I've tried to stay away from the recent controversy (read: shit show) over Battlefield V. There has been a lot of cringe, a lot of people have covered it, and I honestly have mixed feelings about it all. However, I stumbled across this SJW anti-GamerGate subreddit called "GamerGhazi" and it was just too bad to pass up. I believe the intent of the name is to compare Gamer Gate to the Benghazi scandal - ie. there was nothing to it. I think this subreddit will be giving me a lot of material in the near future...
For what it my be worth, my own standard when it comes to making ahistorical characters is that it depends entirely on the type of game. I am not a Battlefield player, but it seems to me that the modern games are not exactly simulators of combat from that time. Therefore, I do not really care about them adding female/disabled characters and having them fight on the front lines. If it had been a simulator that pretended it was giving an accurate portrayal of that time I would have a problem with this. However, I have also heard that there is a single player campaign where a team of Norwegian saboteurs is portrayed as having female members where it actually did not. This campaign is based on a series of three real-life operations that culminated in Operation Gunnerside (https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/operation-gunnerside). In real life, there were no women involved, and some of the men in the first operation, and all of the men in the second, died. I could see why this change would be insulting to some people. The account is also fictionalized in other ways.
On to our main story! Battlefield V has not sold well compared to previous games in the series. Some anti-SJWs elected to boycott the game over the inclusion/historical inaccuracy issue. This probably only explains part of the poor sales, but it is clear that, as is often the case, the SJWs who were "excited" about the more inclusive product have not actually bought it. The GamerGhazi subreddit went into full damage control mode. Their main tactic was to fully deny reality, saying that Battlefield V's sales were actually good. I suggest checking out the post here while I write about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/a8sj37/catastrophic_failure_battlefield_v_somehow/
This threat, which made it to the top of the Sub, is titled "'Catastrophic failure' Battlefield V somehow manages to become third best selling game of the month of November". Oh God where do we begin...
Let's start with the obvious. Battlefield is one of the biggest modern gaming franchises. It should be in 1st during it's launch month regardless of almost anything else. Battlefield V was supposed to be one of the biggest releases of the year. When it can't even dominate the month it came out, that is a very bad sign. But maybe it was behind two other really big releases?
Red Dead Redemption 2 came in first in November, and the new Call of Duty came in second. Those are both huge releases - probably the two most significant of 2018 since Fallout 76 flopped completely. However, both of those games came out in OCTOBER! Like movies, first weekend/week sales for games are very important, and generally telling for how they will do financially. Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 actually came out on October 12th - so it was old news by November when Battlefield came out and had lost all of the initial hype surrounding it and early sales. There is no excuse for Battlefield to lose out to a month old game in November. Typically Battlefield and Call of Duty have been competing series, and often try not to release too close to each other for that reason. As for Red Dead, it came out late in October (the 26th), but still had a significant chunk of its sales in October. Battlefield did manage to outsell the disastrous Fallout 76 - a game so broken that it may put the entire future of the company behind it into question. Fallout 76 was dealing with a social media/YouTube shit storm because of how broken it was, with hundreds of major YouTubers warning people to stay away from it.
GamerGhazi insists that all is well however!
The top comment is incredibly stupid. They actually try to claim that this is a good thing because even a soulless company like EA cares enough about diversity, so that means other companies will in the future. The fact that the game has failed in terms of sales totally counters that. If anything this will help the "get woke go broke" narrative, and make companies even more reluctant to add women and more diverse characters to their games. This will also probably make companies care more about complaining fans, and less about SJWs who don't actually buy their games, in the future. I don't know how anyone other than an idiot attached hopelessly to an ideology could convince themselves of this argument.
Then there are more people in denial that the sales are bad, and tend to write it off as large companies always hyping up their expected sales. There is truth to that, but sales of Battlefield V are down 50% from Battlefield 1 (the previous game in the series), and are being outsold 80% by Call of Duty. This trend appears to have continued through the holidays. EA's stocks fell significantly in response to the game's failure. A corporation is never going to put social justice over the interests of its shareholders.
However, I give credit when it is due, and at least a couple people made good points:
Here is a Leftist that is at least consistent! I'm glad at least one person saw the irony of celebrating a move a corporation did only to make money, and understands that putting a woman on a poster doesn't really change anything. If you want to be anti-capitalism, be anti-capitalism...
Another person made a similar point:
Anyway, those comments got criticized, so don't expect that subreddit to get smarter any time soon. For what it's worth, if you want to pick up Battlefield V now, it is half off at many retailers - probably due to overstock compared to demand.