyone just canceled. The quickest way to turn $60 into $15. Great job, EA! This worked out well for me and several people I know. We all returned our pre-orders and went with Premier. After a few days, they released the Day1 patch, which broke the game for a lot of people... We would randomly crash somewhere between 30seconds to 2hours. No error popups or anything. Windows Event viewer gave a crash code. Upon looking up that crash code, you'd see a couple posts for BFV....However, you'd see that same error and symptom showing up in both Battlefront games and BF1.... So... For a game that was supposedly written from scratch...well... it wasn't. Kind of leaves a salty taste in your mouth. Then the December patch was delayed past my Premier bill date, so canceling premier became a very easy decision.

Re:Movie studios are more profitable than ever

[Mashiki]

AMC got a federal bailout and went broke, then got bought out by Chrysler - who had recovered from their bailout. All of the above companies attempted to pull the "they'll buy what we tell them to buy" go read the interviews with the CEO's at the time. New Coke was a "they'll buy what we're telling them" otherwise they wouldn't have stopped all production of the original formula. Did you forget that? All of those companies are more or less fine because their only options were: Listen to the actual market instead of marketers, or go broke.

As for EA, it's a bad year for everyone what with Red Dead 2 out and Fortnite still a thing. Wait till next year.

So ME:A was a great seller and the satellite studio hasn't been folded? And Deadspace 4 is still a thing? Oh and DA:I wasn't a clusterfuck, and then there was the bit about the "if you don't like social justice agendas, don't buy DA4" bit. Then there was that gigantic clusterfuck with C&C Generals, or the previous multiple fuckups with the Red Alert series in the last year?

Starting to sound like you're talking about a topic that you don't even have basic knowledge on.