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heybeardo

The Ethics of Battlefield: Hardline

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Payday 2's tone and frankly poor-to-middling writing makes it really just seem like total caricature to me. Not to mention the mechanics are not extremely connected to the reality (kill a civilian or guard, put him in a body bag, and throw him in the back room of the nearby convenience store - does this even approach realistic?) and I find it very easy to play Payday 2 with no harm to my conscience. 

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I just want to be clear that I am not making assumptions about anyone who enjoys PayDay 2. I know that we all react differently to different tones and content.

That said, thanks for sharing how you view PayDay 2 so I can compare my own impressions.

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I originally mentioned Payday 2 as a silly game in contrast to Battlefield's generally rather serious tone.

 

That being said, I watched some Hardline footage and it struck me as pretty dumb as well. I'm not interested just because I'm not interested at this point.

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Payday's tone and presentation definitely make it a caricature rather than a commentary.  And I do give the game credit for things like actually punishing you for killing civilians, both verbally and mechanically.  I just can't help feeling really weird about it while I'm tying up hostages and shooting SWAT officers in the head.  It's still fun in spite of all this, which just adds to the level of discomfort for me.  Not enough that I want to stop, but I do kind of wish the game had a different presentation so I could just enjoy it more.

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During the sale I watched a gameplay video of Payday 2 when deciding whether or not to buy it or Insurgency. After watching gameplay, My reaction was "I don't want to do that. These dudes are creepy." Then when I watched the Insurgency video I was like "This looks like fun." I don't know what that says about me.

I think Insurgency, while probably the better game, is far more distressing in its content. You mentioned the inherent casual racism of the game, which in turn coaxes out gross bigotry from the player base.

 

Again, maybe it's the attempted authenticity of a game like Insurgency versus the overt hyper-stylization of Payday 2.

 

I'm not ready to talk about it because I haven't finished the game, but Wolfenstein rides this wave so precariously that it might be the grossest of all.

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I'm not ready to talk about it because I haven't finished the game, but Wolfenstein rides this wave so precariously that it might be the grossest of all.

 

Slight derail, but I would very much like to hear someone's thoughts about that, whenever you finish the game. There has been a little critical discussion about the racial and social tropes present in Wolfenstein, but the alternate-history setting and the presence of Nazis has dissuaded even RPS from doing a good deep-dive.

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Wolfenstein's an odd game because it does a lot to promote a diverse cast and touches on American imperialism (many of the game's newspaper clippings paint the resistance effort as terrorists), but still revels in its sadism--the game practically begs you to salivate at the thought of perforating a Kriegsmarine with his own knife or cheer heartily when you liquify a heavily-armored soldier with the pulse rifle.

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I think Insurgency, while probably the better game, is far more distressing in its content. You mentioned the inherent casual racism of the game, which in turn coaxes out gross bigotry from the player base.

 

Again, maybe it's the attempted authenticity of a game like Insurgency versus the overt hyper-stylization of Payday 2.

 

I'm not ready to talk about it because I haven't finished the game, but Wolfenstein rides this wave so precariously that it might be the grossest of all.

 

Racist assumptions encouraging bigotry in the player-base, yes. I'm still really upset about the invasion of Iraq so I find the reference material of Insurgency very distressing. The propagation of the racist, paranoid nationalism that allowed that war to occur in computer-game form bothers me on a rational level more than an emotional one. I'm not sure why that is the case. But as far as what I saw from PayDay2, here is the video I watched:

 

The whole thing just creeps me out, even before they start shooting. The sound-scape and apartment set-up make me feel like I'm watching some movie where half of it is showing the rope-burned hostage crying and smacked while "Shut-UP!" is being yelled at them. The instructions by phone add to that feeling. ClownMasks+surgical gloves = creepy. Screaming women and robbery dominance voice just creep me out.

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Also, Blaskowicz's jacket is made of human leather, which really upset me for some reason.

 

I can understand why. How can that detail not be an intentional poke at the holocaust?

The zombie mode of COD games make me uncomfortable because I feel like they just reversed the skins. A bunch of unarmed crowds who are undead (dead who have not received justic so they haunt) surrounded by Nazi symbols makes me feel like someone wanted a nazi-fantasy and just reversed the description of who was being shot so it would be acceptable.

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I can understand why. How can that detail not be an intentional poke at the holocaust?

The zombie mode of COD games make me uncomfortable because I feel like they just reversed the skins. A bunch of unarmed crowds who are undead (dead who have not received justic so they haunt) surrounded by Nazi symbols makes me feel like someone wanted a nazi-fantasy and just reversed the description of who was being shot so it would be acceptable.

 

Incidentally, one of the reasons that Inglourious Basterds didn't sit well with me.

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The sound-scape and apartment set-up make me feel like I'm watching some movie where half of it is showing the rope-burned hostage crying and smacked while "Shut-UP!" is being yelled at them

 

I recently started playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist thanks to the latest steam sale, and that sentiment describes about half the cut scenes in the game.  As much as I like stealth games, I don't think I'll be able to make it through the whole thing entirely due to the cut scenes.  Usually Sam starts by hitting the guy, then he eventually gets around to asking for information, doesn't get it, rinse and repeat.  In some scenes Sam gets the info he wants, but keeps on kicking the shit out of the guy or you can decide to kill him.  The scenes aren't as graphic as Splinter Cell: Conviction, but are just as prevalent.

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The whole thing just creeps me out, even before they start shooting. The sound-scape and apartment set-up make me feel like I'm watching some movie where half of it is showing the rope-burned hostage crying and smacked while "Shut-UP!" is being yelled at them. The instructions by phone add to that feeling. ClownMasks+surgical gloves = creepy. Screaming women and robbery dominance voice just creep me out.

 

To be fair to the game, you can't smack the civilians around without killing them which the game punishes you for doing.  You yell at them to get down and can zip tie their hands behind their back in order to move them around or prevent them from escaping, but that's it.  If you do kill a civilian, you get penalized money and the disembodied voice yells at you for doing it.  It makes your respawn time longer on the lower difficulties and on the higher ones you can only respawn if the team has hostages to trade for captured robbers so the game actively encourages you not to kill them.  But the mask and glove thing is definitely creepy.

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Remember a while back, when a couple of people asked for examples of the militarization of the police? Well, "fortunately", you never have to wait long for it to show up:

http://mashable.com/2014/08/13/ferguson-police-protests-vs-iraq/

 

That sniper rifle picture? The demonstrators they were "controlling"? Peaceful protests of the shooting of an unarmed black man.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/another-police-shooting-in-ferguson/article_7fb366f0-2f29-5bdd-b18b-34c9d8c688e7.html

 

More pictures:

http://www.stltoday.com/gallery/news/multimedia/protests-arrests-continue-monday-in-ferguson/collection_3cb71990-8eb8-5328-aeda-bd0d4bed7198.html#0

 

Some Editorial:

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/america-is-not-for-black-people-1620169913

 

To tie this back into the gaming discussion, this is a good example of why game developers need more diverse teams than just white coastal males. I'm pretty sure nobody who has these kinds of interactions with the police would think Hardline was a good idea.

 

Also relevant, if you want a more rigorous analysis, the ACLU put out a general report recently:

https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-police-report

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I'm still not clear on what the concern is. I'm not dismissing the concerns, I'm just limited by my perspective.

Is the problem that:

1.Battlefield: Hardline promotes the illusion that militarized police are necessary?

2. That the issue of militarized police is treated lightly?

Would a game called "Battlefield: Ferguson" be ok if one side was unarmed and trying to go home?

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I'm still not clear on what the concern is. I'm not dismissing the concerns, I'm just limited by my perspective.

Is the problem that:

1.Battlefield: Hardline promotes the illusion that militarized police are necessary?

2. That the issue of militarized police is treated lightly?

Would a game called "Battlefield: Ferguson" be ok if one side was unarmed and trying to go home?

 

It feels like a mix of both.  Ferguson is an example of what a militarized police force is like, Hardline is an example of what it could become, albeit to the extreme.

 

I also just want to say that Hardline actually presents an equivalent response since the criminals are just as armed and dangerous as the police while Ferguson is entirely one sided.  That's not a point in Hardline's favor, just an observation.

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PETA should branch out a little and make a game where you play a police officer who fires non-lethal armament, like tear gas grenades, regular assault rifles with rubber bullets, and sonic weapons, at unarmed civilians that act like they would in real life. Or maybe an aspiring game jam thing.

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I realize I'm living in a dreamworld here, but after the recent events in Ferguson, the tasteful thing to do would be to cancel the game.

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I realize I'm living in a dreamworld here, but after the recent events in Ferguson, the tasteful thing to do would be to cancel the game.

 

I imagine the realistic thing is it will probably be delayed until they think it's been long enough that people won't make the connection anymore.

 

As a tangent to that, RPS had a piece today about the single player trailer but they've since removed it given current events.

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I think you can make a fun version of this game, like if you made it some kind of "action movie" setup, like hong kong triads vs cops, or like some kind of 80s action nonsense, but when you're talking about "realistic militarized police" you can't ignore that realistically these police are killing unarmed people of color every day, most often while executing a search warrant for drugs. 

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Is the problem that:

1.Battlefield: Hardline promotes the illusion that militarized police are necessary?

2. That the issue of militarized police is treated lightly?

 

 

It's not a question of making it appear necessary. It's a question of making it appear normal. The core concept of the game, the elevator pitch, if you will, takes the equivalence of Law Enforcement and Military for granted. 

 

The fact that is treats it without seriousness is basically expected. A Battlefield game wasn't ever going to be a Very Special Episode about Police Militarization. If they were going to make this game, it was always going to be this. But deciding to go forward with the project in the first place exhibits tone deafness and poor judgement.

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I think you can make a fun version of this game, like if you made it some kind of "action movie" setup, like hong kong triads vs cops, or like some kind of 80s action nonsense, but when you're talking about "realistic militarized police" you can't ignore that realistically these police are killing unarmed people of color every day, most often while executing a search warrant for drugs. 

It amazing how many people are trying to find meaning and commentary in Hardline when at it's core they have said it's in the format of a cheesy cop drama like CSI (They referenced Micheal Mann for the action, which I don't think they are nailing, but the cut scenes are completely nonsensical tv cop drama). 

 

Yes there could be commentary about the militarization of the police force in this game, there could be even a two sided argument going on in it as well, but there isn't. Is that a failing on the game? Depends on what you want to get out of it, if you're looking for a hard hitting social commentary, I can guarantee it's not coming from Hardline or anywhere else that is attached to EA.

 

This isn't meant to be the Spec Ops of militarized police shooters, it's a fairly superficial romp in television cop land.

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The debate isn't whether or not the game is trying make any social commentary but whether or not the game's setting and presentation are appropriate and what the message people get out of it is.  I think everyone knows that it's not going to tackle any hard hitting questions but that doesn't mean that asking those questions is pointless.  A game doesn't have to be about racism to be racist.

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Not providing a "commentary" and presenting the world in a certain way without addressing why it is that certain way is a commentary in itself. 

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@SecreteAsianMan If games are art, and I believe they are, then nothing is off the table. Whether it is from past, present or recent events. Between movies, comics, music, multimedia, and games there are a billion examples of what Hardline is portraying. Does that mean we should dismiss it no? Does that say something, as JonCole proposes? Yep.

 

I'm a little confused as to why one product deserves so much attention and lamentation when millions/billions of others have presented these issues with the same superficiality?

 

There was some talk about Watch Dogs before/after it came out, but I didn't see a lot of comments about canceling the game because of what it represented. And to be fair, the issues America is going through with this do happen in other places, but I'd care to wager the issues Watch Dogs were treading on affect a much larger group of people across the world and are just as serious.

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