opinion: The fact that Battlefield 2042 is suspiciously quiet shortly before release is worrying. Are there problems or is this all marketing tactics?
What is actually going on with Battlefield 2042? That’s the question shooter fans around the world were asking as the curtain comes down on the big gamescom Opening Night Live. The show is over. And again there is no new info, no new gameplay.
It almost seems as if EA had abruptly stopped marketing Battlefield. What remains is confusion, disappointment, worry. On Twitter, reddit and other social platforms, one question in particular is surfacing: Why do we know so little about the most anticipated shooter in a long time less than two months before release?
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“A bad gut feeling “
“Not seeing any gameplay from Battlefield 2042 at gamescom is a bit disappointing,” writes shooter Youtuber Matimi0 on Twitter. Not only many users, but also other influencers agree with him and express concern about the long radio silence.
Is anyone else concerned it's nearly September and there's no official #Battlefield 2042 gameplay? I have a bad gut feeling.
— Flakfire (@Flakfire) August 25, 2021
The fan channel Battlefield Bulletin tweets: “No news or even a mention of Battlefield on Opening Night.” Battlefield specialist Flakfire writes: “Anyone else worried that we haven’t seen any official gameplay and it’s almost September? Have a bad gut feeling about this.” Similar statements can now be found in droves on the net.
The reason for this is obvious: For weeks, everything has been revolving around the lore and setting of Battlefield 2042. There was the elaborately made render film with many tidbits of information about the story, blog entries, artwork, and so on. What is still bitterly lacking, however, is tangible gameplay. Because as nice as the background story may be, what really interests us gamers is the question: How does Battlefield 2042 play? And there are hardly any answers to that yet!
And all this after the Reveal trailer with focus and fan service had actually laid the perfect foundation for a comeback:
Growing Concern
Not even 10 minutes of gameplay footage exists of Battlefield 2042 if you string together all the trailers released so far (including Battlefield Portal). Only a fraction of this is at all meaningful for the game experience, because in most of the official scenes there is no fighting from a first-person perspective.
Does the gunplay feel robust? Does the game flow on the much larger maps? How do the vehicles play? What about the groundbreaking destruction and levolution? And when will these questions finally be answered?
No news on #Battlefield 2042 at the Xbox 2021 Gamescom Stream.
— Battlefield Bulletin (@BFBulletin) August 24, 2021
What Battlefield 2042 will really feel like at its core, we still don’t know three months after the Reveal – and that’s fuelling frustration and uncertainty. Is the marketing silence a sign of trouble? Is the development of Battlefield 2042 possibly not as far along as EA had claimed? There are no indications of this. But of course the rumour mill on the net couldn’t care less.
“If Battlefield 2042 is postponed, would that shake your confidence in the game?” asks BrettFX, e-sports commentator for multiplayer shooters. Admittedly a hypothetical question, but one that strikes right at the heart of the current mood in the community and reaches many users. According to EA, Battlefield has set a record for “the earliest feature complete in series history” – so no part has ever been finished and reached the fine-tuning phase faster. But fan confidence is starting to crumble.
All just tactics?
“It’s probably all marketing tactics,” Youtuber Lossy counters in a recent video. In his opinion, the fans are currently being deliberately kept in suspense in order to fuel the hype.
If this is true, it would be a fatal miscalculation: While Battlefield fans are desperately chasing after every little tidbit of information, the main competitor, Call of Duty: Vanguard, is dishing it out left and right: Barely 10 minutes of gameplay at gamescom, launch of the alpha almost immediately afterwards, fixed dates for the beta. The title is put into the hands of the players without any transition. Although CoD was announced a full two months later, we now already have a much better picture of how it will play and why it gives MW fans hope.
One of Battlefield 2042’s biggest problems, on the other hand, is its own alpha. Because in the meantime, when looking for gameplay, you mainly come across gameplay leaks from the technical playtest: Horribly shaky or low-resolution scenes with Cyrillic or Japanese text pop-ups, in which players pedal aimlessly across the map and then get shot down from somewhere. No teamwork. No wow moments. Pure chaos. Plus low-detail or missing textures, glitches, bugs and an unfinished interface.
Start the offensive!
This is all completely normal in a tech alpha, of course, and not at all indicative of problems in the finished game. Nevertheless: As a developer, you couldn’t imagine a worse representation of your own game. And because there is hardly any official material, the clicks on the questionable playtest material pile up.
The logical consequence: deterred viewers who may never give Battlefield 2042 a second glance – or at least question whether it will really be the promised NextGen shooter! EA gives up the narrative about its own game through marketing failure and leaves the stage to leakers and CoD Vanguard. All tactics? If so, an extremely strange one.
Instead of secrecy, the big offensive must now come – with full transparency, more trailers, info and above all gameplay. Real gameplay scenes that answer the question for us: What kind of game does Battlefield 2042 want to be and for whom is it intended?
