People are upset that 'Battlefield V' has female soldiers; those people are dumb

On Wednesday, Electronic Arts unveiled the next game in its long-running Battlefield series of military first-person shooters. During a livestreamed event hosted by The Daily Show's Trevor Noah, the developer celebrated 16 years of the series while hyping up their fanbase for Battlefield V, coming to the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 19. The game will be set in World War II and have focus on multiplayer, as is traditional for the series.

They unveiled the game's cover art, which has a female soldier front and center. A woman was also the focus of the game's reveal trailer, sporting a prosthetic arm and weaving through an intense gunfight.

The reaction from select pockets of the video game community was swift, with many decrying the game -- which has barely been seen outside of the initial trailer -- as feminist, "social justice warrior" propaganda. The hashtag #NotMyBattlefield quickly began to pick up steam on Twitter and YouTube, filled with complaints that the game was not historically accurate.

That's been the defense of the haters so far: Historical accuracy. Many outspoken critics claim their objection isn't even about the presence of women in WWII as much as it's the fact that they don't want the Battlefield series to follow the cartoonish footsteps of other popular shooters like Fortnite and Overwatch. Some said that they would be fine with the inclusion of female Russian snipers, but that the concept of British women on the front line is simply a bridge too far.

But make no mistake. For many, that line between "historically accurate" and "fantasy" is firmly drawn at "women soldiers in WWII," despite the fact that such a view is, itself, ignorant of actual history. A few commenters online even argued that putting a woman on the cover of a World War II video game was disrespectful to all of the men that died in the conflict.

Never mind the fact that Battlefield games, even when attempting to approach realism, are ridiculous -- allowing players to do things such as board planes while they're in midair and shoot flamethrowers while on horseback. If players were really looking for strict military accuracy, they would be playing video games like ARMA, a series famous for its adherence to realism.

Even Colin Moriarty, one of the video game industry's more prominent conservative (and, often, controversial) voices, was surprised by the backlash. "I'm puzzled by the Battlefield V/women controversy," he tweeted. "Women did have a role in World War II. Lyudmila Pavlichenko is one of the most famous, revered figures of the war, period. But that aside, don't we want games to do different things? WWII is tired. Maybe this'll rejuvenate it?"

The historical accuracy complaint has also been by writers such as Robert Rath, who often covers the ties between video games and real-world history. "It's pretty clear in the trailer that we're seeing women who are in the British Special Operations Executive -- and yes, they existed," Rath said on Twitter. "Did it happen like that? No, but FPS games regularly feature cinematic, rather than realistic, combat."

That last point is pretty important. If Battlefield truly aimed to be as accurate and as realistic as it could possibly be, it would no longer be fun. Some tweets have made light of the fact, saying things like "If Battlefield V really was going for authenticity, EA wouldn't let Americans play it for two years." Which is funny, but it also doesn't address the fact that real war is extremely unpleasant in a wide variety of ways (to put it lightly).

It's the thing that some of us gamers, who enjoy participating in sprawling battles in which there are many virtual deaths, are careful never to think too much about. To some degree, the fact that we're fine-tuning World War II to be as entertaining as possible is kind of messed up.

To be fair, the loudest complainers are most likely in the minority. Some fans also complained that the last game the series, Battlefield 1 (not the first Battlefield game, just a unique take on World War I), was being too "politically correct" because it featured a black man on the cover. That game went on to sell quite well.

It's depressing, though, that we won't bat an eye at video games with regenerating health or multiple respawns, but we freak out at the idea that a woman with a prosthetic arm could be useful in combat. Whether Battlefield V ends up being a good video game or not, at least it's doing a small part to break some of our unfortunate molds.