Jeff Gerstmann on Battlefield Hardline and police militarization (02/22/2015)

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• published: 07 Mar 2015
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Taken from premium content "The Taller The Jar, The Sweeter The Questions 02/22/2015": http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/the-taller-the-jar-the-sweeter-the-questions-02-22/2300-9967/ Transcript: "How much it will affect the sales or people's opinion of the game, I don't think it will that much. That's maybe sad, in a way that more people aren't worried about that sort of thing. I don't know. There are plenty of people that are not necessarily thinking about the real world ramifications of like, our relationship with police, society with police, and all that sort of stuff and how that's gone so so awry in so many different situations for a really long time. There's been a recent spotlight put on that stuff in a very major way with Ferguson happening last year and the other things that have happened around that like relatively recently. We're talking about decades and decades of stuff. All that stuff has been happening for so long, why would people get offended now? Is it because it's presented to them at a platter like, 'here's actual video of this happening, this is United States btw where you thought these sorts of things wouldn't happen' where you look at it and it looks like Beirut. No, it's Missouri. Fuck. What the fuck is going on out there. But our relationship with police and police in the media, movies, TV, and all that sort of stuff. You know, think about it. Decades and decades and decades of the police presented as the badass cop that worked outside the lines to get the job done. He's hard on the criminals because the courts aren't. The Cobras of the world, the Dirty Harrys. This is something that is engrained into our culture. It's bigger than Battlefield Hardline you know, presenting the police that way. You can agree or disagree if you think that's a problem or not. It's hard to say. Does the media we consume make an impact back into the real world or are we really able to look at it and go 'that's a fantasy, it's a good thing there are laws to keep the criminals off the streets and keep the criminals safe from the police. Cause Marion Cobretti blasting people all day long for parking wrong!' It's a very complicated problem that goes back to decades and decades of movies and television. Our nation's relationship with guns and racial relations in America too. It touches so many different things in so many different ways that you can't really pin all of that on Battlefield Hardline. If anything, Battlefield Hardline is just a symptom of our collective fascination with badass cops. I say 'our' but I'm sure there are plenty of people who are very much NOT fascinated by that sort of stuff. So, yeah I don't think it will make a huge impact on Battlefield Hardline. There will be some people that will be very outraged by certain sequences in the game. I say that as someone who hasn't seen any part of the singleplayer campaign, I'm just kind of guessing that there will be some things where people will go like 'That's fucked up!'. Well, yeah. I know there are people at EA that are very worried or concerned with how this thing will come out. Definitely people have been like 'yeesh I don't know about this one'. They'll obviously going to go ahead with the release at this point and put it out I guess in March. I bet they've already probably been over with a fine-tooth comb like 'alright there's going to be some stuff in here that, change the race of this person, do this, do that'. My solution. I was on the phone with someone at EA and I said 'well, you want to solve your problem, just turn everyone green and then when the campaign starts just say Mars, present day. Present it as some disgusting sci-fi fantasy'. Problem solved! Cause who cares what the space police do! It's a weird situation because it touches many different things and you know I go back and forth on the different aspects of it. Because you know, I've enjoyed plenty of things that are badass cops cleaning up the fucking streets, doing all kinds of fucked up shit, not reading the miranda rights. So it's yeah, weird. It's a very engrained archetype that the cop is almost a criminal, you have to be a criminal to catch a criminal. Like all that sort of stuff is a very resonant popular trope. So it's hard to pin all that on Battlefield Hardline. It's just a dumb cop-focused shooter probably, and the multiplayer looks like Battlefield so we'll see how it goes. But I don't think it will be a huge impact on their business. If anything, if there are people that call attention to it and protest it, that'll just serve to raise its profile like this game that would normally just come and go cause it's an off-shoot of Battlefield. If you already care about Battlefield, here's more multiplayer. It'll quietly sell a couple of million of copies and kind of go away. But if people make a big stink about it, it'll just make it sell more copies. One way or the other, is that good or is that bad? I believe that for you to decide."