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Aug 25th, 2018 at 16:49:20 - This Is the Police (PS4) |
In my initial playtime of This Is the Police, I ran into a number of in occurrences that could be seen as ethical dilemmas. One of these was when the game was teaching me how to fire people, it defaulted on firing my best man on the shift. At first, I was under the impression that I had to fire him, and I tried hitting various buttons on my controller, which ended up resulting in the game softlocking(oops). I later learned I didn't have to fire that character, it simply defaulted to him, but it brings up the question of whether a game should be able to make a choice for you in a situation where you can normally make the decision yourself.
Another ethical issue actually arose as a result of me having to restart the game. Since I had already gone through part of the work day before the game taught me about firing, I had to restart game, and thus redo some of my progress. However, I learned from my failures on the initial attempt to do better in the second. The ethical dilemma here is that the developers most likely didn't not intend on players getting second attempts in their first playthrough. Is it wrong for me as the player to play differently for the sake of doing better, or should I have tried to recreate my first attempt for the sake of preserving my first experience of the game.
The other major ethical concern presented was when the game told me to fire all of my black cops as an in game objective. Before I touch on the issue of race, I'd like to tackle this dilemma by discussing that the game explicitly told me to do so, where everything has previously been a choice given to the player. Granted, the player still has the choice to do so or not, but I yet to play enough to see the consequences of my actions. For the record, I chose not to fire them. This objective was also related to an election that is happening in game, which the police happens to have connections to. I also feel as though this is an interesting portrayal of the police force. In theory, the police shouldn't have bias in any way, so is it ethical to portray them in this way? Of course in real life, there have been examples of the police having this kind of bias, but should a game do so, or should it be an upstanding example of the police?
There is also the matter of race in this situation. I'm not sure of the exact time frame this game takes place in, and if the game told me I'm failing to remember, but it's clear to see that a takes place in a time several years ago, or at least a time that mirrors such a time period. Regardless, although I have yet to play the entirety of the game yet, if someone were to put the game down at around this point, it's easy to see how this could be misconstrued as pushing a racist agenda. Is it ethical to have this in a video game, or should there be a disclaimer upon starting the game stating whether or not the game is representative of the developers ideals?
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