Liminality and the Smearing of War and Play in Battlefield 1

Abstract

This article interrogates how war and play are smeared together in Battlefield 1, the first AAA game set in World War I. It advances liminality as a conceptual framework that goes beyond the notion of hybridity (Giddings 2005, Keogh 2014) in addressing how videogames destabilise spatial and temporal relationships and facilitate play with the memory, history and cultural meanings associated with World War I. In contrast to the tendency in games studies to focus either on single-player or multiplayer, this article analyses form, content and player responses in both to answer the following questions:

What happens when the spaces and temporalities of two liminal phenomena merge in Battlefield 1? What affective intensities are generated in the play with cultural notions about WWI, and what emerges in the tensions between game form and historical content?