On September 10, 2002, Electronic Arts publisher and a relatively unknown developer called DICE released a multiplayer shooter called Battlefield 1942. In the 20 years since everyone involved has had a great ride.
The game, which not only featured infantry but also allowed players to control vehicles, was notable for its scale and variety; I avoid pretty much every other online shooter – I’m talking about Duty and counter attackwhich are only for infantry –like the plague, but always played Battlefield because I like the way it lets me spawn like a sniper, get killed and then think, you know what, I’ll drive a tank after that and maybe drive a fighter after that.
In the 20 years since, the series has changed a lot. Player numbers have increased—2042 has cards that support 128 at a time, which has problems but is also amazing – while the institution has jumped to Vietnam, the First World War, the distant future and back again. There have been games where you play as a cop instead of a soldierand spin-off games that were heavy on the story. And that’s just the Battlefield series; DICE also has two Star Wars games that are Battlefield in everything but name.
And yet it hasn’t changed at all. From Battlefield 1942 until Battlefield 2042the premise of each game has largely remained same. Two teams battle it out on a big map, trying to capture control points and kill players on the other side. You can use different infantry weapons, or you can get behind the wheel of a vehicle, and some of those vehicles are slow and carry passengers, while others are fast and don’t.
Every game has had its problems, some technical and others design-related, and every game has pissed off a veteran fans while attracting new players. As I mentioned in my 2042 reviewa Battlefield game having a bad launch and then restoring via patches and updates is almost a meme at this point, something we are experiencing again in real time as 2042 is slowly recovering from its own disastrous release.
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On an occasion like this, it’s natural to look back on the series and remember the good times – something DICE has marked this week with… free goodies for 2042 players – but 2042’s misery and the direction the series is heading are also cause for concern among players when it comes to battlefields future.
Battlefield games were thought of for the longest time as standalone video games, which you bought, played for a few years, and then moved on from the moment the next one came out. However, it is now clear, at this time of the season passes and live service games—that DICE (or maybe just their publisher overlords at EA) see a slightly different path for Battlefield, one where games are kept alive for years to come, while encouraging fans to constantly spend money on things like expansions and cosmetic content. A push that, seen as part of comparable industry moves across other games and genreshas become both exhausting and a point of contention for many players.
It’s not like the series itself is under threat; indeed it was only last week that EA announced that a brand new studio is working on a brand new one Battlefield “experience”while also tweeting that they “all about the future of Battlefield!”. But it’s still a troubling trend, and one that rightly makes people worry about the following Battlefield game might look like.
I don’t know if anyone could have figured that out in 2002 that this series would still be going in 2022. And I’m sure no one could have seen it the twists and turns it has taken in the decades since. So any attempt to predict the future for Battlefield would probably be just as pointless.
Perhaps season passes and cosmetic microtransactions will drive the series into the dirt. Maybe DICE will learn lessons from the things people hated 2042-not the bugs or things that can be fixed, but fundamentally economically driven decisions such as the introduction of Sspecialists – and make it up to the next game. Who knows! We can only wait and see, just as we have done for the past twenty years.
In the meantime, I’m going to spend some time playing 2021’s today Battlefield 2042 so I can enjoy a remake of a map (Caspian border) from 2011 Battlefield 3which is about the most appropriate 20th anniversary celebration I can think of.
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