Hot tweets this weekend from EA Games @Battlefield account sparked outrage and ridicule, saying the promotion for the World War I first-person shooter game was seemingly thoughtless and inconsiderate.
According to The Guardian, a pair of tweets were sent out over the weekend with the hashtag "#justWWIthings." The first tweet said "Your squad got big plans for the weekend? #justWWIthings," while the second one simply quoted "Weekend goals. #justWWIthings."
Netizens quickly noticed this and took to twitter to express their dismay and anger towards the mockery the hashtag was insinuating. They mentioned that taking account of history and making it sound like it wasn't a big deal was a callous move and belittles the horror of the past. One even said that this could get the "worst hashtag of 2016, possibly of all time."
EA games acted on it quickly by deleting the pair of tweets with the questionable hashtag and issued an apology. The company mentioned it did not intend to disparage or show disrespect to the occurrences of World War I. This was, unfortunately, too late as many netizens already took screenshots of the tweets.
We apologize for any offense taken to content posted earlier. It was not at all our intent to show any lack of respect to the WW1 era.
— Battlefield (@Battlefield) October 31, 2016
Perhaps the question is, is 'Battlefield 1' and EA games really indifferent to the World War I era? Engadget says it probably isn't so. A review stated that the type of genre 'Battlefield 1' was in with respect to single-player mode is unpopular to most gamers, and would usually prompt players to simply skip to multi-player mode. This game didn't allow them to do that, though.
Players are thrown in story mode depicting a World War I scenario where you are to expect the unexpected, and that death is inevitable. 'Battlefield 1,' in a way, was giving people a history lesson, pointing out that it was a depressing era to be in, thus would demand respect every time one references to it. Gamers are made to experience desperation in a time where hope appears to be bleak, evoking feelings of awe to the brave soldiers of that time, Engadget adds.
Whether 'Battlefield 1' and its creators are insensitive to WWI is a matter of perspective of opinion. What is certain, though, is that the animation and gameplay are truly different from other war games. The game is readily available to PS4 and Xbox One owners, while 'Battlefield 1' system requirements for PC would include Windows 10 or later operating system, 16GB RAM memory, an online connection speed of around 512 Kbps or more, and available disk space of at least 50GB, as per PC Gamer.
