Creating Controversy: No, An Upcoming EA Game About Militarized Police Doesn't Need To React To Ferguson, MO
from the imitating-life dept
As the Ferguson, MO saga continues to unfold, there are certainly lessons to be learned. An overly-militarized police force coupled with the oppression of free speech and the press aren't good ways for managing an angry population, for instance. Conversely, a police force that actually connects and serves with the community they're tasked with policing produces far better results. And, of course, we're all forced to have yet another discussion about race-relations in this ostensibly free and equal country of ours. These are good conversations to have.
Strange calls to video game companies that will be releasing a long-produced game featuring militarized police, insinuating that they must somehow be cognizant of Ferguson now that it's happened, are not useful in any way. That link serves as the kind of Kotaku article that features the gaming website occasionally going completely off the rails and twisting itself into angsty-wrong for reasons unknown to this writer. The piece starts with some of the frightening images we've all seen from Ferguson and then tailspins into this:
Into a world where Ferguson has now happened, where people around the world are confused and outraged at this type of police appearance and presence, EA is going to release a video game about heavily-armed police blowin' shit up on the streets of the USA. Nathan wrote about people's concerns (and EA's responses) with Battlefield Hardline's subject matter earlier this year, but that was a piece inhabiting a vacant plot of the media and cultural landscape, where the only thing present were those concerns. Now, we have some reality to sit alongside them.Ah, yes, fantastic point. The company that made a fictional game set in real-world American locales must now be concerned because said game features aggressive and militarized police and Ferguson just happened! Because prior to Ferguson, police were never militarized. Before Ferguson, a militarized police forces had never scared the shit out of everyone. That whole thing after the Boston Marathon bombing where the police shut down a major city and rolled SWAT tanks through the streets? Never happened, yo. Police brutalizing civilians wasn't a thing until Missouri.
Except that none of that is true. The game is a work of fictionalized entertainment and, just because the subject matter might somehow remind some folks of a police issue this country is facing, there isn't a whole lot to do from EA's standpoint. As this article admits, before then wishing upon a rainbow that somehow EA would treat their game product like not-a-game product.
So what are EA to do? Well, there's not much they can do, or to be honest anyone should ask them to with regards to Hardline. The game was announced months ago and is well on its way to being completed...What I'd hope EA do, however, and this goes for all video game publishers, is to take the subject matter a little more seriously next time they want to approach it. There's a deeply unsavory element to casting police as assault rifle-toting warriors, one that in the wake of Ferguson - and its inevitable successors - video game companies would do well to remember and be a little more careful with.I mean, you can say that if you want, but then you had damned well better be calling for the same thing when it comes to the issue of crime in this country and Grand Theft Auto, the issue of war in this country and something like a third of the games ever produced, the issue of animal cruelty and trades-workers in this country and the Mario Bros. franchise. Or, instead, we could realize that slamming makers of entertainment and art for not flinch-reacting to the news of the day, even really important news, is probably a silly thing to do.
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Filed Under: battlefield hardline, ferguson, militarized police, missouri, police, video games
Companies: ea
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The reason starts with G and rhymes with Squawker Media.
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No, that's a video game. None of that is real and everyone knows that.
The actual "unsavory element" here is cops ACTUALLY BEING assault rifle-toting warriors.
Especially when they have no plan, no understanding of what they are doing and no qualms about assaulting innocent citizens, the press or even elected officials and really believing that their getting teargassed is their own fault.
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Original title (still left in the URL slug): Soldier Cops Are Giving Games Like Battlefield An Image Problem
Kotaku can get bent.
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Meh
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Yes, because they are.
I completely agree. I don't know much about this particular game, however I think we need a game that exemplifies their concerns.
We should have a FPS game where you play a regular, average citizen. Perhaps ones that is a passerby to a peaceful protest happening at a local university.
As you pass, you see armored police tanks approaching, with kevlar covered officers exiting armed with M16s and grenades.
Someone pulls out a cell phone to take a photo, and bullets start flying. You duck as you hear explosions and gunfire rip through the formally peaceful protest. People are running in fear while being gunned down in the back.
Afterwards the police, having done their civic duty for the day, hop back in their tanks and roll away from the newly formed red pond.
Off to the next disturbance...
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I do not blame the fiction, but rather the management of such organizations, and the politicians who are letting this happen. In particular, politicians have become too removed from real life, living in their political bubbles, and this results in them making decisions on the fictions that they are fed by the lobbyists, many of whom who are work for the peddlers of fiction of the entertainment industries.
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I know it's a poor excuse...
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Eating mushrooms doesn't make you grow big and smashing ones head into a brick ceiling doesn't produce Gold?
What is next, telling me when I see Apples with legs and a mouth I shouldn't hit those apples with a shovel?
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They can make you small, too.
You're eating the wrong mushrooms.
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Re:
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Are you kidding?
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Aug 15th, 2014 @ 4:14pm
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Drop the joysticks and move away from the console.
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Re:
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The point everyone should be concentrating on with Ferguson, is the Missouri police department jumped the gun, literally. They displayed to the American public what their government has been stock piling and has in store for anyone who challenges status quo .
All that military hardware American taxpayers have paid for, to fight foreign wars such as in Iraq, is now being shipped back home and used against the very people who funded it.
In other words. The US government tipped their hand of cards too early, due to Missouri's militarized police department bringing out their military equipment prematurely. The display of military police force against the general public wasn't supposed to happen this early in the game.
It wasn't supposed to happen for another 5 or 10 years from now when widespread social unrest happens due to food shortages, global heating, or the next stock market crash.
Bringing America's militarized police force into front and center view, wasn't supposed to happen over an 18 year old's murder. It was supposed to be a surprise, shock and awe if you will, and wasn't supposed to happen until the next big social uprising happens across the country.
In other words. The militarized police is basically the US government's last line of defense against the American public. Their trump card if you will. All that military equipment is already deployed and ready for action in every town, city and state across America. Along with the taxpayer funded soldiers ready to point that equipment at the American public.
When the time comes, and it will otherwise the US Gov wouldn't be stockpiling military equipment, that equipment will be used to round people up like cattle.
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Re:
Hardline on the other hand is basically a copy of PayDay and Battlefield 3 fused together to make something different to what Activision has (*eyeroll*) and is NOT about militarisation of police but instead about the old game that kids USED to play before certain sensitive snowflakes were allowed to control what kids should and shouldn't do..
COPS & ROBBERS!
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Re: They can make you small, too.
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They had the chance to do something different with their other games and did fuck all with them. All hail the glorious American empire
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you don't know what you're talking about, again
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Free Online Games
Bubbles Shooter
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