A lot of people on the internet got mad at at a video game the other day. Business as usual for the most part but, for once, I see where they are coming from.

Though I won't add my voice to the cacophony of angry shouts I just want to explain what might have caused such an outcry when it comes to this particular part of history and it's apparent "trivialization"

I'm going to preface this by saying I haven't played Battlefield 1 yet but from all the reviews I've read and the Quick Look and Vinny's livestream on this site I can say, pretty confidently, that EA and Dice have done a great job showing the horrors of this war (in the campaign at least).

When it comes to this game a lot of people were wary of it already as the First World War is a touchy subject for a lot of people. But low and behold, they did it! A great game that tells the story of the horror of war while maintaining that crazy fun multiplayer we've come to love.

But then their marketing team got a little too comfortable and used the hashtag #JustWWIThings along with pictures of war with quippy lines underneath like this:

I like dark humour as much as the next guy but that might be a bit too far. Notice how I spelled "humour"? Yes I am from the Great White North and I'm pretty sure we and our European brethren were the loudest when it came to the distaste of this unfortunate campaign.

When it comes to the First World War I feel comfortable in saying this war isn't something that's very prevalent in the American historical mind (as a Canadian, I could be totally wrong but being so closely exposed to the US I believe WW2, Vietnam and Iraq are way more ingrained).

In Canada, the Great War holds a very special place in our heart. It's where we earned our stripes as a colony and built the foundation for the Statute of Westminster which gave us our sovereign independence from the British Empire (yes, we asked nicely, typical Canadians). The Battle of Vimy Ridge is arguably one of the most important military victories in our history as it was the first time all three (yes, only three) of our expeditionary forces grouped together and won (the first time a colonial army had defeated an enemy on foreign soil). To this day there is a parcel of Canadian Soil located at Vimy Ridge with a monument commemorating our dead. 172,000 men were injured and 61,000 never came home.

When it comes to Europe, well, there are still parts of the continent that bear the scars of that war 100 years after it happened. For both of us (Europeans and Canadians) its an incredibly important part of our history and, yes, a joke is a joke, but it's definitely something that should be handled with a little bit more tact.

I'd love if some American duders would give me their opinions and point-of-views on the matter, for clarity's sake!

It was a dumb thing, they realized it was dumb and stopped.

To me, this feels like more of a facepalm situation than a pitchforks situation.

@csl316: I noticed some people were confused by the uproar that came from it, I was just trying to clarify why people got so mad. Facepalm indeed

It was dumb but I think the way WWI is talked about with this game, in a way no other war or war game is treated, is pretty silly. It's been annoying to see over and over again.

I've actually seen American reviews hang on this point and blast the game for it and I can't recall any WWII game or Vietnam game ever remotely getting that treatment. I mean I don't really want to get in the specifics of comparisons or dragging out all manner of horrific things that happened in those wars (some of which games had fun with, making them horror based, occult, or sci-fi to no outcry at all), but really thinking about it I just can't even begin to understand the logic. Nevermind how no other medium is subject to the ridicule.

Yes this marketing was dumb. Like @csl316 it's just a facepalm for a stupid marketer.

I think tact should be used with any depiction of a real life war, but i admit it seemed a bit odd to be offended by a WW1 "joke" even if it wasn't funny which it wasn't. But i guess that could be because the first world war is barely even touched on in our schools, not even close to the amount of the second world war and american civil war. But i guess i can understand when you have people to this day still waving a confederate flag...

"How can I swing this into what's hot with the kids? Adding words into the phrase 'just {insert here} things'? It's gold Jerry, GOLD!"

Dumb social media marketer is dumb. I guarantee they didn't even think about what they were doing either. Like I mostly get the impression people who get placed in charge of Twitter accounts for companies are either QA people or someone who was purely hired for their "media presence". My girlfriend applied for a marketing internship several years ago where number of personal Facebook friends and number of Twitter followers was a consideration.

I knew from the moment I saw the trailer that I had a problem with this game., so the marketing just confirmed my preconceived notions. I've done a lot of reading on both world wars and World War 1 is as close to sacrosanct as it gets. The idea of making a fun-bang-shooty game about the lowest point in human history seems insane.

Pop culture has exploited the shit out of ww2, vietnam etc., conflicts more recent than ww1 (and with a much higher body count in the case of ww2). No one seems to care. Those conflicts aren't being treated with any particular reverence, so why should ww1, a conflict that at this point doesn't even have any surviving veterans? This is a dumb pr stunt. Nothing more, nothing less. Setting a higher bar for bf1 because it chose ww1 as a subject doesn't seem appropriate to me at all.

It should have been #JustBF1Things. They're making stupid image macros of their game, not the actual war.

Yeah, actually probably would have went over a bit smoother that way.

I think it was super dumb, but I don't offend very easy, so it's not the end of the world or anything. I'm not mad at anyone. Incredibly poor taste though. It'd be the equivalent of having a World War II game, throwing up a picture of Auschwitz on your game's Twitter feed, and putting #holocaustproblemz under it. The fact that they let that thing all the way through the chain is astounding. Between this and the Seven Nation Army dubstep, I am admittedly less likely to play the game. Just kind of strikes the wrong note. Granted, the game probably is far more sensitive (relatively), but my already existent dislike of Battlefield games mixed with this just kind of kills any desire I have to play it.

Social hypersensitivity knocks it outta the park, again.

It's a game first, a consumer product second, and then a reference to an important global conflict. It's not meaningful commentary, it's not a simulator, it's not a literal interpretation of what actually happened.

It was never meant to be.

I care a lot about the history of the First World War. I care especially as a Canadian soldier, one who has stood as a silent guard at cenotaphs around the country multiple times. It boggles my mind how so many seem unable to delineate between the interpretive fiction of war media and the real deal - historical or current - when processing their outrage.

Depictions of war and conflict need not always be super somber affair of endless misery - I would argue that is as much a lie as the happy-go-lucky glorification so many people detest. Afghanistan had many uplifting moments for me, and I made a bunch of friends, despite how brutal individual days could be.

This is a dumb social media stunt. BF1 is absolutely fine for what it is. End of story in my book.

I'm looking forward to the #JustCivilWarThings marketing campaign, see how the us audience reacts then.

I have played through the campaign and do not believe that WWI is treated well. Sure, it's the best they could do while also making a shooter, but the stories are wildly inconsistent with treating the war well. The first mission is done well, but that's about it.

I don't see the tweets as being too different from the gameplay in terms of tone or treating the source material well.

That conflict started over a century ago. When are people allowed to start joking about it?

It seems to me, as someone who hasn't played the game so I'm an outsider looking in, that the European developer DICE paid respect to WWI, whereas the American publisher EA doesn't get it. That kind of tells you how people around the world look at WWI. But they took the tweets down so it's whatever. No need to storm the gates.

@paulmako: In 8 days the entire country of Australia will fall completely silent at 11am, hilarious.

This is the correct answer.

You make a WWII game for example and I think: #JustBF1942things , while it would still be dumb, is at least not disrespectful to the soldiers. #JustIwoJimathings though - not so cool. WWI is a big deal here in Aus, it is interesting seeing how little focus it gets in the USA, but I imagine that making fun of the Civil War or US contributions to WW2 would not be really acceptable? "It was 100 years ago" is a crap argument. "It's been a decade since 9/11 - get over it already!" Time does not necessarily heal all wounds.

Why are modern military shooters set in fake countries or fake conflicts? (Here is a vague 'Middle Eastern location') there are a number of reasons but I imagine that respect for both parties is a big one. The veteran who posted earlier - I think the name of the hashtage is important. #JustBF4Things = stupid but ok #JustAfghanistanThings = not ok

I'm all for dark humour, and tackling WW1 doesn't have to be an always serious, sombre affair (see, e.g., Blackadder Goes Forth), but turning it into a quip without any context comes across as distasteful. I don't think that unique to WW1 either - if you marketed one of the earlier Call of Dutys with #JustWW2things, it'd be just as distasteful.

I think the big problem with it (and it's a more of "this is terrible marketing" than making me angry) is the lack of context - it's hard to see war image plus quip alone as anything more than trivialising war. However, you could probably get away with that sort of tone in the game itself (FWIW I haven't played it yet, so not sure how sombre or lighthearted at times the game times to be) - by seeing more the scene, and having the jokes come from actual characters rather than a disembodied voice of marketing, it becomes more of people making the best of a bad situation rather that joking about the situation per se.

I also think that fact that it is a piece of marketing will colour people's reaction to it. Making dumb quips about something to hawk a product (as opposed to making a commentary on the nature of war, or even just trying to be deliberately offensive for comedy's sake) is always going to feel more exploitative and provoke a stronger negative reaction.

There's a subtle, not always clear, distinction between joking about something and merely trivialising it. Blackadder Goes Forth aired in 1989 and was, for the most part, a fairly lighthearted take on WW1 and is lauded, so I don't think joking about the conflict is necessarily a bad thing. The #JustWW1things hashtag falls more on the latter, which is why I think some people reacted poorly to it. I don't think it's due to WW1 being sacrosanct either - #JustWW2things or #JustIraqWarThings would come across just as poorly.

Like I said above, it's a matter of context. I actually think you could get away with using "Just <war> things" as a tagline if you were producing a deeply satirical take on the conflict in question (be that in TV, film, or games), but a) Battlefield 1 is not that, and b) the rest of the marketing doesn't take that tone.

If you'd take the time to play or watch a mission from the game, you'd know it takes its time to honor the men that fought in that war and tell personal stories. That's one of the reasons the game is getting so much praise.

It's no more insane to make a game about WW1 than a game about any other real war. If that's your complaint, you have a great many games to be up in arms about.

The difference with BlackAdder goes Fourth is that the humour is satirical in nature and, through its humour, it highlights the actual horrors and stupidity of the war (the episode where they launch an assault because Haig wants to move his desk 3 inches closer to the front is a perfect example). Other satirical pieces can actually highlight the horrors of war (MASH being another case). As you mentioned, the out of context quip "Hey this guy is setting other humans on fire #JustWWIThings" is ridiculous.

Battlefied games are wacky, there will be plenty of crazy gifs coming out. The campaign treats the war pretty seriously from what I've seen. This was just a marketing misstep, but there's no question that it was a misstep.

@korwin: I apologise. I'm from the UK and always donate to the Poppy appeal and observe the silences. They are a solemn opportunity to reflect on conflicts past and present. I'm not laughing at those.

The war was terrible and EA's tweets were tone deaf. I'm not contesting that either. My poorly worded question was more academic but this thread isn't the time or place for it.

It's not a documentary, it's a video game. Relax. A lot of people who play video games think it's fun to run around and flamethrower people.

Also, the game has done a great job getting people interested in actually learning about the war, and that's a good thing.

I know it's somewhat hypocritical. But games about WW2 and Iraq at least have a cinematic, cultural and literary tradition of being glorified and/or treated with levity. I'm not saying that's okay, it just doesn't provoke a response from me in the same way. On your other point, telling personal stories within the confines of a game where you gun down dozens of enemies, or hold a position all by yourself, or can shoot down 7 planes in a single dogfight is still moot. There are lots of heroic stories from WW1 and literally millions of tragic, pathetic ends to people who never even managed to get a glimpse of the enemy. Again, exactly the same thing is true of other wars but WW1 gets to me because there was very little point to any of it, so treating it like any other war that is worthy of adaptations feels wrong to me.

Marketing is pure evil and always has been, this shitty ad campaign is not a surprise.

I think the people in this post telling you to "relax" need to read up on the war and think about what it means for countries to pour entire generations of young men into a meat grinder over a conflict that has no real justification other than nationalistic greed. A war where men who did not want to fight were hung or shot without trial, a war where the primary mode of combat saw a soldier in an open field against machine guns with no control over their own survival, a war that had any young man that had not volunteered or been called up at home labelled a coward by the white lilies, just imagine. and after years of hellish war, the deck was stacked for an even worse conflict, that would not have happened if not for the first world war. Maybe we shouldn't go ballistic over these kinds of distatsteful ads, but we should absolutely show our disagreement.

I like the game, it's fun, but it's only fun because outside of the title screen it doesn't constantly remind you that you are in the first world war. In multiplayer at least, the weapons and gameplay are so different from the actual war it's hard to even call it a world war 1 game.

But tieing the name of this war to a poorly made meme is just gross and uncalled for, it reminds you of the war and immediately makes a joke. Super crass.

And you can ask why we tiptoe around WW1, but i think we do it because not only did it create world war 2, it showed a disregard for the people who fought in it more than any war before or since. It was never taught much to me in school and i've only gotten to know it through my own study. What I learned is that is was a very different conflict than any other.

You pretty much shoot down your points correctly within. WW1 was not unique in any one of these ways. Your response is hypocritical.

Like I said in my last post, I really don't want to drag out specific examples but man, there are awful things in WWII that games make into wacky occult or sci-fi elements or at the least do the exact same as BF 1 has. How many times have we seen the Nazis made into goofs of some form in every type of media?

And again, this ad was dumb, to the topic. Speaking to the way in which people act like WW1 is different here. I think you should read up on WWII if you think people were not dying in similar ways "never even managing to get a glimpse of the enemy". I don't know what you would say there was some grand point to anything there was either, or Vietnam, or any other war in any other of the many videogames set in historical wars. War is always hell. Yes there was a romanticism and change in warfare that made WWI unique but you can argue that even happened in previous conflicts first (American Civil War is a good example), and happened afterwards as well in different forms in Vietnam, WWI, and other wars.

If the joke was funny, I might make an effort to defend it. But if it were funny, it wouldn't need defending.

To me if it was a comedian or some funnyman twitter account making the joke, besides not laughing at it, I wouldn't think twice about it. the fact that it's being loosely used as advertising is whats gross to me. That isn't a good way to get people to play your game let alone how out of taste it is.

@mikemcn: I've spent years of my life studying and writing about the war and am pretty confident I'm more familiar with it than any one in this thread. I still say it's a video game, relax.

I still remember the horrible things I saw in WWI. It's not a joking matter.

But seriously, who actually cares? That wasn't coming from a developer but from someone on the twitter account. Twitter.

I'm all for having fun with video games and them taking on real world settings but to have a social media bullshit thing that says "#justww1things" is the most incredibly stupid thing I've ever seen. There are people alive who's fathers and grandfather's fought in that horrific war, the kind of war that took away any and all sense of what it actually means to be a human being. Whenever you deal with any real world event I'm not saying you have to play it completely straight, I like dark humour myself but have some tact.

I think the marketing for Battlefield 1 has been bad since the first trailer they showed at E3. But then again, I'm the kind of guy who thinks that most videogames set in historical wars are kind of shitty.

Has anything good come from Twitter? So far it has only proven to be an efficient outrage machine. Yes, there was Arab Spring, but that was 6 years ago and subsequent revolutions or attempts to use Twitter as a medium for change have shown evidence of suppression and in any case have just been fruitless.

Word of Twitter having to decimate (in the classical sense) its staff and problems with funding really make me curious where this medium is going to go. 'Cause right now it's a circlejerk of team forming and targeting of rage.

This is why I hope twitter dies. A vocal minority had a negative reaction and everyone's treating those people as if they are some big group. They aren't, they're hypersensitive babies. This is the issue with Twitter, it gives wacky people a bigger voice than they should have.

Why? That's not an 'gotcha' question, I am just legitimately curious why people hold World War I in such high regard but don't care about World War 2 being used in games, etc.

Is it because it was a large loss of life for a complex set of dumb reasons? is it because World War 2 could be justificed because there was a 'bad guy' on one side of it? Is it because it was our first taste of moden warfare and therefore more horrific?

As an American who celebrates ANZAC day with his Kiwi (NZ) wife, I am always a little curious about why that war is so significant for Europe/the common wealth.

TBH its quite funny even more so with the inappropriate hashtag.

@yothatlimp: it doesn't make sense. The loss of human life during WW2 was far worse than WW1. I think people just aren't used to seeing WW1 in media.

@yothatlimp: WW1 in the UK atleast is seen as a pointless conflict in which millions died in horrific conditions with those in charge being considered incompetent, WW2 on the other hand was fought for a good reason with the soldiers in the aftermath having been portrayed as heroes/villians. The soldiers who fought in both conflict are view by the public very differently in WW1 they are revered while being celebrated in WW2.

How do you do, fellow kids? #JustUsKids

Sure, it's all fun and games right up until that last episode.

Hope you enjoyed your outrage.

@yothatlimp: all of the above I believe, and I spoke to the Canadian point of view on the war in my post but unfortunately I can't speak for the European viewpoint

Up until a few years ago there were still living WW1 veterans.

I think saying #justbattlefiedthings would have been better. But I also don't think it was something to have been so upset by since they did react very quickly as was pointed out. Glad they came to their senses about this though

I'm from Europe, had to study a lot about WWI and WWII during school, and I still thought the #JustWWIThings was funny. Maybe they should've used #JustBattlefiedThings but other than that I really don't see any problem with it. It wasn't making fun of World War 1, it was making fun of their own gameplay and Tumblr blogs. If some of the gifs they posted were posted by some random player, people would probably laugh and retweet it.

Everyone gets outraged by everything these days. It wasn't a big deal.

This further reinforces my belief that people who get upset about insignificant shit like this need real problems introduced in their lives.