The notion that our history is going to be defined by Battlefield 5 or any number of ww2 games with a tenuous grasp of history I think is a bit short-sighted and misunderstanding the nature of how stories work in society. I don’t think anybody confuses the story of the Trojan War for true history, and I highly doubt anyone with any investment in the field will confuse a video game for the real thing. Sure, children will, but they’ve always been more interested in stories, myths, fiction- that’s part of being a child. In fact, I would go so far as to say that’s the fun of it.
And, earlier developers always had the option to be more ‘realistic’ in their games. In some cases, they did not have the mechanics we associate with realism as part of the design, but in some of them they chose to emphasize improving the quality of the game in and of itself- the ability for any character to get in any vehicle for example. We have examples of games where this isn’t the case, but the notion that a game’s quality as anything other than education would improve by adding more restrictive gameplay in such a way. I absolutely think, for example, the game Imperialism II or Colonization are vastly improved by playing on random maps, even though that reduces the ‘historical’ value of it.
The real ww2 had infantrymen as cogs in a machine- the average private had almost no real initiative, not much freedom to move around when the guns were out. These do not contribute to good gameplay and even in the most realistic offerings, the game doesn’t have you getting rounded up for straggling if you decide to go on a long flanking maneuver without telling your commanding officer. It’s probably better for this. If you talk about the presence of women, weapons, etc, those are small potatoes compared to that particular factor. That and the video game soldier knows he’s coming back after he dies so acts of bravery… aren’t.
EA is a large corporation with very harsh working conditions. I don’t want to stick up for this company, and I choose not to. I don’t like the loot boxes, but I feel like they’re just the last in a line of iterative addictive properties. I find the notion that ‘addictive’ is a sign of a good game to be ridiculous, but this has been going for the past 20 years. The worst aspect of games like this are their progression systems, cribbed from MMORPGs and now in almost every big-budget multiplayer game. In the original BF1942, if I had the game, from minute 1 I could use any weapon, get in any vehicle, do whatever. In BF1 and probably 5, I will have to play the game hours and hours to get everything. This is deliberate- ever since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Battlefield 2, these mechanics have popped up in FPS games, RTS games… they’re everywhere. There’s a reason for this- it’s a tried and true method of generating addiction, and I think it significantly weakens the games that have them.
