Did the makers of BF ever claim it was realistic?
Because is the place to post real world news (about journalism) .
It takes a lot of self-control to see “people wrong on the internet” and not try to fix it.
obligatory xkcd
Because it’s a thread about journalism.
Just goes to show, never assume.
Yeah, definitely.
Don’t be a man baby or nazi ally.
Are you sure? It doesn’t seem like it.
Because the way our world is atm, you can’t escape either thing and frankly, you probably shouldn’t try since we seem to be in an era that could easily head towards the type of world people experienced between 1939 and 1945 and I really would prefer to avoid that, thanks.
It’s the Internet in 2018. Almost anything nowadays devolves into P&R stuff, followed by name-calling, “punching” of “nazis”, and self-congratulatory BS.
The person who was making this a P&R thread has been “suspended” for 1000 years, so I think you’re safe, guys. You can go back to talking about game journalism without it becoming political, somehow.
Relatively sure.
Turning this into P&R wasn’t the work of one single person.
Also, suspending someone for one thousand years? Sounds like mods here are really into Dispensational Theology and Millennialism. ;)
It’s OK, I’m pretty sure he was an alien hive mind sent here to evaluate human society to determine if we’re ready for interstellar travel. His experience here means the answer is no, probably.
Hey sir, I know its a cliche, but thank you for volunteering and your service.
This seems so wrong. Like most countries can’t just give access to unlimited calls to soldiers. How much could this possibly cost?
Honestly, I don’t know. Probably pocket change compared to the efforts made to run a place like Bastion (I believe you guys referred to it as Camp Leatherneck? Place was absolutely awesome. Only got to spend 3-4 weeks there out of 6 months. Just as well. Had I been there I’d have gotten very fat very quickly!)
I was spending maybe $5 a week on phone calls.
Wasn’t much else to spend my money on when we were out, other than energy drinks and protein powder, both of which I dislike.
Back on topic, without delving into the discussions elsewhere about BF5, my initial reaction is:
- Gladness EA are taking a stand (because I don’t like thr shrill internet brigade either, whether “SJW” or whatever the opposite is now.
- Cynicism about what stand they’re taking. It seems a bit like: introduce random female to pander to female demographic–>excites the manbabies–> EA get to slap them down and sweep all criticism off BF5 as manbaby crying–> everyone forgets about lootboxes.
A cynic might hypothesise an element of constructed controversy here…
FYI you can rest easy on the last point. I worked at EA, I know Andrew & Patrick & just about all the decision makers there. EA doesn’t do conspiracies or constructed controversies , not because we were particularly moral I assure you, just that we didn’t have the smarts or the discipline to pull it off. That and we were always so busy cleaning up our latest PR disaster for whatever idiocy we did we never had TIME to think of trying to play PR games.
You should take EA at face value. With loot boxes EA hamfisted a transparent attempt to gouge money out of customers. It blew up and so they changed it. With Battlefield, Patrick just openly says what the real reasons were.
1.) EA sees the gamergate crowd (for want of a better label) and understands its bad for business, so they oppose it and they know the more they openly oppose it, the more popular they are with customers and the press, so win/win. Battlefield players who don’t like women in games are going to buy battlefield anyway, literally their opinion just doesn’t matter to EA from a business perspective.
2.) The audience for games is now very diverse, customers like to play someone who looks like them so they stretched that as far as they could with a thematic fig leaf around it. They are also emboldened after the way they scored points after putting in black characters for the WW1 game which also brought out the gamergate guys
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4i9ecx/battlefield_1_black_washing_the_european_heros/
3.) Patrick has a daughter and like many of us has to deal with uncomfortable questions around our work that causes us to think and change. In his case it was this:
“She plays Fortnite, and says, ‘I can be a girl in Fortnite. Why are people so upset about this?’ She looked at me and she couldn’t understand it. And I’m like, ok, as a parent, how the hell am I gonna respond to this, and I just said, ‘You know what? You’re right. This is not okay.’”
Patrick is not a warm or charismatic man , when he says something you can take it as what he believes to be true.
4.) One thing I can tell you, EA HATES being portrayed as the bad guy, it really bothers them. When it was voted “worst company in America” that was a full blown internal crisis for years. EA wants to be seen as the good guy in games. I know it sounds weird but its true. Also EA is a bay area company. 90% of its employees share the same social views on tolerance and inclusivity . The views of employees do count for something its one of the reasons we never got any pushback internally around gay relationships in The Sims, in fact we got the opposite from Larry and JR who both wanted us to make the game even MORE inclusive, not less.
So anyways, from my expereince there I wouldn’t worry about the notion they constructed a constroversy, honestly as a company EA just isn’t that smart. Take em at their word with this one.
It actually surprises me they cared about that. I know there were all kinds of teeth gnashing that people chose a video game company over like banks and things, but passion about arts is not new or dead.
I mean, objectively, it’s dumb. BoA is far more evil than EA could ever be.
But I get how it happens. EA was earning that bad press, and people have more passion* for art and entertainment than they do financial instruments.
*the oddballs like me who enjoy art, but won’t ever work up the vitriol for them like I do the financial industry, excepted.
It was so serious the COO Peter Moore took it as his full time job for months to do something about it and built up an entire internal initiative to fix the problems. In typical EA fashion It included a full engagement campaign with customers and employees to identify which particular issues caused it and then they worked back from there for each link in the chain to take away the problems. They worked on it for years, it might still be going for all I know.
Again I am not suggesting EA was particularly moral here, they didn’t necessarily care about the issues (well not Peter Moore, he really did care) but the board DEFINITELY cared about their reputation and what it meant to the stock price. I guess its logical, if you hate a bank or an oil company you will still buy stuff from them, if you hate an entertainment company? Well I suppose image means a lot more when it comes to luxury goods like games.
I think i still feel the same way I do now that I did then, although I don’t think I voted.
I engage my bank, like face to face, almost never. I don’t like who runs them, but they’re a necessity. If I boot up a game, my unwind time, my fun time and that experience just sucks… not only am I booting up games more and more often but I am fully conscious that some jerk in a suit is the reason my 2 hour of fun time turned into a 40 minute frustration fest.
I think that might have been the year BOA sent when of their customers to jail, so I have a special hate for that bank, but who knew years later it would be Wells !
Still I get why people get upset when their fun is not fun anymore, be it games, movies or anything else, and they feel they can pinpoint a fault for that.