Titanfall

About

Titanfall is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts for the Windows, Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms. In the game, players can pilot mecha robot machines known as “Titans” or use more conventional weapons to battle each other across a wide range of terrains set on a lawless alien planet.

History

On March 1st, 2010, the video game company Activision terminated the Infinity Ward co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella for "breaches of contract and insubordination." On April 12th, the Los Angeles Times^[2] reported that West and Zampella had formed the video game company Respawn Entertainment with several former Infinity Ward employees. In 2011, Respawn Entertainment began pre-production of Titanfall as the company's first video game title. In June 2013 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, Respawn Entertainment showed an official Titanfall gameplay demo (shown below). The game was released on March 11th, 2014 in North America and two days later in Europe.

Online Presence

On June 6th, 2013, the /r/titanfall^[3] subreddit was launched for discussions about the video game, receiving upwards of 31,300 subscribers in the following nine months. On the following day, the Titanfall Wiki^[4] was created. On June 16th, Redditor WhiteAsCanBe submitted a Titanfall gameplay screenshot to the /r/gaming^[6] subreddit, where it gained over 5,300 up votes and 690 comments prior to being archived. On October 22nd, the Titanfall-Community^[5] discussion forum was launched. On February 16th, 2014, YouTuber VanossGaming uploaded a montage of comical Titanfall gameplay moments, which accumulated upwards of 2.8 million views and 4,100 comments in the next two months (shown below).

On the same day, Redditor Unt4medGumyBear submitted an image macro mocking the game for not being sold on the Steam software distribution service to the /r/pcmasterrace^[8] subreddit, receiving over 4,400 up votes and 780 comments in one month (shown below, left).

On March 17th, Redditor phoenyx1980 posted a photograph of a Titanfall-themed window dressing at an electronics store, which accumulated more than 11,900 up votes and 400 comments (shown below) in the first four days.

Attack on Titan Comparison

Earlier the same year that the game was revealed, the Japanese anime series Attack on Titan began airing. Following the E3 reveal of the game, several internet bloggers noted several similarities between the game and anime/manga franchise. The earliest of which was posted two days after the gameplay reveal on June 12, 2013.^[11] The article makes mention to how both the game and anime have massive behemoths called "Titans", human soldiers who must out-maneuver said Titans, and the fact that both versions of Titans have a, "cooldown period." Several months later on September 23, 2013, a thread on Gamefaqs was created in which the OP describes Titanfall as a "Attack on Titan rip-off with mechs." However many other users who posted in the thread criticized this viewpoint stating that many other games and show had the same elements that both Titanfall and Attack on Titan share.^[12] Following the release of the game internet users once again began to note the similarities between the two entertainment properties. Due to the popularity of the two several crossover videos were made. The first was made by YouTube channel Polaris on March 28, 2014 (shown below left). A second video created by Machinima's Happy Hour channel was uploaded on April 16, 2014 (shown below right).

Reception

Titanfall won more than 60 awards at the 2013 E3 reveal. As of March 2014, Titanfall has accumulated a Metascore of 86 on the review aggregator site Metacritic.^[2]

Fandom

Pre-Release

On September 9th, 2013, Redditor North_Shore_Pokemon posted an image macro to /r/gaming^[10] speculating that Titanfall would outperform games in the Call of Duty franchise (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gathered more than 6,800 up votes and 1,000 comments.

Post-Launch

On March 14th, Redditor Upstart Duke submitted a "first world problems" Titanfall image macro to /r/gaming,^[9] gathering upwards of 7,200 up votes and 300 comments in one week.

Search Interest

External References