It’s Battlefield season again, that special time of year when your friends suddenly remember they own headsets and your GPU fans prepare for war.
With Battlefield 6 hitting the trenches and players declaring it “the best one yet” (we’ve heard that before), I cracked open the NAG March 2015 issue to see what the gaming battlefield looked like a decade ago.
Spoiler: it was full of downsized studios, Sims expansions, and the early rumblings of a Call of Duty identity crisis.
Let’s rewind the clock to a time when RGB meant one colour per component and social media wasn’t a warzone.
The latest (and greatest?) Battlefield released over the past weekend, and players are flocking to play, probably the best war shooter we will see this year (sorry COD, I just don’t have faith. Prove me wrong).
With that in mind, I dove back into the NAG March 2015 issue, where Battlefield: Hardline adorned the cover, a far cry from the franchise’s roots.
What other tidbits and trinkets were discovered leafing through the leafy-thin pages? Let’s find out!
Ken Levine is “Levine” in a fantasy
In 2015, one of the biggest names in the gaming world was Ken Levine, who was known for System Shock 2 and the Bioshock series.
Having just come off another successful release in Bioshock Infinite (and providing it with some great expansions), he raised a few eyebrows with the announcement that Irrational Games, the studio behind his brainchild, would be downsizing from about 90 to 15 members.
At the time, Levine’s explanation was that he wanted to focus on smaller, narrative-driven games that were replayable and immersive. He also dropped that he was working on a new IP.
Fast forward ten years, and this “new IP” has a name… and that’s about it.
Judas was said to be in development hell in 2022 already, and despite an announcement trailer in December that year and slivers of news since, we have yet to see anything concrete.
The Sims 4 gets to work with Get to Work
I don’t know about you guys, but back in the 2010s, I had an unhealthy obsession with Sims that involved still playing the Castaway spinoff on PS2 (all those spinoffs were bangers) and visiting my cousin to play the latest Sims 3 expansion he had bought.
When Sims 4 launched in 2014, I was notably disappointed by the amount of features lacking from its predecessor.
In 2015, the latest of the franchise would get its first expansion pack, Get to Work, allowing us to control our Sim at our workplace for the very first time (now if only we got to go as postal as…Postal)
A decade on, and The Sims 4 has a plethora of expansions giving hours upon hours of content, with a modding community giving even more hours upon hours of content, though not without competition on the rise, as inZoi and Paralives have made it clear that they want a piece of that life simulation pie.
Call of Duty moves to a three-year development cycle
By 2015, the titan Call of Duty had already firmly cemented itself as an annual release, with chart-topping sales to bolster it even more.
After the underperformance of Ghosts in 2013 and Advanced Warfare in 2014, a decision was made to allow three-year development cycles for their development houses (with Sledgehammer Games making up the third).
Treyarch would therefore be next in line to release in 2015, bringing back the Black Ops franchise with the beloved Black Ops III (and ensured Battlefield Hardline would firmly be playing second fiddle for the coming future, until Battlefield 1 released a year later).
In 2025, things are a little different. Black Ops 7 (seven?!? Seven of them?!) is due to release in November, but if you ask me, I think Battlefield 6 might just have its number.
Swat flies, not gamers
A disturbing trend was on the uptick in gaming ten years ago. With the advent of live content creation such as Twitch on the rise, some people clearly just wanted to watch the world burn, by calling in SWAT teams on streamers just to watch their home get invaded in real time.
This, coupled with ongoing problems such as GamerGate, meant it was a real tough period for us gamers who just wanted to game.
We were almost classed in the same category as, shudders, football fans.
These are problems that are still lingering in our gaming communities, but if there is a silver lining, know that you will always feel special, warm and fuzzy with your friends at NAG.
Bonus tidbit: The editor’s note
As I was paging through this magazine to find news articles, I just couldn’t write this piece without mentioning what the editor had to say in this issue.
The editor at the time, Geoff Burrows (or “GeometriX” as some may know him), had gone on a mini rant about how Peter Molyneux had unethically promised things about Godus (a God-like sim, probably meant to be the “true vision” of Black & White) to secure Kickstarter funds, and then proceeded to not implement said promised things.
In 2025, Masters of Albion (a God-like sim, probably meant to be the “true vision” of Black & White), developed by 22cans and Peter Molyneux, is set to release soon, with a new Fable also coming out early next year.
The more things change…
Ten years later, it’s wild how little, and yet how much, has changed.
We’re still waiting for Ken Levine’s next masterpiece, The Sims is still selling DLC like it’s oxygen, and Molyneux is still promising godhood.
Maybe the true circle of life isn’t in The Lion King, it’s in gaming history endlessly looping with slightly better graphics and bigger download sizes.
Either way, paging through old NAG mags reminds us that while the pixels may age, the passion never does.
About BigMacDaddy:
BigMacDaddy is a rockstar, MLG gamer and world-renowned knowledge base for all gaming studios… in his dreams.
In real life, he is a full-time software developer and loves family time.
His hobbies include a lil’ YouTubing, chess, game development and travel.