World War 1 had a deep and long-lasting affect on the social fabric of Western Europe, in a way that is hard to understand if you haven't lived with it, perhaps. There is a political, social and cultural legacy that is complex and difficult to unpick, and I think it mostly resembles how people remember and talk about national tragedies, rather than wars.

We have been remembering this war and the devastation of it for a century, amplifying it every year as part of a sort of shared memory that is passed down between generations. It's maybe not something you can appreciate without having inherited that legacy, the best you can do is find a comparison from your own cultural experience. And of course, not everyone will feel that way. Certainly the effect is dying out due to migration, globalisation, communication and so on. But for a large set of the population it still exists.

Things like this pluck at a part of that shared consciousness in a way that is very confusing, and complicated, and people's first reaction in that situation is often anger. Marketing firms taking advantage of shared national tragedies doesn't tend to go down particularly well.

FWIW I don't think it applies to WW2 in the same way. The first world war was a deeply affecting tragedy in a way that the second wasn't, in terms of how they are remembered. The narrative of the second world war is more about victory and glory, it's more easily translatable to triumphant media, films, slogans and feel good stories.

You should talk to the Japanese or the Jewish people about that.

I don't know where people are getting this "feel good" narrative about WWII from. Really have no idea. Yeah, in some ways certain parties were saved from the awfulness of certain aspects of the war, but what was actually carried out that they were rescued from is the darkest stuff in human history perhaps. The fact that it occurred at all is terrifying. And never mind that, for these "good guy" narratives, on the Allied side there was a guy like Stalin at the helm. In America we established internment camps. It was an awful war with a terrible cost.

This will be my last post in here because I think it could obviously get ugly, and I didn't even want to get into these sorts of specifics, but I really think people are way off base on this stuff and a lot of the comments I see. Hopefully you realize you are buying into convenient narrative and propaganda for one war and not another, for whatever reason.

@gerrid: except for the whole holocaust thing. I mean that didn't affect anyone right? :(

Movies, TV , radio, plays, books, and games make entertainment of war. In some cases that entertainment allows un to understand such things. In some cases such entertainment is a cathartic salve to our wounds to see what we feel is justice/good against that which is unjust/bad. In some cases that entertainment is there because we have to use levelity to fight depression.

The reality is that war is terrible. Why we would make games, movies, comic books, standup comedy, and memes about destruction and death often seems at odds with good taste. Yet, our desire to convert those stark vicious realities into something we can digest to understand on many levels is considered -by most- to be helpful. In some cases PTSD was treated by asking people to use art, writing, and talking with fellows who went through teh same thing, and now in teh 21sts century playing games has been added to that list of therapies.

In fact, making a 'game; of war is as old as chess, yet the even more realistic practice of moving metal pieces around on a game table (with blue pieces representing their forces and red pieces those of the enemy), using dice rolls to indicate random chance and with a referee scoring the results is 200 years old. All human cultures have made games of war, be that the olympics where the martial arts were practiced on a peaceful field or the hip-ball courts of Mesoamerica.

As for Battlefield One, the concept that making a game about it where the participants laugh and jeer as they shoot each other is not offensive, but putting a meme under a screenshot is offensive seems thin.

Isn't being outraged about the outrage worse though?

WWII was a war between good and evil that had to be fought. WWI was a tragedy that never should have happened. It was a mistake on all counts and more resembles a disaster than it does an actual "war".

One of those is easier to adapt as a game/sport than the other.

@korwin: I imagine it will be a much smaller demographic but sure.

@artisanbreads: Well, I said it was specific to the Western European story of the war, and how it is told in this part of the world. Trying to give some insight into how perhaps things are perceived differently.

So of course it is about the narrative that is constructed by a society, which I said. And if you are in a different society you will have a different understanding. For Jews and the Japanese, obviously there is a different cultural and societal history there.

I made no value judgements about either war, it isn't a competition about which was worse. Just trying to explain how the "propaganda" as you put it has created different attitudes to the two wars, in Western Europe.

EDIT: I think people maybe misunderstood, or didn't read what I wrote here:

"The first world war was a deeply affecting tragedy in a way that the second wasn't, in terms of how they are remembered"

I think maybe people just read the first part and assumed I was saying one was a tragedy and the other wasn't? Because obviously I am not saying that.

Seems like this has transformed from a discussion about the hashtag thing being stupid (and it is,) to a discussion about whether or not it's tasteful to adapt WW1 into a game. That's.....just weird.

Real wars have been adapted into movies, books, TV shows, and video games for a very long time. It's called artistic expression. If you have a problem with generalizing how it's done in one medium, I think you should have a problem with the rest too.

For fuck's sake, there's a widely popular and respected video game series that turns WWII into a thing about Nazi robots and people think Battlefield 1 among all things is distasteful with its campaign focus to tell a number of emotional respectful stories of men who fought in that war? Guys, if the existence of Battlefield 1 in general has losing your shit, you really need to switch your focus. What the fuck.

If you think BF1 Represents WWI your death wrong. BF1 is just a WW2 game with a exotic ww1 prototype gun skins. what's wrong with bolt action rifles like the gun almost every foot soldier used yes there non scoped bolt action rifles but there in the scout class ... i am ok with automatic / machine guns / rifles but at least make them inaccurate ! hell there's even a dumb tooltip in this game that explains why people didn't use semi auto rifles "cause there accuracy was really bad" hell you can even out snipe a sniper with a mp18 ! at least in Verdun the mp 18 is hot garbage and it can only be used effective in a trench. (sorry for the rand but i think its necessary that somebody says that this game isn't a WWI game).

As an American, and someone who completed the game, WWI seems to have been handled with the right amount of gravitas that should be observed. I think respecting a conflict goes a long way to making a good game, but to say that WWI is a war too ghastly to even depict is a step too far. Depictions are what allow us to move on as a society from the heinous shit that we've done to each other. It's not like chemical warfare hasn't been used in games before, and the way mustard gas is used is fairly accurate to how it was described in primary sources. If anything, BF1 is an extremely relevant tool in teaching the general public about a conflict that does have significant fallout even to this day. As Brad and others have pointed out, many historians now believe that WWII was just a continuation of WWI. Hitler and others stated as such in the speeches they gave prior to and during the fighting. But that's a different conversation.

As a game, BF1 has many human moments that don't try to make the war out to be some cartoon of what it is. The opening of the campaign is a great lesson in the futility of war as well as the seeming expend-ability of human life given the right circumstances. However, I don't think that the twitter stuff is really that bad. From what DICE have said about the making of this game since it's reveal, they seem to really understand that a real conflict requires some boundaries that they clearly set in terms of tone and story in the game. But given that boundary, it means nothing if you can't explore beyond it every once in a while. And on some level I think DICE also understand that poking fun is ok in limited capacity. Stuff like the tweet OP posted is the kind of stuff that should be laughed at and not just immediately trashed. The contrast between serious and the occasionally goofy are what allow us to make the whole conversation of tough issues like these go down a little better for most people and help to keep the serious topics grounded.

@frostyryan: It's hard not to answer one the same as the other. WWII is more capable of being light entertainment because it brought a lot of good to the world, WWI didn't. That applies to "fun time video games" and flippant twitter posts.

World War 1 might be a century old but it was a horrific brutal conflict that decimated the population of Europe so even as a "dumb" American I find it in poor taste.

I think I understand the grief, but trying to list why something is offensive misses the point that EA intentionally/unintentionally uses these kind of marketing practices.

I just don't know what can be done about it as it worked in giving them broader mainstream news coverage.