Analysts say Battlefield 5 may put EA's financial guidance at risk.

Mcgeezaks

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Avnger said:
Zeraki said:
Hawki said:
It's funny that you mention Overwatch because when it came out, I remember...not exactly a furore, but certainly a running theme that Blizzard was carving into skeletons. I had really no idea why. Is it because the heroes are of various nationalities? Is it because its 'face' (Tracer) is female? Is it because it isn't the sausage fest that TF2 was? Is it that Tracer is gay (no-one cares in-universe, why should we)? Apart from that last question, no-one ever provided me with an answer, said answer being Blizzard "pushing the gay agenda." Even when I pointed out that you could change "Emily" for "Emile" and you wouldn't have to change a line of dialogue in the comic in which they interact, people were still upset...even though Tracer was already shipped with Widowmaker in more fanfiction than I care for (though they're probably not the same people).
If I remember correctly it's because Blizzard changed a victory animation/pose for Tracer in which she shows off her ass because of a fan complaint. That was pretty much it as far as I can remember.
Except even that is false. Tracer's animation pose was using a placeholder that the dev team wanted to replace and eventually did so. People claimed it was "forced down their throats" but refused to acknowledge the only people "forcing" anything was the dev team designing the game the way they wanted to.
Source? From what I've seen some guy complained about the pose on the forums, mods locks the thread, Kaplan doing this


And telling everyone he's very sorry for being a bad nice guy. According to the articles talking about this, that is.
 

Hawki

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KingsGambit said:
I said not one person who was defending that game for portrayal of the wamin in the game would pre-order it, and I was right.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.1055577-EA-on-women-in-Battlefield-V-If-you-dont-like-it-dont-buy-it?page=7#24250254

Liar.

BabyfartsMcgeezaks said:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160329080345/http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20743015583?page=11#post-211

You might be able to claim that Blizzard is saving face (potentially true), but this leaves us with either:

a) They were already going to do it.

b) They listened to a fan who already played the game and did it.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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Avnger said:
Zeraki said:
Hawki said:
It's funny that you mention Overwatch because when it came out, I remember...not exactly a furore, but certainly a running theme that Blizzard was carving into skeletons. I had really no idea why. Is it because the heroes are of various nationalities? Is it because its 'face' (Tracer) is female? Is it because it isn't the sausage fest that TF2 was? Is it that Tracer is gay (no-one cares in-universe, why should we)? Apart from that last question, no-one ever provided me with an answer, said answer being Blizzard "pushing the gay agenda." Even when I pointed out that you could change "Emily" for "Emile" and you wouldn't have to change a line of dialogue in the comic in which they interact, people were still upset...even though Tracer was already shipped with Widowmaker in more fanfiction than I care for (though they're probably not the same people).
If I remember correctly it's because Blizzard changed a victory animation/pose for Tracer in which she shows off her ass because of a fan complaint. That was pretty much it as far as I can remember.
Except even that is false. Tracer's animation pose was using a placeholder that the dev team wanted to replace and eventually did so. People claimed it was "forced down their throats" but refused to acknowledge the only people "forcing" anything was the dev team designing the game the way they wanted to.

The thing is that despite that pose indeed being a placeholder, one of the devs went to the official forum and said that due to the complaint the pose had been changed. It was a miscommunication that was Blizzard's fault that started this fire. If that guy had just actually said to the complainer that the pose in question was a placeholder and didn't seem to be figuratively bending the knee to that complaint, none of that mess would have happened.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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Zeraki said:
Silentpony said:
Windknight said:
Oh I'm sure there are some fuckwads out there going 'No wamans in mah games!' and while being vocal, they're a super duper small minority compared to the normal gamers who are going 'Uggh, another fucking war shooter? And EA at that? Pass.'

I maintain the game could work if they went hard on the alternate reality take, make it all steam-punk or retro-punk WW2. Using a Microwave gun on Nazi mechs is a new level of fun.
If I remember correctly, someone said the British tanks shown in the trailer were never deployed to the European theater, and were meant solely for the defense of Britain. So go that route! Make it the Nazi mech ground invasion of Britain and you play a cyber-girl with a spiked bat and a steam-punk Samurai partner.
That would be far too creative for the likes of EA these days. They just chase market trends at this point rather than trying to actually create something unique.
And its a sorry testemant of gaming devs these days that not one of them said "Hey, do you think gamers would enjoy a retro-futurism world war game, flying around with a jetpack and using blasters to kill Nazi robots, with both an over-the-top narrative driven single player and an expansive mutliplayer, including vs, teams, free-for-all and co-op against increasing waves of Nazi robots."
AND not one of them is asking why they've never asked that before.
For shame...
 

Elijin

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I still dont think the type of player who is engaged enough to care about wimmins in his WW2 shooter would be pre-ordering much of anything. Especially not an EA title.

The type of people who pre-order an FPS have very minimal crossover with the type of people who care, or even know, what game developers say on twitter.

This is just a combination of marketing, the competition around the release date, and a WW2 shooter just not being as popular as expected.
 

Abomination

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It had nothing to do with the presence of women in the game in any capacity. The game is failing because EA are incompetent when it comes to reading market trends.

Their product COMPETES WITH ITSELF and they're surprised it is running out of steam. They assume gamers buy AAA titles and then immediately stop playing them when the latest entry in the genre comes out. They assume gamers have the time to play their game, and then they make a game that has a Skinner box grinding component built in.

Many folk do not have the TIME to play more than one shooter and so will buy one and stick with one or perhaps a new genre has their interest now. I bet Battle Royale games have HEAVILY dug into EA's market. And of course EA is going to try and do the exact same thing to try and steal those consumers back.

Know what there is a market for again? CRPGs like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect without gutting the dev team.

Make a good game FIRST, monetize later. Stop trying to fracture the shooter market that is known for playing games that most people play, especially if you're going to try to do it using the exact same trick you have used every other time you have failed to dominate it.

Fortnight and Overwatch are the King and Queen of shooters because they are doing exactly the opposite of what EA is trying to do.
 

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Abomination said:
It had nothing to do with the presence of women in the game in any capacity. The game is failing because EA are incompetent when it comes to reading market trends.

Their product COMPETES WITH ITSELF and they're surprised it is running out of steam. They assume gamers buy AAA titles and then immediately stop playing them when the latest entry in the genre comes out. They assume gamers have the time to play their game, and then they make a game that has a Skinner box grinding component built in.
Fuck, didn't Battlefield 1 compete with Titanfall 2 by releasing within a week of each other? Two similar shooters published by the same fucking company, as well as COD infinite Warfare? Seriously, who in their right mind stacks 2 games of their own big budget titles of the same genre right next to each other as far as release dates go? It's already hard enough to release right next to a COD game, let alone compete against another of your own titles.

Assuming, of course, it wasn't intentional to ensure Titanfall 2 didn't meet sales goals and thus facilitated Respawn getting gobbled up by EA like so many other studios. I don't have proof but honestly wouldn't put it past EA to pull such a shitty play.
 

Ftaghn To You Too

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A bunch of morons complaining probably isn't the cause of the game failing. It's every other fucking problem with EA, and the crowded release schedule. That said, the really stupid "Don't like it don't buy it" thing and doubling down rather than just openly admitting that they don't care about historical accuracy in pretty much any way and wanted a pulpy, fun shooter PROBABLY didn't help.

I'm curious what will happen to Dice. Battlefront 2 was one of the most public PR disasters in recent gaming memory, and this game underperforming for whatever reason isn't going to make the corporate overlords happy. I'm thinking that from this point on, Dice is going to be slowly drawn into the EA glue factory.
 

Specter Von Baren

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..... Are these forums going to self destruct over this topic again? Please try to reign things in on this guys, keep rational, keep calm, take a break from this if things get firey. Pleeeeeaaaasssseeee don't explode these forums over this again.
 

Callate

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There are probably a dozen reasons the game hasn't done as well as EA would have liked. But having one of your leads literally say "either accept it or don't buy the game" is the kind of challenge that makes a lot of people light up: I can throw your words in your face by literally doing nothing? Win-win! Even people who don't especially care might enjoy disputing a world-view that seems to believe a product as inherently disposable as a modern multiplayer first-person shooter is so indispensable to its customer base that people would find the burden of not being able to participate more than they can bear.

If you're an independent, there might be commercial benefit to stirring things up and implying that buying or not buying is some kind of significant moral stance. If you're part of EA and making back their money requires every person who buys your game also pressures their friends to buy your game (and probably a season pass as well), inciting this kind of kerfuffle is downright stupid. It's also the kind of thing that reminds one why many companies don't allow anyone outside of their marketing department talk to the public. (Not saying that's a good policy, much of the time- just that it makes it understandable.)

Soderlund, the lead designer responsible for the quote, is leaving EA. I hope, honestly, that the scrum doesn't discourage EA from featuring women in its games in the future. But if they quietly instituted an internal policy that the appropriate response to grumbling on such matters is not to poke it with a stick... that might be nice, actually.
 

Abomination

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Dalisclock said:
Abomination said:
It had nothing to do with the presence of women in the game in any capacity. The game is failing because EA are incompetent when it comes to reading market trends.

Their product COMPETES WITH ITSELF and they're surprised it is running out of steam. They assume gamers buy AAA titles and then immediately stop playing them when the latest entry in the genre comes out. They assume gamers have the time to play their game, and then they make a game that has a Skinner box grinding component built in.
Fuck, didn't Battlefield 1 compete with Titanfall 2 by releasing within a week of each other? Two similar shooters published by the same fucking company, as well as COD infinite Warfare? Seriously, who in their right mind stacks 2 games of their own big budget titles of the same genre right next to each other as far as release dates go? It's already hard enough to release right next to a COD game, let alone compete against another of your own titles.

Assuming, of course, it wasn't intentional to ensure Titanfall 2 didn't meet sales goals and thus facilitated Respawn getting gobbled up by EA like so many other studios. I don't have proof but honestly wouldn't put it past EA to pull such a shitty play.
That's the problem with the EA executives, you're stuck asking the question: "Are they malicious, or incompetent?" and you can never be sure.
 

Hades

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I think this whole narrative is incredibly unfortunate and it might have damning consequences in the future.

Between Battlefield and COD its COD that's doing the most wrong. Its Black Ops 4 which decides to cut its campaign mode, openly implements scummy DLC practices and who's development is apparently a complete trainwreck.

Battlefield should easily win this installment of their rivalry. But then Battlefield gets a bigger focus on woman, the GG people rally against the game and suddenly the playing field is even again? Is something so petty as this culture war nonsense really more important than COD taking the lead in exercising single player modes from Tripple A games? Is some playable woman, however historically inaccurate it might be really so much more damning than COD mindlessly jumping on the most recent trend?

If this narrative that Battlefield failed because it became a ''SJW game'' ever becomes mainstream then it would set a very nasty precedent. Perhaps next E3 EA would proudly present that their next Battlefield returns to its historically accurate roots while at the same time cutting their single player and putting in all the shady DLC practices COD apparently got away with. And the people who are so critical of Battlefield now would probably applaud this move and claim victory.

It would be really unfortunate if COD gets rewarded for killings its campaign while Battlefield gets punished for something far too petty to get worked up about.
 

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Abomination said:
That's the problem with the EA executives, you're stuck asking the question: "Are they malicious, or incompetent?" and you can never be sure.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Or in EA's case, greed.

Silentpony said:
And its a sorry testemant of gaming devs these days that not one of them said "Hey, do you think gamers would enjoy a retro-futurism world war game, flying around with a jetpack and using blasters to kill Nazi robots, with both an over-the-top narrative driven single player and an expansive mutliplayer, including vs, teams, free-for-all and co-op against increasing waves of Nazi robots."
AND not one of them is asking why they've never asked that before.
For shame...
...you mean Wolfenstien?

Y'know, a Wolfenstein game in the Battlefield mould might not be a bad idea. I mean, Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein was a thing once (no idea how it's generally regarded).

Hades said:
I think this whole narrative is incredibly unfortunate and it might have damning consequences in the future.

Between Battlefield and COD its COD that's doing the most wrong. Its Black Ops 4 which decides to cut its campaign mode, openly implements scummy DLC practices and who's development is apparently a complete trainwreck.

Battlefield should easily win this installment of their rivalry. But then Battlefield gets a bigger focus on woman, the GG people rally against the game and suddenly the playing field is even again? Is something so petty as this culture war nonsense really more important than COD taking the lead in exercising single player modes from Tripple A games? Is some playable woman, however historically inaccurate it might be really so much more damning than COD mindlessly jumping on the most recent trend?

If this narrative that Battlefield failed because it became a ''SJW game'' ever becomes mainstream then it would set a very nasty precedent. Perhaps next E3 EA would proudly present that their next Battlefield returns to its historically accurate roots while at the same time cutting their single player and putting in all the shady DLC practices COD apparently got away with. And the people who are so critical of Battlefield now would probably applaud this move and claim victory.

It would be really unfortunate if COD gets rewarded for killings its campaign while Battlefield gets punished for something far too petty to get worked up about.
Y'know, I toyed with bringing this up, but I thought people might accuse me of trying to change the subject. But since the genie's out of the bottle, I may as well come out and say, "huh?"

I mean, shouldn't people be more pissed at Black Ops 4 right now? I mean, not only is it outpacing pre-orders of Battlefield V, but also the likes of Fallout 76 and Red Dead Redemption 2.
 
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Hades said:
Between Battlefield and COD its COD that's doing the most wrong.
Come to think of it, COD:WW2 had playable women in multiplayer and sold well. The level of controversy wasn't as big as this, and I would say that the inaccurate guns and lack of swastikas was probably bigger than that.

Then again COD had playable women in multiplayer for some time now so it's no surprise really, but for BFV, this controversy is the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions BFV. At this point, the controversy is the game's identity.
 

Zontar

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Alright so was busy yesterday, sorry about that.
Hawki said:
I didn't see any kind of framing.
I guess you don't remember Battlefield 1's marketing outside of the initial trailer. It was sort of the reverse of Battlefield 5's, 1 opened with a great opening that wasn't hammered by the blunders afterwards (such as a limited edition that didn't even have a copy of the god damn game), where as 5 has had a massive blunder of an opener and it seems there's nothing they can do to save the game now.

Can't comment, but physical comic sales have declined across the board.
While this is true (well mostly, plenty of niches are exploding right now, most notably being table top gaming and board games, which are in unprecedented heights right now) when one compares sales of comics both within the industry, and especially when comparing it to american sales of manga, Marvel Comics is doing far worst then it has any right to, especially in the wake of the MCU, which should be giving sales a boost since that's almost always the case for adaptive materials getting successful movies. Instead we're living in a time where for the first time since the 60s DC has a larger market-share, a third party has a chance of overtaking them, and virtually all of their titles are being outsold by a comic from a guy who's claim to fame is making videos on his phones from his car talking off the cuff about the absolute state of Marvel Comics.

I honestly don't think I could run that company worst if I actively tried to do so.

Um, the game was generally regarded as being pretty bad, not sure what that has to do with anything. Even if Ghostbusters didn't have the controversy (because female leads are "controversial" these days apparently), the game would have tanked regardless.
I've yet to see any Woke media that was above a 5/10 at best. And I don't see how taking a property, aiming it at a completely new target demographic, telling the old audience to piss off, and having the entire raison d'etre be "it's the same old story, but this time it's all women" isn't going to be controversial. Hell you're the first person outside of the media bubble I've ever seen be surprised that such an obvious controversy in the making was controversial.

And how are Sony "woke?"

Asides from Ghostbusters, and even then, it being "woke" is more a declaration some made because there's nothing in the film that expresses any kind of "wokeness."
You really don't realise how Amy Pascal ran things when she was in charge do you? I'd recommend Midnight's Edge's video series on the making of Ghostbusters and Spider Man to get a better picture, but suffice to say, they got woke and went broke.

Let's be generous and assume that BF5 is an example of being "woke," can you name any other examples? Unless Mirror's Edge is an example by virtue of having a female protagonist, which seems to be the criteria here.
All it takes is one. Bomb hard enough and that's all she wrote.

First of all, BioWare's already working on Dragon Age IV, Anthem, and is already planning "Mass Effect 5" (for want of a better title). They're hardly "broke" right now.

Second of all, the decline of BioWare is generally attributed to a number of factors, namely Dragon Age 2 having rushed production, Mass Effect 3 having a terrible ending (and depending on who you ask, multiple other features), Dragon Age Inquisition being dull as dishwater with a tepid open world template, Mass Effect Andromeda having similar issues, and Anthem being a percieved "betrayal" by some because it's shifted away from the "BioWare template." So I'm not sure what BioWare has to do with any of the "wokeness" you're suggesting, because the only suggestions I've seen for that is Inquisition (something about qunari) and Andromeda, the latter of which was debunked by Kotaku.
Kotaku did nothing of the sort, not even sure why you brought it up. BioWare's been going downhill for a long time, started when they had older staff members start to leave and they replaced them with progressive types for the writing staff. Did not end well for the final product (imagine my shock, woke progressives don't write good stories, it's almost as if that's the reason they're reluctant to make their own when the market makes it clear someone else won't do it for them through market forces). Andromeda was the final nail in the coffin, not the beginning of the end. BioWare Montreal shut down, Austin is dedicated to SWTOR updates, and Anthem is shockingly close to release given what's been revealed so far. The downward spiral has been going on since 2010, but damn did Andromeda really kill it (probably literally in the case of the Mass effect IP)

No idea what this is about - kneeling?
That's a part of it (though far from the only one). Really should not tell an overwhelmingly conservative audience who are pretty patriotic that instead of appreciating the country that made you a millionaire you're going to instead intentionally disrespect the anthem because of reasons that boil down to empty political platitudes that have been debunked so far and wide it requires active religious zealotry to pretend there's an argument to be had on just the issue of there even being an argument one could make about it (to say nothing of the cliffside uphill battle of actually making the point in a rational way that doesn't counter the hard facts).

Put simply, there's a reason why Vince McMahon took the opportunity to announce the return of the XFL as a proper football league.

No. Just no.

I know the arguments you're going to try and use for this, I'm not interested in hearing them again.

Also, neither Star Trek nor Star Wars are approaching "broke" either.
No argument needs to be made about the state of the Trek and Wars IPs in the wake of Abrams putting his hands on them, that goes without saying. And I don't know what you think the situation is, but the latest Star Wars movie? It lost 80 million dollars. The latest Star Trek movie? 100 million. That's not a discussion on how the movies before each of those severely under-performed (and how in real lines of work that's still a failure no matter how much money one makes), these movies have reached the point of flat out losing massive sums of money, with virtually no hype for future projects. No one is hyped for STD's second season or the hypothetical 4th Star Trek movie perhaps maybe (hell they've lost their two leads), no one is hyped for Star Wars 9, everyone alredy hates Star Wars Resistance to the point it's Dead on Arrival (though the 10PM sunday timeslot assured that anyway), in fact the only thing the two have collectively that there is any excitement for is the return of Clone Wars, and that predates Lucas leaving LucasFilm since the scripts and audio where made back in 2011-2012ish before the show was cancelled.

Well, so far you haven't cited any examples of catering, so I don't know. And if we swing back to Battlefield V...oh no, the horror, people can choose to play as females. You could simply choose not to play as them, but something something SJW, something something censorship, zzz...
And you can choose to actually try and make an argument that doesn't boil down to at best strawmen. The trailer looked like hot garbage, not one person has managed to argue against that (hell no one seems to even be trying to defend it outside of progressive youtubers and gaming rags that have to do so by ideological obligation), and the response by the company to the completely predictable response has been well outside of the scope of what is professional or acceptable.

We where told we can either accept their BS lines about why it's "necessary", or not buy the game, and oh look, now a franchise that was set to surpass Call of Duty has now fallen to the point it probably won't even be in 2nd place for shooters this year.

Got Woke, Went Broke, every time.
 

Zontar

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I don said:
Hades said:
Between Battlefield and COD its COD that's doing the most wrong.
Come to think of it, COD:WW2 had playable women in multiplayer and sold well. The level of controversy wasn't as big as this, and I would say that the inaccurate guns and lack of swastikas was probably bigger than that.

Then again COD had playable women in multiplayer for some time now so it's no surprise really, but for BFV, this controversy is the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions BFV. At this point, the controversy is the game's identity.
The reason is probably because COD:WW2 advertised itself well instead of opening up with one of the worst video game trailers of all time. As much as we like to make fuck of these games for trying to shove in women and minorities into conflicts that either didn't have them or had them in such small numbers that it's barely worth a mention (if even that), it's not that which killed Battlefield 5, it's the horrendous marketing and the pants-on-head level response from the company to the reception. How did we go from the reveal trailer for Battlefield 1 to what we got for Battlefield 5 anyway? That seems impossible. They both had to have been outsourced to different companies, in different countries, one of which didn't speak the same language as DICE, that's the only way I can think that level of collapse in quality is possible.
 

The Lunatic

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I wasn't going to buy it any way, but, making a "Diverse" and wacky WW2 game is certainly not something that would sway me.

Instead, I'll just be playing Post-Scriptum, maybe some ARMA here and there. I won't pretend to be part of the Battlefield audience, nor will I pretend that I was ever going to be the target audience for this kind of game, but, as somebody who enjoys shooters in that time period, I'm not convinced.
 

Squilookle

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erttheking said:
the last battlefield had automatic weaponry everywhere and no one gave a crap.
Oh people gave a crap alright- we hounded BF1 from its first day until its last about the stupid prevalence of auto and semi auto guns dominating the "WW1 era" game. There was a common line of 'if they wanted to make a WW2 shooter so badly they should've just made it a WW2 shooter' In the end DICE tried to silence the crowd when they realised they could jerry-rig a mode from existing weapons quite easily. Hence the Standard Issue Rifles mode. But make no mistake, people were pissed about all the prototypes and weren't afraid to let it be known.

Zontar said:
How did we go from the reveal trailer for Battlefield 1 to what we got for Battlefield 5 anyway? That seems impossible. They both had to have been outsourced to different companies, in different countries, one of which didn't speak the same language as DICE, that's the only way I can think that level of collapse in quality is possible.
Actually it was mostly down to the resignation of one guy- Roland Smedberg, who had worked at DICE on Battlefield trailers since way back in 2002: https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlefield/comments/5gpjux/roland_smedberg_aka_rolliethepollie_responsible/

Everything makes a lot more sense when you consider how much artistic flair he took out the doors with him.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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I don said:
Hades said:
Between Battlefield and COD its COD that's doing the most wrong.
Come to think of it, COD:WW2 had playable women in multiplayer and sold well. The level of controversy wasn't as big as this, and I would say that the inaccurate guns and lack of swastikas was probably bigger than that.

Then again COD had playable women in multiplayer for some time now so it's no surprise really, but for BFV, this controversy is the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions BFV. At this point, the controversy is the game's identity.
Yeah, but they didn't put them prominently in their marketing material, so COD:WW2 wasn't as ahistorical.

Or something, I dunno. Somehow this is the talking point and not "EA is getting its comeuppance for the absolute dumpster fires that were Battlefront 1 and 2"
 

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Zontar said:
I guess you don't remember Battlefield 1's marketing outside of the initial trailer. It was sort of the reverse of Battlefield 5's, 1 opened with a great opening that wasn't hammered by the blunders afterwards (such as a limited edition that didn't even have a copy of the god damn game), where as 5 has had a massive blunder of an opener and it seems there's nothing they can do to save the game now.
None of which corresponds to your claim that the black guy on the front is meant to represent France.

I've yet to see any Woke media that was above a 5/10 at best.
Overwatch, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted Lost Legacy, Last of Us, Heroes of the Storm, Breath of the Wild, Perfect Dark, etc.

As far as I can tell, they come under the definition you're using, and all of them got to the 7-9/10 range of scores (on average).

And I don't see how taking a property, aiming it at a completely new target demographic, telling the old audience to piss off, and having the entire raison d'etre be "it's the same old story, but this time it's all women" isn't going to be controversial.
-How was Ghostbusters targeted at a new demographic? The original film wasn't explicitly targeted at males.

-The audience was acting like children - I'd love to be able to tell arseholes to piss off as well. Might not be the best marketing strategy, but it's an understandable one.

-Them being women was never a marketing point. It was never expressed outside the film, and it's never expressed within the film.

Hell you're the first person outside of the media bubble I've ever seen be surprised that such an obvious controversy in the making was controversial.
Having a film with female leads shouldn't be controversial. I'm not surprised that it is (because that's par for the course these days), but it's an asinine train of logic.

You really don't realise how Amy Pascal ran things when she was in charge do you? I'd recommend Midnight's Edge's video series on the making of Ghostbusters and Spider Man to get a better picture, but suffice to say, they got woke and went broke.
How Amy Pascal runs things is irrelevant to what's within the movie itself - you avoided my question entirely.

Also, how is Sony "broke?" Last I checked it was still functioning.

Kotaku did nothing of the sort, not even sure why you brought it up.
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/12/the-story-behindmass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-year-development/

BioWare's been going downhill for a long time, started when they had older staff members start to leave and they replaced them with progressive types for the writing staff.
Source needed.

Did not end well for the final product (imagine my shock, woke progressives don't write good stories, it's almost as if that's the reason they're reluctant to make their own when the market makes it clear someone else won't do it for them through market forces).
Still waiting on that source.

Andromeda was the final nail in the coffin, not the beginning of the end. BioWare Montreal shut down, Austin is dedicated to SWTOR updates, and Anthem is shockingly close to release given what's been revealed so far. The downward spiral has been going on since 2010, but damn did Andromeda really kill it (probably literally in the case of the Mass effect IP)
BioWare's already planning ME5. Whether ME5 happens is another matter, but the downfall of Andromeda had nothing to do with "progressives."

That's a part of it (though far from the only one). Really should not tell an overwhelmingly conservative audience who are pretty patriotic that instead of appreciating the country that made you a millionaire you're going to instead intentionally disrespect the anthem because of reasons that boil down to empty political platitudes that have been debunked so far and wide it requires active religious zealotry to pretend there's an argument to be had on just the issue of there even being an argument one could make about it (to say nothing of the cliffside uphill battle of actually making the point in a rational way that doesn't counter the hard facts).

Put simply, there's a reason why Vince McMahon took the opportunity to announce the return of the XFL as a proper football league.
So, if I kneel to acknowledge that blacks are over-represented in police killings, I'm "disrespecting the anthem."

...yeah, I don't "get" sports. 0_0

No argument needs to be made about the state of the Trek and Wars IPs in the wake of Abrams putting his hands on them, that goes without saying.
What about the Kelvinverse was "woke?"

Also, Star Trek is pretty "woke" already.

And I don't know what you think the situation is, but the latest Star Wars movie? It lost 80 million dollars.
Solo? What was "woke" about it?

Also, the downfall of Solo can be attributed to a number of factors, including:

-Last Jedi backlash (which is about the only thing that approaches being "woke," as asinine as that is)

-Proximity to Last Jedi (mere months rather than the previous 1 year gap)

-Terrible marketing

-A nightmare of a production schedule (that was well known before the film was released)

-Close proximity to Infinity War and Deadpool

The latest Star Trek movie? 100 million.
Again, what was "woke?" about Beyond? Sulu being gay? You mean that "blink and you'll miss it scene where he's with a guy?" Or is it because Jaylah isn't "alien of the week that Kirk employs 'diplomacy' on?

Also, the downfall of Beyond is harder to quantify, but it's generally acknowledged that it sufferred from poor marketing (not to mention awareness at all), plus a sense of burnout with the franchise. If anything, people have criticized the Kelvinverse for not dealing with complex themes, not for doing so (again, more "wokeness")

That's not a discussion on how the movies before each of those severely under-performed (and how in real lines of work that's still a failure no matter how much money one makes), these movies have reached the point of flat out losing massive sums of money, with virtually no hype for future projects.
While it's true that Beyond and Solo underperformed, I've never seen anyone attribute that to "wokeness."

No one is hyped for STD's second season
Go on Reddit, you'd be surprised.

Also, what was "woke" about Star Trek Discovery? I mean, I've seen the usual "casting minorities in lead roles, white genocide!" crap, but what in the show is actually "woke" (beyond the normal Star Trek standard)

or the hypothetical 4th Star Trek movie perhaps maybe (hell they've lost their two leads),
Again, what's "woke" about the Kelvinverse?

Again, the Kelvinverse has been criticized for its lack of themes, not abundance of them.

no one is hyped for Star Wars 9,
If you say so.

everyone alredy hates Star Wars Resistance to the point it's Dead on Arrival (though the 10PM sunday timeslot assured that anyway),
And again, what's "woke" about Resistance?

Not that I'm interested in Resistance either, but the reasons I've seen cited for it (some of which include my own) basically boil down to the animation style, the perceived pandering to a younger demographic, and lack of interest in this time period (or at least the Resistance itself). I haven't seen anyone cite "it's pushing an agenda."

Though one of the pilots is female, and Phasma's in it (I think), so...yeah, it's "woke" I guess.

And you can choose to actually try and make an argument that doesn't boil down to at best strawmen.
I could say the same to you. All you've done is make claims about things being "woke," which have failed for all sorts of different reasons.

The trailer looked like hot garbage, not one person has managed to argue against that (hell no one seems to even be trying to defend it outside of progressive youtubers and gaming rags that have to do so by ideological obligation),
You might want to look in the mirror before you talk about "ideological obligation."

Also, the trailer looking like garbage is down to a lot of things. You might be able to point it as being "woke" (female character), but that's the tip of the iceberg. Apparently EA learnt their lesson beecause the difference between the original trailer and subsequent ones are like night and day, but everyone's worked up about the option of playing as females in multiplayer.

The horror. The horror.

and the response by the company to the completely predictable response has been well outside of the scope of what is professional or acceptable.
Telling people "if you don't like it, don't buy it?"

Frankly, I'd like to see more of that (and I'm not just talking about games).

Also, the behaviour of "fans" is what goes beyond "acceptable." Last I checked, companies didn't send out death threats or get people to leave social media through harassment.

We where told we can either accept their BS lines about why it's "necessary", or not buy the game, and oh look, now a franchise that was set to surpass Call of Duty has now fallen to the point it probably won't even be in 2nd place for shooters this year.
I think it's quite dubious to claim that Battlefield was set to surpass CoD because of Battlefield 1, when it was going up against Infinite Warfare (let me guess, that was "woke" as well).

Also, nothing surpasses CoD, like, ever (in terms of sales). Fallout 76 and Red Dead Redemption are trailing behind it as well - that doesn't mean much outside of CoD still being a juggernaut.

Got Woke, Went Broke, every time.
Assuming that's true, why didn't Blizzard go broke with Overwatch? Why didn't Naughty Dog go broke with Lost Legacy and/or Last of Us? Why didn't Guerilla go broke with Horizon Zero Dawn? Why didn't Rare go broke with Perfect Dark?

altnameJag said:
Yeah, but they didn't put them prominently in their marketing material, so COD:WW2 wasn't as ahistorical.
There's a key difference between the two in that a lot of WWII's marketing showed singleplayer. In contrast, nearly all of BF5's marketing has been multiplayer.

Zontar said:
The reason is probably because COD:WW2 advertised itself well instead of opening up with one of the worst video game trailers of all time. As much as we like to make fuck of these games for trying to shove in women and minorities into conflicts that either didn't have them or had them in such small numbers that it's barely worth a mention (if even that), it's not that which killed Battlefield 5, it's the horrendous marketing and the pants-on-head level response from the company to the reception. How did we go from the reveal trailer for Battlefield 1 to what we got for Battlefield 5 anyway? That seems impossible. They both had to have been outsourced to different companies, in different countries, one of which didn't speak the same language as DICE, that's the only way I can think that level of collapse in quality is possible.
So basically you're claiming that the lack of pre-orders/hype for BF5 is down more to do with the marketing rather than the insertion of a female option in multiplayer.

So much for "get woke go broke."