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
Deathbrin
“and the inclusion of the “No Russian” level in Modern Warfare was possibly included solely to create headlines”
Ohh, not again! Or is it just whoelse wasn’t there when the debates were going on here?
DrNate86
As someone who shot absolutely EVERYONE on No Russian, I am thoroughly disappointed by this decision. Trying to drag your loved one to safety eh? Not anymore you’re not!
TROPtastic
Hmm… I think this is exactly the kind of situation he is trying to avoid :P
Deathbrin
Haha oh man :)
Awayze
Woah hang on, you can kill civilians in GTA games so whats the big deal?
Lol its a game, chill.
SpikeyMikey23
Aw, I wanna put bullets through different coloured pixels!!
Forrest_01
So i am not quite getting this – Will there be no civilians at all, or will you just not be able to shoot them?
I mean it’s a warzone, so the likelihood is that you wouldn’t see many civilians anyway, but it would be a little weird if there was one & the crosshair just went green (or something) indicating that you couldn’t do anything to them.