The Battlefield War Games Series Embraces Police Militarization

The Battlefield series, by Electronic Arts, represents
one of the more popular collections of military
first-person-shooter war games. Its most recent
iteration—Battlefield 4, released last fall—has sold at
least 1.6
million copies (and actually probably much more) as of
February.

The vice president of the company producing the next iteration
of the game has revealed
some basic details of what is coming next. They are starting a
new series, using the franchise name and bringing the war games to
the United States. But America is not under invasion, and players
won’t be taking on the roles of soldiers. EA and Visceral Games are
embracing our militarization of the police department

Battlefield Hardline is cops and robbers, but not the
way kids used to play. Here’s the promo art:

Maybe there will be a chapter in the game where the players raid
a house and shoot the place up only to find they’ve gotten the
wrong address. Maybe the player will discover that most of these
SWAT raids are done simply to done to search premises and
administer warrants and that their violent methods weren’t even
necessary. Maybe they’ll destroy an entirely peaceful medical
marijuana dispensary. Maybe somebody will question the violent
destruction and threat to human life all for the purpose of
preventing somebody from disposing of some drugs. Maybe the player
will kill lots and lots of dogs.

Maybe not. The veep’s message at EA makes it sound like the
designers are merely interested in cops and crime as a setting, not
the reality of how it plays out in the United States. The
Battlefield games aren’t known for their plots and
single-player campaigns anyway, if the
reviews are to be believed. (I’ve never played the games
because I’m terrible at the shooter genre.) Gamers get
Battlefield for the multiplayer action. The game will most
likely bring the old cops and robbers game to a virtual space with
a militarized twist.

The site for Battlefield Hardline is here, but there’s no info
as yet. The game will be formally unveilled at the E3 gaming
industry conference in Los Angeles in a couple of weeks.

The folks behind Battlefield Hardline might want to
check out
our Reason-Rupe analysis of poll responses by frequent gamers.
We found they’re more likely to be concerned about the
militarization of the police. From our survey, 70 percent of gamers
think it’s too much for police forces to have access to military
equipment and drones as tools for crime-fighting, compared to 57
percent of non-gamers. And nearly two-thirds of the gamers we
polled believe that police officers aren’t held accountable for
misconduct.

Assuming that the multiplayer scenario allows players to choose
either side, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that there
will be “controversy” over allowing the players to take on the role
of the criminals. I suspect fewer people will raise an eyebrow at
the idea of civilian police officers being treated like military
forces.

(Hat tip to Brad
Heath of USA Today.)