EA Concerned Kids Don't Know About WW1 For Battlefield 1

Fensfield

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Gosh it's almost like there's an opportunity to teach something, too.
... Also the whole not-for-kids thing. But still.
 

CyanCat47_v1legacy

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someguy1231 said:
Ugh, they better not dumb the game down...
Considering how there was footage from the arab front in the trailer it already seems to be more extensive than most other works from the time. Even Ken Follet didn't write about the war between arabs and ottomans. Neither did Jan Guillo although he showed the colonial wars in africa
 

K12

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I think EA should be more worried about "the kids" (which I'm guessing is aging-business-prick talk for people in their early 20s/ late teens) knowing too much about WW1 and being pissed off by the inevitable historical inaccuracies.

I think this is actually very revealing that EA were hesitant to make a game about a conflict that hasn't had much exposure (i.e. COD haven't done it first). It's really symptomatic of the "follow the leader and then we'll make just as much money as them" attitude that AAA companies have because they're run by businessmen who know nothing about their products or potential audience.

One positive is that it's nice to have some clear confirmation of exactly how stupid and close-minded EA thinks it's target audience is.
 

Leg End

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loa said:
So they're openly marketing their 16-18+ game to children now?
I think this is the most amazing part about this. If not intentional, the wording is not going to be doing the industry any favors.
 

Neverhoodian

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You'd think that, even if by some miracle people never learned about World War I in middle or high school, they'd at least know that World War II was a thing and be able to extrapolate that it was called that for a very good reason.

Just how young are EA's target audience here?! That "M" rating is there for a reason. Don't give the Moral Panic Brigade ammo here!
 

Elfgore

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WW1 was skipped quite a bit in my schooling. Think the most I got was Freshman year in world history, even then we steamrolled through it pretty quick. Guess learning about Russian Czars was more important. So I can kinda see why they're worried kids might not know.
 

CyanCat47_v1legacy

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VinLAURiA said:
lacktheknack said:
That's... fine? The game is rated M, the only legal customers most assuredly realize that WWI was a thing.
Today's seventeen-year-olds were born in 1999. Even 9/11 is probably something they only know from history class now.
Speaking as someone born in 1998 I think it varies both from country to country and school to school. My elementary classes actually got a lot of time on WW1 compared to WW2 since it was both less well known and seemingly more complex. our main focus on WW2 was the holocaust and the invasion of norway. the rest were mostly just dates and names like pearl harbour, D-day and operation barbarosa. In WW1 there was a lot more focus on cause and effect although the battles themselves were mostly glossed over because we didn't fight in the war. as for 9/11 most people know more than they want to know and in general have gotten rather jaded because the collective western news media has seemingly been doing nothing but spouting propaganda about it for as long as anyone can remember. mercifully most history teachers seem to catch on to this and 9/11 is practically never talked about even though there is at least one paragraph about it in every history textbook i have used for the last five years
 

Shamanic Rhythm

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Brian Tams said:
EA should be more worried about people who DO know what World War 1 is, and will shit all over what is guaranteed to be an extremely unfaithful adaptation of what was a very brutal war fought in conditions where the filthy environment of the trenches killed just as many soldiers as the actual fighting did.
Realistically if they want to have any semblance of traditional Battlefield gameplay, they're going to heavily concentrate on 1918 dynamics where you have armoured cars, prototype SMGs, self propelled guns, advanced tanks and fighter plane dogfights. They'll also have to sneak vehicles and weapons historically only used by one army into others for balance.
 

Elijin

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I mean obviously they know there was a WW1, since there was a WW2.

But I accept that younger generations potentially don't know anything about WW1 (and have encountered this in real life discussions with younger people).

Not knowing about WW2 and Vietnam is just silly.
 

Bobular

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I can understand not knowing about Vietnam as outside of America no one cares and inside America I wouldn't have thought they would cover wars that America lost, but my younger sister knew about WW2 when she was about 5 or something, its hard to miss when there are parades and TV specials every year, kids ask questions. And if there was a WW2, I'm amusing she's smart enough to realise there was a WW1.
 

Squilookle

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Pull the other one EA. Are you saying kids were complete experts beforehand on the fictional conflicts you conjured out of utterly nothing for:

Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2 Modern Combat
Battlefield 2142
Battlefield Bad Company
Battlefield Heroes
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Battlefield Online
Battlefield Play4Free
Battlefield 3
Battlefield 4
and Battlefield: Hardline?
 

cikame

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Arn't these games rated M?
Though saying that i've witnessed plenty of people who know literally nothing about the great wars, i certainly wasn't taught anything about the wars in school, it's purely through interest that i educated myself.

But still, i figure a basic understanding is delivered through osmosis at this point isn't it? It's not like there arn't hundreds of war films and tv shows out there, and we still give annual moments of silence, don't people wonder why we do that?
 

elvor0

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Imperioratorex Caprae said:
Considering the way almost all of my elementary and high school history classes basically glossed over WWI but we got hammered with WWII, I'm not that surprised that younger generations may indeed know very little-to-nothing about WWI unless they took it upon themselves to read about it.
I wonder if the decision to skim on WW1 is a conscious decision or just something that happened out of WW2 lionizing(not that lionizing the people who fought is a bad thing)? The US wasn't massively involved in WW1 until right at the end and even then there wasn't a very big presence of the US. It could just be that they think it important to know when and why it happened(because Arch Duke Ferdinand shot an ostrich because he was hungry) but not go massively into it due to lack of involvement. I'm guessing the major wars you guys study are the US Civil War, The American War of Independence and WW2?

Being British at least at my school we most certainly did study WW1 properly, and I should imagine that France and many of the countries for whom The Great War hung over for the entirety of it do to.
 

Wrex Brogan

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...See, on one hand, that's a stupid thing to say and really brings up a lot of questions about their marketing.

On the other hand, I've been in a group of 18 year olds who seriously didn't know anything about World War II yet made jokes about Hitler. It's always a little disturbing having to explain what the Third Reich was to people who are legally allowed to drink and drive.

Though, I wouldn't take that anecdotal evidence as a generalization about 'Kids these days', more a case of 'man, some people of all ages can be fuckin' ignorant about shit'. Not something I'd really wring my hands over in regards to marketing.

EDIT: also, I just remembered - my first ever experiences with the World Wars was... well, early CoD and Medal of Honor games. Hell, I even figured they weren't accurate without knowing anything about the wars, since they were... well, not realistic. Still enough that they actually piqued my interest in finding out more about the wars though. So it's... really nothing to worry about?
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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elvor0 said:
Imperioratorex Caprae said:
Considering the way almost all of my elementary and high school history classes basically glossed over WWI but we got hammered with WWII, I'm not that surprised that younger generations may indeed know very little-to-nothing about WWI unless they took it upon themselves to read about it.
I wonder if the decision to skim on WW1 is a conscious decision or just something that happened out of WW2 lionizing(not that lionizing the people who fought is a bad thing)? The US wasn't massively involved in WW1 until right at the end and even then there wasn't a very big presence of the US. It could just be that they think it important to know when and why it happened(because Arch Duke Ferdinand shot an ostrich because he was hungry) but not go massively into it due to lack of involvement. I'm guessing the major wars you guys study are the US Civil War, The American War of Independence and WW2?

Being British at least at my school we most certainly did study WW1 properly, and I should imagine that France and many of the countries for whom The Great War hung over for the entirety of it do to.
WWI is very important even in regards as a lead-in to WWII as the state of postwar Germany and the Treaty of Versailles + the Great Depression are huge factors in why Germany went facist nutso on Europe. If they'd taught it correctly, in my day, a lot more people I was in class with wouldn't have struggled to understand why Germany went right into invading Poland and the whole forced redistribution of wealth, blame the Jews, etc. But instead we got a smattering of WWI about trenches and mustard gas, very little on the postwar pressures and then BAM! Nazis. Thankfully my grandfathers both were historically inclined and taught me well, one of them having served in WWII. So I got a full education from them about WWI and WWII and why they happened so close together.
 

elvor0

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Strazdas said:
Also outside of US the rating systems ARE mandatory. as in it is flat out illegal to sell 16+ game to 15 year old.
In some places. Not in Europe. In the UK, the only time it was illegal to sell something with a rating on was if the BBFC classified it, which only happened Rockstar and some high profile violence based games, the BBFC haven't been allowed to classify video games for almost a decade.
 

Amaror

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Karadalis said:
Same thing as with Alien and Aliens.. the sequel just was bigger, badder, more action, more explosions, more dead people.

But seriously... this one time i will share EAs worries... kids these days have no clue there was a "first" world war. Heck people are now dubbing it "the great war" instead of world war.

History is sadly rewritten by a bunch of revisionist assholes and/or seen as something thats not worth teaching/learning about... looking forward to repeating the mistakes of the past...
You do know that the title "world war 1" is the revisionist-title right. "The Great War" is the original title of the first world war. The title "world war 1" was only applied to the war after we had the second world war and people realized that this sort of thing might not be a one-time thing that can happen.
Also I am pretty sure that everyone that hears about the "SECOND world war" and has the brain capacity required to play a videogame will be able to figure out that there most likely has been something called "FIRST world war" happening at some point in time before the second world war. It's not exactly hard.
Also, EA, don't start this sh** again. "Kids" are not allowed to buy your game. "Kids" are not your audience. Don't build your games based on what you think "Kids" may like.
Don't get me wrong I am sure there are many adults today that don't know particullary much about the political reasons behind world war 1 and all it's various complications, but I doubt there are THAT many people that don't know that world war 1 was a thing that happened. I mean, come on!
 

NickBrahz

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Thaluikhain said:
Over in Australia, the totality of WW1 taught in schools (or discussed anywhere) tends to be about the Australians (and maybe some New Zealanders) in Gallipoli, so not surprising.
Don't try to lump in your crappy school with the rest of ours, we learnt everything from rat/lice infestations in the trenches to minor battles in our school, Gallipoli they only focus on when you are in primary school and start WW1 history.

But OT: This game isn't designed for kids, anybody that is older then 8 should know about WW1, if not then i don't know how they managed to turn on a PC/console.
 

P-89 Scorpion

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Zulnam said:
Translation: EA high-ups believe young generations are dumb enough to know nothing about the world war that was prior to the second world war.

Also "ww1 was not just trenches" = expect no historical accuracy. Machineguns for everybody!!
Machineguns are one of the primary reasons for trenches. I believe you mean assault rifles and submachine guns though submachine guns and even the BAR machinegun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1918_Browning_Automatic_Rifle ) where in use by the end of WW1.
 

chozo_hybrid

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They could be an entry point for people to learn about it, what's wrong with that?

I just don't see why that would stop people from playing anyway, if they hear the game is good they may play it.