How Battlefield 1942 Birthed One Of EA’s Biggest Franchises

EA’s gigantic Battlefield franchise has been going for 20 years now, and it all started with Battlefield 1942. At the time of its release, DICE as a studio didn’t have a hit to its name. After acquiring Refraction Games, DICE was looking to use the engine made for Codename Eagle to create a large-scale wargame taking advantage of online multiplayer. It passed on the Nintendo Gamecube after learning there wasn’t an online plan, and eventually, EA would publish what became Battlefield 1942 for PC to critical acclaim. This massive breakout hit would create a franchise that would change the course of online gaming and still has fans to this day, even if the most recent entry, Battlefield 2042, has lost the special feeling of the earlier games.

Titles like 1942, Vietnam, Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 3 truly solidified not only Battlefield as a major franchise but also online multiplayer as a whole. What Battlefield 1942 did for gaming was unprecedented. Getting 64 players, all on broadband and DSL internet connection, to work on team-based objectives, all hectically shooting at each other with planes, ships, and tanks, on maps that were bigger than many other contemporaries was a massive step for online gaming at the time, and an experience unlike any other modern first-person shooter in 2002. It was all-out warfare on an epic scale, something few FPS games had attempted at the time.

Battlefield 1942 forged the 64-player online-focused gameplay of the series, complete with large maps and a variety of different vehicles to pilot and exploit. Its locales were varied, covered the three theaters of war and represented real-world landscapes with well-designed warzones, setting the groundwork for a community that would push the game beyond its serious, historical roots. The Battlefield franchise has a lot to thank for its first entry and the community that made it a hit, from the variety of widespread maps with different vehicles to master to the mods that paved the way for future online games.

Battlefield 1942 Showed Multiple Aspects Of Warfare

A whopping 17 maps were included in Battlefield 1942, with five more maps being patched in later. These maps not only had large skyboxes, each one had towns to explore and hills to fly through. Operation Battleaxe and Berlin focused on ground battles but are some of the best-regarded maps for their close-quarters engagements (something Battlefield 2042 should learn from), while Iwo Jima showcased the possibilities of naval and air combat surrounding an island with varied terrain.

Wake Island’s demo map was crucial to the game proving its worth as a multiplayer experience. With such a small landmass, there was a lot of room for players that were interested in ground combat to interact and takedown warships and fighter planes. It moved online gameplay beyond each player simply being a soldier with a different loadout or class and more towards a war with players adopting radically different playstyles and strategies.

Battlefield 1942’s Vehicles Made The Game Unique

Battlefield 1942‘s vehicles were awkward and bulky, even the ones that didn’t have to deal with land terrain, but they weren’t as buggy as Battlefield 2042‘s and actually led to a lot of creativity, hilarity, and tactics being formed. Ramming aircraft carriers and submarines together, having to arc shots with tanks, and riding on the wings of aircrafts are all funny and tactical strategies that were always happening simultaneously on maps based on the Pacific theater. Players could man guns or drive vehicles manually and fighting with aircraft carriers was a team effort that almost always ended in havoc.

Battlefield 1942 Built A Whole New Community

Before Youtube became the behemoth it is today, forums and sharing sites were the way to talk about games and share videos peer to peer. In 2002, this scene was developing for gaming as well, and Battlefield 1942 already being a pioneer in the online gaming space made it a breeding ground for early internet content. Battlefield‘s weapons, guns, and janky movement made the act of sharing crazy stunts or crazy killstreaks that much more enjoyable and brought fans together.

Of course, Battlefield “combo” and “trick” videos are nothing new, nor are they gone in 2022, but the “LoopZook” and other videos like it were a pioneering moment for the game and its popularity. Beyond being a realistic, strategic wargame, Battlefield was also a vehicle and weapon sandbox that let its players show off stunts and push the physics engine to its absolute limit. The community would really start to take advantage of internet stunt videos during Battlefield 3, but 1942 paved the way for creativity like that to be expressed and shared.

The Mods for Battlefield 1942 Set the Stage for Future Entries

While modding was never directly supported in 1942 or onward (save for an older Battlefield 1 graphics overhaul mod), the themes of the added weapons and vehicles would bring visions of the future and would even be directly acknowledged by EA itself. The most popular was by far Desert Combat, which added modernized assault rifles, M16s, rocket launchers, helicopters, and planes to the game. Total conversions were surprisingly common, with Forgotten Hope successfully replacing every nation’s weapons and vehicles with correct models and damage outputs. Galactic Conquest, on the other hand, attempted to turn the game into the Star Wars game DICE would eventually be given control of many years later with Battlefront (which was in itself inspired by Battlefield).

Battlefield Vietnam (strangely missing from Battlefield Portal despite appearing in Bad Company 2) would continue to hold on to the franchise’s historical roots until Battlefield 2 came out, but both would take this degree of realism, weapon choice, and detail and integrate them into the mainline franchise. Mods have become a less integral part of the gaming landscape, mostly being restricted to simulation games, creative games, and open world RPGs, but the legacy lives on through community content creation on YouTube, Reddit, and other social media platforms. Battlefield was formative in this area, as the many creations players made would directly influence future installments in the series.

In recent years, the franchise has struggled to reach the critical success that the earlier titles had, and the modernization has decreased the amount of anachronistic chaos that lent the old games their charm. With EA’s plans to build a Battlefield universe of sorts, the frantic World War 2 gameplay of the original seems left behind. Battlefield 1942’s grand scale paved the way for other multiplayer shooters to experiment with larger sandboxes and varied content, while its community scene showed the importance of online and user-generated content. If DICE and EA wants to lead the gaming landscape again, it could do much worse than to look back to Battlefield‘s roots, and consider what made the game resonate with players in the first place.

Battlefield 1942’s ability to keep a serious and grand tone while being subject to endless slapstick and pratfalls has made it one of the most influential titles in the gaming medium. While recent entries haven’t been able to capture the exact same feel, there’s a reason DICE keeps trying, with future Battlefield games guaranteed. Regardless of the direction the series takes in the future, there’s no denying the transformative influence of Battlefield 1942, both on EA and on the gaming landscape itself.

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