EA and Battlefield developer DICE decided on this strategy several years ago. They knew they wanted to get away from the modern and near-future settings for a while, but it also didn’t want to burn the WWII setting right away. This led the studio to start with WWI knowing that it could always still go to WWII with the next game if Battlefield 1 didn’t work out. Of course, that wasn’t the case — Battlefield I finished 2016 as the No. 2 best-selling game in the United States, according to the industry-tracking firm The NPD Group.Update: The headline here originally misidentified the franchise in question as Call of Duty. Apologies for the error.