No Civilians Will Die in Battlefield 3

[Hevva]

No Civilians Will Die in Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3's executive producer says that the game has been designed to ensure that no civilians will die in combat.


Patrick Bach, executive producer behind the third instalment of DICE's Battlefield series, is worried about how gamers react to being given the opportunity to kill civilians. He fears that, given the chance, we'll usually choose to be "bad"; to deal with this, he says, his team has chosen to remove civilians from the equation altogether.

"Me personally, I'm trying to stay away from civilians in games like BF because I think people will do bad," he said in an interview with RockPaperShotgun [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/30/why-you-cant-shoot-civilians-in-battlefield-3/]. "I don't want to see videos on the internet where people shoot civilians. That's something I will sanitize by removing that feature from the game."

Elaborating on his choice, he added that it "doesn't mean that I don't want people to feel that war is not good... We are trying to do something that is more mature. Mature not being gore - some people confuse the two. That's childish actually, to want more blood." He feels that although we still have a long way to go, games "will grow with gamers."

DICE's choice is an interesting one, and adds to the growing number of questions about the place of real-world morality in games that simulate war. The community is still cautious about too much realism, as evidenced by the rules of engagement [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90759-Six-Days-in-Fallujah-Triggers-Outrage]. Hopefully, in time, our medium will find itself able to reconcile the reality of the world around us with the infinite moral choices offered by interactivity. In the meantime, DICE's decision is something definitive and progressive, and makes an interesting contribution to the debate over the place of real-world morality in war games.


Source: RockPaperShotgun [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/30/why-you-cant-shoot-civilians-in-battlefield-3/]


Permalink

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

To oversimplify it, he basically said 'people will want to do this, so we're removing the feature'. In itself, that's a very poor design outlook.

I'm not saying he isn't warranted in his concern considering the media's tendency to focus on these things, but the phrasing makes the thought process seem...off.

As for me, I think the omission is a shame. I wouldn't do it, most people I know wouldn't do it, but removing civilians entirely to force that attitude on everyone seems like the wrong way to go.

Still, it's a step up from just making them invincible for no apparent reason.

 

[cainx10a]

I for one applaud DICE's for this decision.

Problems with games like this or the wannabe docu-video game that Six days is Fallujah pretended to be, is that there is no penalty for shooting a pixelated civilian. You just shoot the poor sod who was in your way, and move on to shoot the legitimate targets, and you will probably forget that you even got a civilian only maybe if it were to deduct some points from your scoreboard "Arma 2"-style which is a game that definitely aspire to be as realistic as possible when depicting modern warfare.

Do you want the game to end after shooting some random Iraqi child who you thought was holding a gun in his hand ... CoD-style? Do you just want to hear "Oh, Joe, check your fire" and other slap on the wrist style of warnings?

Then again, he is also preventing some dumbass from posting videos of how he is "shooting some muslims/arabs" in BF3 on youtube like some do of other games, like M&B ... except here it involve spears and lots of skewing.

 

[XT inc]

So instead of being progressive and making the player choose to practice caution with repercussions while engaging the enemies in a area with civilians.

They remove all the civilians and let you go bullet and grenade crazy.

Not like trying to capture the stress of combat where you wouldn't know who your enemy is and who is a civilian.

Maybe shooters where everyone is your enemy is too generic these days.

 

[Giest4life]

Okay, this is decision is just plain stupid. Instead of adding introducing a disincentive to kill civilians, or trying to introduce a mechanic to impress upon the gamers the ugly truth of war, you remove the one thing that makes war really ugly.

Safe to say DICE did not want to attract negative publicity on Fox.

 

[xitel]

Does nobody else get the feeling that this is just yet another jab at Activision from EA's PR? I mean, as far as I'm aware, no Battlefield game has had any civilians from the beginning. So they're basically saying "Hey, you know how those other guys added this controversial thing that made people actually feel a bit of emotion instead of just 'Rawr kill enemy!'? You know how we've never done that? Yeah, we're just going to keep not doing that, but we're going to make a statement about how we're still not doing it so we can make the other guys look bad again."

Now, I'm not a fan of Activision's business practices, but at least they're not spending all of their damn time just mudslinging instead of actually publicizing their own game and showing people what it's going to be like, like any company ought to.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

Bah. Way to make taking back a city block or two feel completely empty. You expect me to believe that the city is completely devoid of any civilians? Way to break immersion.

Just back up a civilian kill with a consequence. It's not that hard.

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

Given that pretty much all of Battlefield's appeal is in multiplayer where there wouldn't be civilians anyway, I couldn't give two shits about whether or not there is civilians in singleplayer or not.

 

[SHIFTYMACO]

I think its a silly idea removing civilians from a game if they could have been used to improve the atmosphere of the game, Eg- the scene in Saving Private Ryan where there are those french civilians in the town that Vin Diesel tries to assist and then gets sniped.(yes I know that's a movie)

BUT

If Battlefield 3 is anything like Battlefield 2 there's not really any need for civilians in the game. What would be the point?

snip

Well said!

 

[akibawall95]

I do think that civilian dead is horrible, but sadly it happens in war. Most FPS games do try to avoid civilian deaths or flat out do not include civilians in most of the game. In Black Ops I think there were only civilians in the opening scene(but I am probably wrong). Think it is rather silly announcing this, if they had said nothing about it no one would have even cared.

If they want a realistic shooter then they should add civilians, people die when when the fighting breaks out and it's not just the bad guys who get hurt. I think putting civilians in combat could add another emotional level to the game. The player could have to choose between eliminating the immediate threat first or try to avoid civilian casualties. To me this decision was made by the the higher ups to avoid bad press.

 

[Mariena]

This is just another part of the BF3 vs MW3 poo-throwing competition.

I can't remember any Battlefield game that included civilians. The older Battlefields only included skirmish modes with bots. There have been no civvies, so why bring this up?

"Gosh Activision, remember that No Russian thing you guys did? That was just terrible. We hate you for it. We'd like to let the public know that we, at EA, would never ever do such a disgusting thing. Activision, you miserable sods."

That's what it looks like to me.

 

[staika]

Hooray for pleasing the mindless idiots who don't play games yet criticize everything they do. But then again a lot of people who play these games would take the time to "accidentally" shoot a civilian I should know I was planning on it.

 

[Outlaw Torn]

I guess it makes games look good if the developers are holding the players' hands rather than letting them play how they want to. Are they going to lock the trigger so you can't shoot enemies in the groin or kneecaps without killing them? In fact they might as well remove guns from the game entirely and only allow the use of those sticks from Gladiators. In the future, all conflicts will be decided in such a way so they might as well be ahead of the trend.

 

[MajorMurray]

Man, the more I hear about Battlefield 3, the more I don't like.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Ah, even war has to be sanitised. Wouldn't want our little adults learning that guns kill people, would we?

Are they specifically trying to destroy Battlefield?

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I like this choice, because I believe the producer is right: most people would happily gun down civilians if given the chance because, "Hey, it's just a game." And don't tell me they won't. When talking to my friends about shooters and RPGs and the decisions they made, I'm sometimes shocked that they choose the options they do. "It's just a game man," is the defense they always give me.

Besides, it's not like there were any civilians in player-controlled areas in other popular shooters (save "No Russian") and they did just fine. I don't understand why this is such a deal breaker for so many people. Do you get upset when you can't kill children either?

 

[wooty]

Sooooooo, no civilian deaths? And this is supposed to be a realstic US marine game? Sense, makes none this does.

Personally, I think the BF team should be focussing on curbing the grenade spam, bunny hopping and often piss poor hit detection which is still plaguing its predecessor to this day