Battlefield 3 developers, DICE, have announced that this year’s game will not allow gamers to kill civilians. Modern Warfare 2 created a lot of controversy due to the inclusion of the “No Russian” level. In this stage of the game, players were given the chance to kill members of the public in an airport.
Battlefield 3 Executive Producer Patrick Bach gave his opinion on the mindset of gamers when given moral decisions in games:
“If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side – because people think it’s cool to be naughty, they won’t be caught. In a game where it’s more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child.”
Patrich Bach made it quite clear that the studio did not want to face any backlash that would likely occur from a scene involving civilians:
“We would be the ones to be blamed. We have to build our experiences so we don’t put the player in experiences where they can do bad things. Me personally, I’m trying to stay away from civilians in games like Battlefield because I think people will do bad. I don’t want to see videos on the internet where people shoot civilians. That’s something I will sanitise by removing that feature from the game.”
Of course it could be easily argued that controversy can help sell copies of a game, and the inclusion of the “No Russian” level in Modern Warfare was possibly included solely to create headlines. It seems though that DICE want to play it safe and not turn people away from the title due to controversy with the added risk of the title being taken off shelves altogther.
Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
minerwilly
I never for a moment thought it would , theyre just saying this to create a news story and good on them ! Cant wait till october .
bravotangosix
Doesn’t make any difference to me. Battlefield is thee war game. It’s not a civilian ‘duck shoot’ game. Day one purchase!
bunimomike
Yeah, because killing people is fine compared. Hahahah!
Bladesteel
Yes. If they are armed (and preferably uniformed) and shooting back, it is atleast defensible under international law.
What would be interesting is failing a level for any breach of the Geneva conventions and other treaties. Harming non-combatants? You lose. Killing wounded enemies? You lose. Casing excessive property damage (blowing shit up for fun)? You lose. etc…
Deathbrin
Yeah, and there should be flamethrowers and bioweapons laying around making fun of you.
bacon_nuts
That’s an odd idea.. Might work.. Land mines could be included too?
MayContainEvil
That would actually be really interesting to play.
e8
nuke em all… grow some balls dice.
gazzagb
DICE just probably didn’t want the same outcry that happened with MW2, and what happened with Medal of Honour and the ‘Taliban’ backlash.
Rocket_345
I also expect that MW3 will grab the headlines this year aswell with the train level in London and it will end up sounding worse than it is.
Jakster123x
Yeah, saw this on IGN. Controversy is free advertisement, though, not exactly great advertising for your game, but publicity nonetheless.
OneShotWook
I see the guy actually says their aren’t any civilians,which is kinda different to the headline.Don’t want to be a pedant but the difference is huge,ie civilians won’t have invincibility which is where immersion is affected,like this weeks ninja old ladies in Driver for instance.
Agree with Buninomike on this,if Dice must moralize then why does dressing a guy in a uniform and giving him a wage packet make him a conscience free kill?
Easy fix would be to give a trophy for getting to level 50 without killing anyone your not supposed to kill but are in the game anyway.Gamings that easy to understand,i’ll leave the moralizing to Dice whilst i type in my relevant online pass.
TROPtastic
I think he meant that there are no killable civilians, as opposed to no civilians whatsoever. After all, in the first faultline trailer, at the start there were a few civilians walking about, and many more stuck in a traffic jam nearby. Also, while I don’t think killing soldiers is completely conscious free, if they are trying to kill you, it is a lot more acceptable than killing an unarmed bystander.
OneShotWook
I’ve not seen the video Tro but i take your point about the defensible kills,my point being when you forcibly open a can of worms this deep then you move focus from it being a game.
OllyBobs
Good, they shouldn’t allow it anyway, just causes nothing but trouble..
xdarkmagician
I disagree with the first quote. There are lots of people that’ll play games like Fallout3 or Deus Ex that choose to be a champion for the people. Just because you can do something morally questionable in a game doesn’t mean you’ll automatically do it, some people actually have character. I say throw the civilians in there and see what happens.
GTRsannin
Well i like to be a good person even in games i’d rather shoot the bad people even if i’m undercover (my so called “team mates”) i like to be the hero but i think it’s a good thing that they won’t put that kind of situations in this game it doesn’t need it
Deathbrin
Isn’t teamkilling the worst crime ever :D
TROPtastic
Unless you’re playing MoH as the Taliban, sorry, “Opposition Forces” :P
online4ntagonist
I always start out playing goody two shoes. I even feel bad when I blow up the Megatons of the gaming-world. If I wasn’t such a trophy whore, I’d never be bad :P
Should always be an option in a game though. My opinion offcourse. They could have penalised shooting civillians, why did’n they go for that. Much more realistic too.
TROPtastic
Yeah, perhaps they could have made you instant-fail a mission if you kill civilians. It would have discouraged needless killing, while at the same time adding to the realism and immersion.
e8
agree 100% TROPlastic, besides ww3 is around the corner with the state of global conflicts, let us have some fun, just a game.