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heybeardo

The Ethics of Battlefield: Hardline

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Hey guys, I played a bit of the Battlefield: Hardline beta the other day (impressions below). There's something that bothered me about the shift from a military shooter to one involving law enforcement. I've heard other people mention it as well, but what are your thoughts? I mention it a bit in my video, how playing a game where waves of cops get killed feels wrong. Someone on the Battlefield forums made a good point too, something that didn't occur to me:

 

'Stopped watching when you said "Killing cops wave after wave feels wrong." But killing soldiers feels right?'

That's a fair point, actually. I guess I've been desensitised to killing soldiers in games and switching it up draws attention to that.

 

Is this just part of modern gaming culture? Is it right to kill soldiers but not cops? What other aspects of gaming do we look past that are potentially problematic?

 

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Killing soldiers without a thought is one of the more troubling parts of gaming culture at the moment, but I think the reason most people accept it is that the most common image we get of soldiers in the media is fighting in these kinds of constant battles (even if a significant number of soldiers actually work in the motor pool, sit behind a computer, or fly a drone from a strip mall in Nevada). 

 

That said, I'm more unsettled by the player in the role of a police officer shooting a perpetrator on sight. I know this is basically re-skinned Battlefield game, so it ultimately just plays like Battlefield, but the police being portrayed as a military force and anyone who breaks the law as an enemy combatant seems extra disturbing. 

 

So, I guess shooting soldiers should feel wrong, shooting cops feels wrong, shooting criminals (without following proper procedure) feels wrong, and maybe Battlefield: Hardline just feels wrong.

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I'd love to participate in this discussion today (I'm working a doible and have a lot of time to kill), but my circumstances don't allow me to watch your video until this evening. So I'll only be responding to what you've written here.

Cops, soldiers, gangsters, insurgents makes no difference to me. One thing that I do appreciate (not necessarily in this case) is when both sides are shown to have a mixture of just and unjust motives. I can imagine something that would look like thought-killing propaganda in a similar game-structure, but I don't really see one in Hardline from what I've played; maybe the assumption that the criminals and the cops have equal resources and fire-power is one. When I played the beta, one of my first thoughts was that this game would make more sense if placed in a mexican border town. This is based off of what I hear about the civil-war Mexico is experiencing currently, living in Appalachia with an internet connection. I think a good question would be "Would placing Battlefield Hardline in a Mexican border town help the victims of that war, or hurt them?"

As far as desensitization goes, I think that games tap into our love of simple, achievable objectives that we can easily measure progress towards. My concern is when issues of public policy and personal relationships are submitted to this intoxicating optimization, not so much when games use themes of public policy and personal relationships. I would argue that people already have a disturbing tendency towards inconsiderate optimization in their decisions of how to treat others. My opinion is that games themed with the relationships of people actually help by showing how absurd the optimization-view is in its concentrated form. There are people playing who want to live out their fantasies of being a member of a righteous military poilce force, or a righteous criminal gang. And there are people whose views on police and criminals will be informed by this game. But in both cases, what is important to me is that when these people participate in public policy and personal relationships, that they don't think of it in terms of optimization. If the game has any responsibility to evoke this consciousness, then my suggestion would be to make sure to show that both sides of the conflict have heroism and villany. I would also include a mixture of motives that shows how in some cases, they both want the same things and in others they have mutually exclusive interests.

I think I may have a hypocritical view. I preach against the propaganda of optimization, but I have my own agenda that I would like to forward through it. If pedestrians were included, and both teams were disincentived to have casualties accounted to their actions, the game could say some interesting things. Maybe one team could steal the weapons of the other team, dress as them and then mow down a group of innocents in order to lower the other team's score. The reason that including this type of thing is attractive to me is that it might expand a player's view of what the possible motives of the cops and robbers may be.

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My main issue with these kinds of choices is that they're rarely made with an intention to explore a complex relationship of cops against criminals, they instead just take it as a given that this is one version of X vs Y that can be used for a game. These choices seem as though they don't question their assumptions about the idea that the police and criminals are antagonistic to one another. Or that if people do question the relationship, any of their attempts to get the design to reflect this are ignored or shot down because it's 'just a game'. Whether people feel that way about games in general or the non-indie non-'art' games, it's a common reason people believe that they don't need to think about what their game actually means at its core because they're not trying to say something. But the reality is that every game says something whether the makers wanted it to or not. So any responsible creator would spend a lot of time wondering about what the ramifications of their choices are, but too many people in the industry just seem to think that if they're not trying to say anything, then surely nothing is being said.

 

 

 

Side note: It'd be nice if you edited the volume levels of the videos a little, to avoid the peaks in gameplay volume making it harder to hear what you're saying.

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I'd love to participate in this discussion today (I'm working a doible and have a lot of time to kill), but my circumstances don't allow me to watch your video until this evening. So I'll only be responding to what you've written here.

Cops, soldiers, gangsters, insurgents makes no difference to me. One thing that I do appreciate (not necessarily in this case) is when both sides are shown to have a mixture of just and unjust motives. I can imagine something that would look like thought-killing propaganda in a similar game-structure, but I don't really see one in Hardline from what I've played; maybe the assumption that the criminals and the cops have equal resources and fire-power is one. When I played the beta, one of my first thoughts was that this game would make more sense if placed in a mexican border town. This is based off of what I hear about the civil-war Mexico is experiencing currently, living in Appalachia with an internet connection. I think a good question would be "Would placing Battlefield Hardline in a Mexican border town help the victims of that war, or hurt them?"

As far as desensitization goes, I think that games tap into our love of simple, achievable objectives that we can easily measure progress towards. My concern is when issues of public policy and personal relationships are submitted to this intoxicating optimization, not so much when games use themes of public policy and personal relationships. I would argue that people already have a disturbing tendency towards inconsiderate optimization in their decisions of how to treat others. My opinion is that games themed with the relationships of people actually help by showing how absurd the optimization-view is in its concentrated form. There are people playing who want to live out their fantasies of being a member of a righteous military poilce force, or a righteous criminal gang. And there are people whose views on police and criminals will be informed by this game. But in both cases, what is important to me is that when these people participate in public policy and personal relationships, that they don't think of it in terms of optimization. If the game has any responsibility to evoke this consciousness, then my suggestion would be to make sure to show that both sides of the conflict have heroism and villany. I would also include a mixture of motives that shows how in some cases, they both want the same things and in others they have mutually exclusive interests.

I think I may have a hypocritical view. I preach against the propaganda of optimization, but I have my own agenda that I would like to forward through it. If pedestrians were included, and both teams were disincentived to have casualties accounted to their actions, the game could say some interesting things. Maybe one team could steal the weapons of the other team, dress as them and then mow down a group of innocents in order to lower the other team's score. The reason that including this type of thing is attractive to me is that it might expand a player's view of what the possible motives of the cops and robbers may be.

 

You make some good points here. I don't think AAA publishers are interested in showing complex, thoughtful relationships between sides in opposing conflicts. War is rarely symmetrical but this is the standard model for shooters. Balance over realism.

I've heard Spec Ops: The Line mentioned as a more thought-provoking recent shooter but I haven't played too much of it yet.

 

Side note: It'd be nice if you edited the volume levels of the videos a little, to avoid the peaks in gameplay volume making it harder to hear what you're saying.

 

Thanks for the tip. I reduced the volume of the gameplay footage but clearly not enough, ha ha. Forgot how loud Battlefield games can be.

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Eh, I'd say the problem is less with who you're shooting at and more why you are shooting at them. In real life, many (if not most) soldiers engage in violence either because they have to conscription or they think it will lead to greater good (because they are genuinely defending their country, trying to install an (in their eyes) more benevolent government in other countries or subscribe to a worldview where a country must achieve dominance over others lest their culture gets destroyed), whereas the criminals in Hardline want (unearned) money for themselves and the cops are just trying to protect other peoples' property or lives. (Though I guess from the equipment and tactics the cops use in Hardline, it seems like it takes place in some sort of Orwellian police state and so the criminals might have more of a justification)

 

Edit: Though this is more from a "how YOU might feel perspective", since I find it personally pretty hard to take offense at Multiplayer titles due to the fact that they never seem to condone certain actions the way a singleplayer title might. So, I guess I'm more worried about being queasy about shooting millions of Puerto Rican drug smugglers in the back of the head with a silenced pistol in the singleplayer campaign than I am about blowing Sgt. Ghostsnipa69666 up with a tripmine in multiplayer.

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Thanks for the tip. I reduced the volume of the gameplay footage but clearly not enough, ha ha. Forgot how loud Battlefield games can be.

 

For the most part it's fine, and i think lowering the volume further might remove the quietest bits of gameplay audio. I was assuming that you were editing the video with a program that would let you dip the audio levels lower at specific times, but I realise now that's not actually a given.

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For the most part it's fine, and i think lowering the volume further might remove the quietest bits of gameplay audio. I was assuming that you were editing the video with a program that would let you dip the audio levels lower at specific times, but I realise now that's not actually a given.

 

That would be very handy, actually. I'll have a look to see if the editing software I use supports that. Good tip, cheers!

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I think I may have a hypocritical view. I preach against the propaganda of optimization, but I have my own agenda that I would like to forward through it. If pedestrians were included, and both teams were disincentived to have casualties accounted to their actions, the game could say some interesting things. Maybe one team could steal the weapons of the other team, dress as them and then mow down a group of innocents in order to lower the other team's score. The reason that including this type of thing is attractive to me is that it might expand a player's view of what the possible motives of the cops and robbers may be.

 

This reminds me of the Airport scene in Modern Warfare 2, a scene that seems to exist only to inflame. I can imagine a sandbox game like ARMA 3 integrating mechanics like this (it's technically possible with the current engine), with different covert tactics influencing the gameplay.

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Are there any games where false-flag missions are a mechanical option? The closest I can think of is starting proxy wars in Civilization 5 through diplomacy.

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Are there any games where false-flag missions are a mechanical option? The closest I can think of is starting proxy wars in Civilization 5 through diplomacy.

 

There's a quest in World of Warcraft where you need to pit one faction against another by planting evidence and killing a load of enemies on both sides.

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I was hoping for a choice a player makes rather than a situation authored by the game-designers.

As I'm thinking about what a responsible game would say about cops and robbers, I'm realizing that the way the motives are presented would probably be important. In the case of Hardline, in my brief experience, it looked like the cops were willing to crash helicopters into buildings and light up the streets in order to secure five million dollars of cash for some evidence. The criminals looked like they were willing to race motorcycles up escalators, ride elevators in skyscrapers, shoot out windows and base-jump in order to grab money for more guns. Maybe two rival gangs would be a more appropriate theme. NPC cops that create problems for both sides would be neat.

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This game, Pay Day, and that one GTA IV mission all owe heavily to the stylistic choices of the "Heat" bank heist scene. Whereas GTA IV at least tried to tap into the themes of desperation that Heat was going for, BF:Hardline seems content with following Pay Day's superficial aping of the tone. There was even one *terrible* Polygon interview where a Battlefield PR guy was all "cops and robbers, pew pew, fun!"

 

Where some further dissonance arises is pairing something that isn't meant to be taken very seriously with the overtly serious pre-existing Battlefield 3/4 military tone. You act like soldiers but in a "populated" urban setting. It isn't more or less moral than soldiers shooting each other, but it *is* more dissonant I think. As has been said here, if the mechanics had changed at all this might not be an issue, but it's clearly just a reskin. A TC mod practically.

 

Rainbow Six: Seige, while having a huge problem with shitty damsel tropes, does seem to be a much better execution of the cops/robber formula.

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This game, Pay Day, and that one GTA IV mission all owe heavily to the stylistic choices of the "Heat" bank heist scene. Whereas GTA IV at least tried to tap into the themes of desperation that Heat was going for, BF:Hardline seems content with following Pay Day's superficial aping of the tone. There was even one *terrible* Polygon interview where a Battlefield PR guy was all "cops and robbers, pew pew, fun!"

 

I debated including footage of the North Hollywood Shootout in my video, as that reminded me of Hardline. I thought better of it though, after realising it might be crass. That seems to be the tone Hardline is going for, amazingly.

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I'm speaking from a place of ignorance on the specifics of this game but I think trying to place this in some kind of modern context is kind of flawed. There is no justice. Banks are equally criminal enterprises, running a rigged system, literally stealing people's homes with forged documents, laundering drug cartel money, blowing up people's life savings on known flawed instruments, and scamming interest rates. Police in America are increasingly militarized and phenomenal drains on taxpayer resources. Obviously robbing people at gunpoint is wrong, but you're more likely to be a victim of your bank than armed assault. Making a "Serious" game out of it is kind of dopey, but I could enjoy it if it were framed in some kind of ridiculous Hong Kong HARD BOILED light. 

 

Though, it would be kind of wild if it approached it from a totally nihilistic point of view like that, every faction plainly stating their "might makes right" grossness. 

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There was a YouTube video I saw of a session of ArmA 2 and I wish I could find it again. It was one of those super serious invite only servers where everyone is ex-military and strict role-playing is enforced.

This is to the best of my recollection.

There was a team of 4 or 5 soldiers and everyone else were locals, around 30 players. Most of the locals were civilians, with a list of tasks to accomplish at locations around the map. However, a few were insurgents with the goal to kill or disable the soldiers in any way possible. The soldiers' job was to patrol a route, talk to and search the locals and kill or capture insurgents, following realistic ROE.

The trick was, the civilians had instructions to become insurgents if they saw soldiers kill or arrest innocent civilians (i.e. someone who did not appear to be armed and where not, to their knowledge, insurgents) or if the soldiers made it impossible for them to accomplish their tasks.

If you've listened to the podcast you know how invasive you can get with another player's avatar in the ArmA engine, searching them, tying them up etc. Since the soldiers had no idea who the insurgents were, every encounter with civilians was like the hyper paranoid encounters you hear about in DayZ and were really intense to watch.

Tons of interesting (and scary) encounters came out of it. Since the civilian players were eager to do something more "interesting", encounters with the soldiers would frequently attract onlookers demanding the soldiers' justification for how they were treating the locals (hoping for an excuse to go rogue). The insurgents would constantly bait the soldiers to kill civilians. The soldiers pretty much immediately became the hyper aggressive dicks you'd expect the situation would turn them into.

One highlight(?) was a sequence following a group of civilians who had to deliver a crappy, unloaded rifle to the far side of the map in a car (as a wedding gift, they decided). They were pulled over by the soldiers and immediately separated and interrogated. When the soldiers found the rifle, they decided the group were insurgents and tied them up (they weren't convinced by the wedding story). They then realized that they didn't have room in the truck for so many prisoners and considered killing them on the spot. Before they could decide, actual insurgents attacked, killing one soldier and wounding another. The soldiers were cut off from their truck and retreated into a nearby village, but not before spraying the wedding party with automatic fire, killing all but one.

The insurgents untied the remaining civi and gave him a LAW rocket off the dead soldier. The newly converted fighter then stalked the soldiers with the other insurgents until he cornered one and ran at him suicidally, blowing both of them up with the rocket.

Video games.

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The idea of police as a militarised force is extremely disturbing to me, as is the idea of the criminal underworld being a paramilitary force. There's enough real-world context to know that at some point the police have utterly failed at their job, and millions of dollars have spent to allow that incompetent police force to cause massive collateral damage. Honestly I can't even imagine organised crime thinking it's a good idea to tear up the city that they rely on for income, especially givne that you have to deal with all the other crime lords who are suddenly extremely concerned about the nutters with heavy artillery getting in the way of business.

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Polygon interview tried to tackle this and it was really the wrong place and the wrong time, but a fair question.  

 

It would be interesting to see a game tackle these questions, but considering this is Battlefield and EA, I wouldn't be looking for anything more than surface level movie fantasy. This game isn't trying to model cops and robbers, but rather fullfill that cops and robbers film fantasy. In that sense, I agree with the guy on Polygon with his response, even as ineloquent as it was, approaching it from the stand point of "we want you to have fun in this over the top movie bank heist" doesn't seem inherently bad as long as the player approaches it with that in mind.

 

And who wouldn't realize that after playing a game where for, 5 million dollars at stake, 200 robbers (Let's pretend that when you re-spawn you are a different person or we have to concede there resurrection also exists in this world) that kills 200 cops in LA (again, assuming that there is no resurrection). I mean it's ridiculous and who would take that seriously? Also this is a world where the cops, to stop the criminals, steal the money back from them.

 

It's window dressing and clearly with not a lot of deep thought put into it for the sake of a fun game that has to match a certain criteria for it's namesake.  

 

Mostly agree with youmeyou, but that Rainbow SIx thing was such a staged farce, nearly the exact same footage could be taken from Hardline if we rehearsed it as well as Ubisoft did.

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Mostly agree with youmeyou, but that Rainbow SIx thing was such a staged farce, nearly the exact same footage could be taken from Hardline if we rehearsed it as well as Ubisoft did.

 

I dunno... this article by PC gamer on their experience playing it at E3 gives me hope that R6: Seige will play similarly to what was demo'd:

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/rainbow-six-siege-e3-hands-on/

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I have no doubt the game features will all be there and the options for "tactics" and destruction; but anyone who has played a shooter online would be kidding themselves to think that's how it's going to end up being played by the public. Even by  several limiting movement speed to make it more methodical, you're still going to get more "gamey-ness" in a real game than what was staged/roleplayed/whatever there.

 

Edit: Actually I am speculating on the outcome of a game that is pre-alpha based on an E3 video. So yeah, I can't say for certain. But given a very staged demo vs. normal gameplay of every other shooter. It's just a gut feeling, but I can't say or judge until its out in the wild.

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There was a YouTube video I saw of a session of ArmA 2 and I wish I could find it again. It was one of those super serious invite only servers where everyone is ex-military and strict role-playing is enforced.

This is to the best of my recollection.

There was a team of 4 or 5 soldiers and everyone else were locals, around 30 players. Most of the locals were civilians, with a list of tasks to accomplish at locations around the map. However, a few were insurgents with the goal to kill or disable the soldiers in any way possible. The soldiers' job was to patrol a route, talk to and search the locals and kill or capture insurgents, following realistic ROE.

The trick was, the civilians had instructions to become insurgents if they saw soldiers kill or arrest innocent civilians (i.e. someone who did not appear to be armed and where not, to their knowledge, insurgents) or if the soldiers made it impossible for them to accomplish their tasks.

If you've listened to the podcast you know how invasive you can get with another player's avatar in the ArmA engine, searching them, tying them up etc. Since the soldiers had no idea who the insurgents were, every encounter with civilians was like the hyper paranoid encounters you hear about in DayZ and were really intense to watch.

Tons of interesting (and scary) encounters came out of it. Since the civilian players were eager to do something more "interesting", encounters with the soldiers would frequently attract onlookers demanding the soldiers' justification for how they were treating the locals (hoping for an excuse to go rogue). The insurgents would constantly bait the soldiers to kill civilians. The soldiers pretty much immediately became the hyper aggressive dicks you'd expect the situation would turn them into.

One highlight(?) was a sequence following a group of civilians who had to deliver a crappy, unloaded rifle to the far side of the map in a car (as a wedding gift, they decided). They were pulled over by the soldiers and immediately separated and interrogated. When the soldiers found the rifle, they decided the group were insurgents and tied them up (they weren't convinced by the wedding story). They then realized that they didn't have room in the truck for so many prisoners and considered killing them on the spot. Before they could decide, actual insurgents attacked, killing one soldier and wounding another. The soldiers were cut off from their truck and retreated into a nearby village, but not before spraying the wedding party with automatic fire, killing all but one.

The insurgents untied the remaining civi and gave him a LAW rocket off the dead soldier. The newly converted fighter then stalked the soldiers with the other insurgents until he cornered one and ran at him suicidally, blowing both of them up with the rocket.

Video games.

 

 

 

Slightly off-topic, but as far as ARMA groups go, ShackTack is like the Marx Brothers in terms of seriousness. You'd be surprised at how many people get off by getting people to call them Sir on the internet (You actually wouldn't, probably)

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That might very well be the video I'm thinking of (or one that I saw in conjunction with others). I don't remember it being as clowny, but it has been a while and my old (32yo) brain may have mixed it up with more srs stuff.

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Granted the game mode shown in the video is really just a capture the flag variant, but I still agree with the sentiment that this is problematic when combined with the aesthetic.  I think the difference between the Cops and Robbers vs Military aesthetic is largely that it explicitly glorifies the deviant elements of society.  Two soldiers on opposing sides are ostensibly both there voluntarily, or due to patriotism/nationalism/etc and the civilian world is almost presented as if it were excluded from the scenario.  A criminal on the other hand may be in their position because of having no other option, or for the thrill of it, or for greed.  A soldier dedicates themselves to something more, while a criminal need not.  I think the thing you hit on in this thread is that in Hardline all the veneer of self sacrifice and dedication to a cause larger than yourself is completely stripped away.  The superego is ignored, and the Id takes over completely.  I suppose the question then becomes is a somewhat phony representation of selflessness any less bothersome than one completely embracing selfishness.  I think ultimately both aesthetics are problematic, but Hardline seems to require and revel in the obscene motivations of its players.

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Two soldiers on opposing sides are ostensibly both there voluntarily...

A criminal on the other hand may be in their position because of having no other option, or for the thrill of it, or for greed.  

 

I strongly disagree with this. When you take into account that COD focusses on the middle east where many are forced into violence by their extremist peer or superiors it makes the whole voluntary thing plain wrong. 

It's pretty much the same on the western side too, many people "volunteer" for the army because they have no other option, and the only stable employer in the region is army - specifically in the US. It has very little to do with nationalism. There's not much of a choice between join the army or starve is there?

 

The difference between the two games is a reskin.

 

I've not been able to watch the video - I tend to read forums during downtime at work so videos are out, but I think the analysis that "killing X feels wrong" in every context is a little silly. Maybe I'm desensitised to it all, but when I'm playing a game, I know I'm shooting/stabbing/jumping on imaginary things. Sure I can feel emotionally attached to characters, but beating enemies has very little effect on me. They're all essentially robots. 

It reminds me of when I was a teenager and my friend came round. I popped in Halo and he said "This is boring, I want to shoot people." I honestly didn't understand the difference, and I still don't. They're all the same to me. It's also why I think the whole "violence in video games makes people violent" argument is laughable. 

The fact that Battlefield is just a playground for shooting goes to support that it's not pushing any sort of narrative. There was no anti-american rhetoric when it was Allied vs Nazis, there is unlikely to be any anti-police, pro-crime rhetoric in Hardline, nor will the message be about the dehumanization of criminals. The designers wanted something cool and fun for people to play. A lot of people forget about this aspect with AAA games, and to me Cops 'n' Robbers sounds like it'll strike a chord with many people as fun. 

 

Also: Who hasn't spent hours killing cops in GTA X? 

 

On another point, Spec ops: The Line isn't what I'd call a thought provoking shooter. It's more thought provoking than many shooters, but not by a hell of a lot. It's a pretty weak game, with a few interesting parts - especially the ending. I don't regret playing it, but if I had know how average it was going to be I would have skipped it. I think people talk it up because it actually had the balls to do something different, rather than because it was good.  

 

 

P.S. I hope my post doesn't come across as "you're thinking about it too much" because that's not what I'm saying. It's good to think about things! 

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