{"id":75818,"date":"2014-08-22T11:45:09","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T15:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=75818"},"modified":"2014-08-22T11:56:08","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T15:56:08","slug":"ask-questions-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/22\/ask-questions-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Questions Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the worst possible moment, <\/em>Battlefield Hardline valorizes police violence.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

An early screenshot of Battlefield Hardline<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Battlefield<\/em> series, one of the past decade\u2019s most popular video-game franchises, has already given gamers the chance to play as soldiers in World War II, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Now Battlefield Hardline<\/em>, slated for release early next year, allows players to assume the role of a new kind of soldier: the police officer. A recent preview of the game<\/a> shows a cop throwing a thief to the ground and cuffing him; the player is given the option to Hold E to Interrogate<\/em>. The officer yells, \u201cTell me what you know!\u201d and earns fifty points: Interrogation successful<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To Visceral Games, who developed Battlefield Hardline<\/em>, the roles of soldiers and cops are so interchangeable that Army camo can simply be \u201cre-skinned\u201d into police uniforms. In light of the killings, riots, fear, and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the game raises disquieting questions about the relationship between law enforcement and citizens\u2014in short, it\u2019s a horror to watch.<\/p>\n

As a cop in Hardline<\/em>, you\u2019re tasked with preventing robberies and rescuing hostages, which often means shooting all the criminals until they\u2019re dead. (The gentlest thing you can do is arrest them.) The game also enables players to take the role of the criminals, and perhaps the more troubling aspect of Hardline<\/em> is that this experience is identical to playing as the police: both \u201cthe good guys\u201d and \u201cthe bad guys\u201d see the world through crosshairs. The best players shoot first, and shoot from behind. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn multiplayer, the world is simple,\u201d reads the game\u2019s website. \u201cYou\u2019re on one side of the law or the other.\u201d This sort of tone-deafness permeates the game and its marketing. Given recent events, one might expect the hype around Battlefield Hardline<\/em> to have gone quiet; instead, it\u2019s becoming increasingly prevalent. On August 13, four days after police shot Michael Brown, Visceral Games released a twelve-minute trailer<\/a> showing off a chunk of the game\u2019s single-player campaign. The video opens as the main character\u2014seemingly an undercover cop\u2014is carted off by a guy in a bucket hat who points his pistol at your black partner and says, \u201cRace is not a factor here. My dislike of you is strictly personal.\u201d Even when Hardline<\/em> is being self-aware, it\u2019s tasteless.<\/p>\n

Throughout the preview, a voice-over from the game\u2019s creative director, Ian Milham, explains that you can complete levels one of two ways. The \u201cstealth approach\u201d allows you to sneak up on bad guys and arrest them. For each one you put in cuffs, you collect money\u2014a bounty\u2014that you can use to buy better weapons later. A less patient player can simply go in with guns blazing, shooting with impunity. Simply put: as a cop in Hardline<\/em>, you have the choice of killing people or not. The decision is entirely dependent on your mood. The extent to which this varies from practice in the U.S., where police officers are ostensibly only permitted the use of deadly force as a last resort, is debatable.<\/p>\n

I e-mailed Visceral Games to ask about the ethical predicaments that Hardline<\/em> presents, but received no reply. When Hardline<\/em>\u2019s creators talk about the game, they do so with juvenile enthusiasm. Speaking to the video game site Polygon<\/a>, Battlefield Hardline<\/em>\u2019s executive producer, Steve Papoutsis, explained that the inspiration for the game was all the \u201ccool, kick-ass stuff\u201d law enforcement has:<\/p>\n

\n

They\u2019ve got cool motorcycles. And they\u2019ve got helicopters. They even have police planes \u2026 And then like SWAT<\/small> guys. Come on, who doesn\u2019t like all the stuff SWAT<\/small> guys load up in? They look pretty sweet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, almost all of the writing about Hardline<\/em> from video game outlets has shown blithe eagerness for the game\u2019s urban setting. Polygon is perhaps the only major publication to criticize Hardline<\/em>\u2019s troubling themes, but even that comes after glowing preview articles with titles like \u201cIs Battlefield Hardline the next eSports darling?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shaken the country\u2019s view of the military, if the rising number of school shootings has made us rethink our relationship to guns, none of these concerns have affected the robust sales of first-person shooters. In fact, as political and personal cognizance of violence has become more relevant, shooters have become more realistic, more violent, and more popular. The genre by itself has become a billion-dollar business, advancing by technological leaps and bounds each year.<\/p>\n

Are first-person shooters popular because they\u2019re in demand or only because they\u2019re being developed? In an interview with NPR\u2019s All Tech Considered<\/a> about video game violence, Ken Levine, the creator of a sci-fi series called BioShock<\/em>, explained that game publishers are more willing to fund shooters because they\u2019re easy to market. \u201cA shooter answers a lot of questions for you: the main mechanic is you have this gun, you have weapons, you have enemies, you have conflict coming at you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The correlation between violence in entertainment and reality remains unclear at best, but it\u2019s clear that games have an influence on American youth\u2014it was just over a decade ago that the U.S. military developed America\u2019s Army<\/em>, a free online shooter that depicted ground warfare more accurately than comparable games. It was developed for seven and a half million dollars\u2014just one-third of a percent of the Army\u2019s annual marketing budget\u2014and is considered one of the most successful recruiting efforts ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last November, Maria Konnikova explored the reasons why first-person shooters are so popular in a piece for The New Yorker<\/em><\/a>. \u201cFirst-person shooters put our ability to control the environment, and our perception of our effectiveness, at the forefront of play,\u201d she wrote. The irony that law enforcement appear to have neither control nor effectiveness in Ferguson appears to be lost on the 600,000 people who, as of this writing, have watched the Battlefield Hardline<\/em> preview on YouTube since it was released.<\/p>\n

Since 2002, when the Battlefield<\/em> series was introduced, every major American conflict has been dramatized in an iteration of the game. Law enforcement seems like the natural next step. But it\u2019s one thing to lionize the military; it\u2019s another to advocate that the police is<\/em> the military. The tragedies in Ferguson have renewed interest in the militarization of American law enforcement. As Jay Caspian Kang asked in The New Yorker<\/em> last week<\/a>, \u201cHave we also become anesthetized to images of police in armored vehicles and full military gear?\u201d<\/p>\n

Battlefield Hardline<\/em> implies that the answer is a resounding yes. The tagline on the game\u2019s website reads, \u201cLive out your fantasy of being a cop and criminal.\u201d Note that conjunction: and<\/em>, not or<\/em>. In Hardline<\/em>\u2019s universe, the two aren\u2019t mutually exclusive\u2014perhaps the most subversive and intelligent point it\u2019s likely to make.<\/p>\n

Kevin Nguyen (@knguyen<\/a>) is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the worst possible moment, Battlefield Hardline valorizes police violence. The Battlefield series, one of the past decade\u2019s most popular video-game franchises, has already given gamers the chance to play as soldiers in World War II, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Now Battlefield Hardline, slated for release early next year, allows players to assume the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15070],"tags":[15071,15075,8920,15073,15074,7738,4339,781,494,14787,15072],"class_list":["post-75818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-games","tag-battlefield-hardline","tag-cops","tag-current-events","tag-ferguson","tag-first-person-shooters","tag-military","tag-missouri","tag-police","tag-video-games","tag-violence","tag-visceral-games"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAsk Questions Later<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At the worst possible moment, \u201cBattlefield Hardline\u201d valorizes police violence.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/22\/ask-questions-later\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ask Questions Later by Kevin Nguyen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 22, 2014 \u2013 At the worst possible moment, Battlefield Hardline valorizes police violence. 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