Glamorizing police in video games

[coopasonic]

Excellent article on the space police aspect of Mass Effect .

Glamorizing cops has real world consequences and needs to stop. That's the only comment I'll make on this as it's very close to R&P.

I wanted to put this somewhere that we can talk about it. This is a bit of an eye opener for me. I know we as gamers have historically tended to scoff at ideas like violence in video games leading to violence in real life. This feels a bit similar to me. Opening this discussion with a bunch of liberal leaning mostly older white guys might not be the best venue, but it's what we've got.

Along similar lines I've seen articles pushing back on stuff like Batman (which hit close to my heart) basically saying that it argues police could be more effective if they didn't have to follow all those damn rules!

[LawBeefaroni]

Video games/society also glamorize war, violence, blowing shit up, you name it.

Police are a rich source to mine in fiction because they are on the front line of good vs bad (be they good or bad, they are still on the front line). They usually carry guns (important in video games and action movies/TV). They have powers not afforded to regular civilians.


Look at police procedurals and dramas. You can't see a 20 second network ad for one without seeing at least one gun, one heroic police action, and one angry, moral-high-ground exclamation of rage/revenge/victory.

[Smoove_B]

Yeah, that was a good article - not something I'd ever really thought about in the slightest. I need to process the premise as it's a rather interesting observation on how seemingly unrelated things overlap. I mean, I know sci-fi is a mirror for society, but I never really thought of the way Mass Effect might reflect attitudes on policing before. That's kinda heavy.

I have to say, I've been enjoying (I'm not really sure that's the right word) the introspection that's been occurring in the gaming and role playing world over the last few years. I watched the recent No Pun Intended review of Sleeping Gods (it's 50 minutes) and it starts with a really good historical perspective on D&D, Gary Gygax and Fighting Fantasy. I shared it with a friend and he was instantly all angry about the observations on Gygax.

I also saw that Isaac Childres published and update on some issues related to Frosthaven in terms of being more aware of tropes or offensive characterizations that has apparently set off a number of people (as expected). My buddy (same as above) is an unrepentant lover of all things Gloomhaven so I'm expecting him to not like this message either.

Anyway, I guess I wanted to jump in and acknowledge I'm one of the people that's been playing these games for 35+ years now. While I don't know what the ultimate answers are, I am trying to make sure I am open-minded and not just staying locked into my own filters.

[Remus West]

While you could argue that police would be more effective without all the rules you could just as easily prove that when the rules get ignored innocent people tend to pay the price. Even in all those movies and shows, there are always innocents paying for the actions of the police. Mostly through property damage that is never discussed on the show but when the police show up and get into a huge fire fight with a robber in your store you're not opening up for a bit after that. The laws are in place to protect the innocent. Just because the guilty try and hide behind them does not make it less valuable to protect the innocent. I'd argue that what we see from policing in minority communities is due to a lack of just that. The people do not trust the police fully and that makes doing the job harder which leads to rule bending which leads to less trust which leads to...........

[malchior]

My biggest problem with this is that the commentary inherently treats the United States as the lens of human experience somehow. News alert - this game was mostly made by a team of Canadians. Was it influenced by American culture? That is undoubtable but that we need to be worried about some police glamorization aspect is ponderous to me. Not everything needs to be boiled down and categorized inside our fractured, broken political hellscape.

Policing is about power, the power to maintain order using one’s maximum discretion. In providing police with such a free mandate, we make the trusting assumption that they will always make the correct decision. When they make a mistake, as they inevitably and often do, there are very few mechanisms with which to punish them. This makes the police — like the government it represents — a fundamentally paternalistic organization, one in which we are to place all our faith so that it may secure our lives (though only in the ways that it sees fit).

In most non-American western Democracies the police are accountable for their actions, well controlled, and maintain law and order. All good things when talking about a representative, functional democracy.

[malchior]

I have to say, I've been enjoying (I'm not really sure that's the right word) the introspection that's been occurring in the gaming and role playing world over the last few years. I watched the recent No Pun Intended review of Sleeping Gods (it's 50 minutes) and it starts with a really good historical perspective on D&D, Gary Gygax and Fighting Fantasy. I shared it with a friend and he was instantly all angry about the observations on Gygax.

I'll need to check it out. I've heard criticism about his views going back to the early 90s. IIRC TSR ran him out a bit because he became impossible to deal with on multiple fronts.

Anyway, I guess I wanted to jump in and acknowledge I'm one of the people that's been playing these games for 35+ years now. While I don't know what the ultimate answers are, I am trying to make sure I am open-minded and not just staying locked into my own filters.

I generally agree and think we definitely need more kindness all around. However, as I said above we also have to be a little cautious because particularly right now in our sphere there are mobs out there looking to just make issues out of everything and exploiting/distorting reality in the process.

[El Guapo]

My biggest problem with this is that the commentary inherently treats the United States as the lens of human experience somehow. News alert - this game was mostly made by a team of Canadians. Was it influenced by American culture? That is undoubtable but that we need to be worried about some police glamorization aspect is ponderous to me. Not everything needs to be boiled down and categorized inside our fractured, broken political hellscape.

Policing is about power, the power to maintain order using one’s maximum discretion. In providing police with such a free mandate, we make the trusting assumption that they will always make the correct decision. When they make a mistake, as they inevitably and often do, there are very few mechanisms with which to punish them. This makes the police — like the government it represents — a fundamentally paternalistic organization, one in which we are to place all our faith so that it may secure our lives (though only in the ways that it sees fit).

In most non-American western Democracies the police are accountable for their actions, well controlled, and maintain law and order. All good things when talking about a representative, functional democracy.

Yeah, and related to this, you can't expect one game (or any one piece of popular culture) to encompass everything. If a particular video game does glamorize policing, I'm not inclined to see that as a major problem. We should discuss it, and think about how police (and other things) are depicted in popular culture. But as long as other people can make police stories that tell the negative sides of policing, then I think we're ok.

[Carpet_pissr]

And then you have games like "This is the Police"

"Dive into a deep story of corruption, crime and intrigue. Take the role of gritty Police Chief Jack Boyd, and come face to face with the ugly underbelly of Freeburg, a city spiraling the drain. Will Jack reach his retirement with a nice stack of bills, or will he end up broken ... or worse?"

I tried playing through that a couple of times, and it definitely does NOT glorify the police. The opposite, actually.

[Grifman]

This is so bogus (spoilers ahead);

1) They say Shepard is unaccountable. Except that he reports to the Council and they are quite critical of some of his decisions. Indeed he does face serious repercussions for his decision to allow an asteroid to destroy a Batarian colony.

2) Another problem is this - you can play Shepard as an uncaring, totally mission focused renegade. Or you can play him as soldier who has a mission and yet who can see both sides and sympathizes with others. You can defend religious freedom for a Hannar, you can decide to help preserve the previously dangerous Rachni and preserve/save a cure for the Krogan genophage. He can make peace between the Geth and their former masters, the Quarians. On numerous occasions Shepard can make "good" decisions that try to minimize losses during missions. Shepard is not near the totally "semi-fascist" power hungry cop, uncaring about the plight of others that they try to make of him.

3) They say Shepard has ultimate agency over his companion decisions. That's true but only in real life sense. The companions do come to Shepard for advice, but in the game, they make the final decision. Shepard never forces on them a decision that they are opposed to in game. They are blaming Shepard for decisions that we the gamer make, and thus the NPC's are "forced" to accept (because it's a game, duh).

4) They complain that outside of "civilized' space there are threats - pirates, slavers, etc. Sure, and who is going to protect against them? Force is required sometimes - that's just life. Talk is not the answer with some people.

5) Shepard has an extremely diverse crew across all 3 games, made up of a variety of races from across the galaxy. Yet that doesn't seem to count for much here. The article complains that there is no black women but ignores that there is a black man and an Asian woman and Hispanic man for companions. Among the crew are an Hispanic and an Indian woman (it appears). And you can have homosexual relationships, heck you can even romance ALIENS? How much diversity is enough?

The whole premise of the article is based upon the idea that any/all "policing" is bad. That's why it can totally ignore that how you play Shepard can have a tremendous impact of the story and characters. Because if all policing is bad, then what Shepard does and how he does it is irrelevant, our choices as gamers is irrelevant. Cops=bad, therefore Shepard/ME=bad, no matter how you play him/her.

[Blackhawk]

I'll just transplant the (relevant) portion of my post from the other thread:

----------------------------------


I read the article. I don't agree. I agree with the principle behind defunding the police, and I agree with questioning how cops are portrayed in media. But I think they stretch too far and try to hard to prove the parallels, and it results in definitions and justifications that would also wipe the likes of Star Trek off of television. Like the point about Shepard having all of the agency - in a roleplaying game where Shepard is the PC. Remove his agency and you have have a Mass Effect visual novel, not a game.

Now, if they wanted to argue about games and the glorification of war, there might be an argument. Or about Western culture's attitude about trying to be the world's saviors (which Mass Effect reflects.) Or about the military using their power justly (this is where some of their criticisms really belong.) Or about how our culture can only seem to define an exciting 'hero' in conjunction with extreme violence.

[Grifman]

Like the point about Shepard having all of the agency - in a roleplaying game where Shepard is the PC. Remove his agency and you have have a Mass Effect visual novel, not a game.

Yes, I thought that was the dumbest part of the article.

[Grifman]

Now, if they wanted to argue about games and the glorification of war, there might be an argument. Or about Western culture's attitude about trying to be the world's saviors (which Mass Effect reflects.) Or about the military using their power justly (this is where some of their criticisms really belong.) Or about how our culture can only seem to define an exciting 'hero' in conjunction with extreme violence.

I agree. There's plenty of room for discussions about these issues, but right now the author is trying to fit a round peg and a square hole, in addition to ignoring a lot about the game.

[Lorini]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today. I highly highly recommend following The Marshall Project newsletter if you want to know how pervasive racism is in policing and how policing harms innocent marginalized people.

It's the same problem I have with board games glamorizing going to the Caribbean in the 1800's. Let's just ignore the slavery part.

[El Guapo]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today. I highly highly recommend following The Marshall Project newsletter if you want to know how pervasive racism is in policing and how policing harms innocent marginalized people.

It's the same problem I have with board games glamorizing going to the Caribbean in the 1800's. Let's just ignore the slavery part.

Mass Effect doesn't do that? Or other games / culture in general?

[hitbyambulance]

had a friend who was going to enter the academy after high school, so he bought allll the MS-DOS police games ever released at the time (yep, all of them) - it was all 'rah rah cops' back in the early 90s for sure.

[Grifman]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today. I highly highly recommend following The Marshall Project newsletter if you want to know how pervasive racism is in policing and how policing harms innocent marginalized people.

It's the same problem I have with board games glamorizing going to the Caribbean in the 1800's. Let's just ignore the slavery part.

Well, the problem is, few people are going to want to make and/or play a game that includes slavery as part of the game mechanic. It's like how WW2 grand strategy games ignore the Holocaust and treatment of Soviet POW's. No game like that is going to have a part where you ship concentration camp workers/Soviet POW's as slave workers to factories, or build factories by concentration camps or POW camps, or force you to divert scarce resources to the Holocaust. HOI is the biggest best WW2 grand strategy game and the Holocaust is totally absent from it. Nor is there any real discussion about Allied bombing of cities - it has such bombing but I don't think there's any discussion in any way about the civilian toll in any real way.

Look further at AC Valhalla. You do some relatively minor looting but there's no enslavement of Anglo-Saxons, or real pillaging or burning of churches or killing of priests, no sacking of cities that I am aware of. It's a sanitized version of history. There may be others, but the only game I think that incorporated anything like this was Rome: Total War where you could occupy, enslave, or exterminate the population of a conquered city. It was an important game mechanic, and I suspect most people merely saw it as such and didn't think much of it. They might have thought differently if it has been graphically presented to them after their decision, but who wants to show a cut scene of a wailing woman and her children put in chains and marched off due to a decision you made?

So then the question I ask you is this - what would you want? Is your preference that such games not be made? I suspect a fair number of historical games might not be made as history is pretty unsavory in large part. Or that games include the unsavory parts of history? Or perhaps at least acknowledge them in sort of of game preface even though that aspect may not be playable?

FYI, I think this is a much more worthwhile discussion than trying to compare ME to policing in America.

[Lorini]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today. I highly highly recommend following The Marshall Project newsletter if you want to know how pervasive racism is in policing and how policing harms innocent marginalized people.

It's the same problem I have with board games glamorizing going to the Caribbean in the 1800's. Let's just ignore the slavery part.

Mass Effect doesn't do that? Or other games / culture in general?

I only played the first Mass Effect so I can't speak of any other but there was never any doubt that what they were doing was 'right'. And yes movies/TV have come under criticism for portraying police as people who keep us safe when in fact they don't keep all of us safe for certain. In fact Law and Order (I think that's the name?) was cancelled apparently because of this issue.

There are some fundamental questions on if policing can ever be right and there are certainly grey areas in this discussion. The remake doesn't address this apparently (I haven't played it, I'm going off the article).

[Skinypupy]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today.

I'm curious how you think sci-fi games like Mass Effect - games which are set hundreds of years in the future and span massive universes with diverse alien populations, political factions, ideologies, etc. - should be accurately portraying or contextualizing current US law enforcement policies in 2021.

[Little Raven]

Uh huh.

I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely believe that popular culture influences how people approach society, and vice versa. It's all one big stew, and there is often wisdom to be gained by critically examining the themes and messages present in entertainment. But I don’t think this particular article does a very good job of that, at least in relation to Mass Effect. (maybe it’s more on-point in reference to Brooklyn 99 – I don’t watch that show.) In fact, I find myself wondering if the author ever actually played the game.

Because there’s a pretty fundamental problem with the article.

Sheppard is not a cop. Cops have rules. They may break those rules with various amounts of impunity, but they have them. Sheppard is a Spectre. We are explicitly told at the beginning of the first game that Spectres have no rules. (outside of some vague “Keep the Council mostly happy” type thing) Spectres can go anywhere, interrogate anyone, and serve as judge/jury/executioner at will. The tamest Spectre in the galaxy makes the most out of control cop imaginable look like a teddy bear by comparison.

For obvious reasons, Spectres have no real-life counterpart that I’m aware of, but the trope shows up ALL THE TIME in sci-fi universes. Star Wars has the Jedi Knights, Warhammer 40K has the Inquisitors…even the Culture series has the Special Circumstances committee. You find them in more mundane settings too…James Bond is pretty much a Spectre, and in lots of stories, Batman is kind of this figure as well. (sure, he’s technically outside of the system, but he sure works closely with law enforcement most of the time) I suspect that’s because such a person makes a fantastic vehicle for story-telling – they can go wherever the story takes them without worrying about pesky things like laws and licenses, and can engage in constant deadly drama without winding up in prison.

But because such a person is so deeply detached from anything resembling reality, I’m not sure we can really pull much insight into reality from them, outside of “people love power fantasies,” which is true, but not particularly enlightening. The game quite deliberately never goes very deeply into exactly how people become Spectres (although Garrus mentions a “Spectre training course” at one point…thinking about how THAT would work for more than about 10 seconds gets hilarious) or how such a system weeds out bad apples, because it’s very important that the audience NOT think about such things – all that would do is detract from the fun. This is the problem Star Wars eventually ran into. Jedi can kinda work (from an audience perspective) if there’s one of them and you follow him around having adventures. Once you have actual Jedi Councils doing actual government work, everything starts getting either silly or dystopian (or both!) in very short order.

It’s not like the Mass Effect universe doesn’t have cops. It has lots of them, and the player interacts with several of them. They have actual cop jobs (mostly keeping order and paperwork) which they attempt with various methods and levels of success. Many of them are envious of Sheppard’s expanded authority and more than a few will try to utilize Sheppard to “solve their problems” but virtually all of them will remark on the differences between them and Sheppard. They have rules – Sheppard doesn’t.

There’s a fascinating discussion to be had on what, exactly, the role of art and entertainment should be in society. Not every culture has come to the same answer that we have. Should art always contain a moral lesson? The communists certainly thought so. (and I’m not using that as some kind of slur…many cultures have come to the conclusion that art is powerful…probably because it is…and must therefore be carefully managed by the powers that be to promote the public welfare) I’d love to dive into that as well, but for now I have to get back to work. So…maybe later.

[Lorini]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today. I highly highly recommend following The Marshall Project newsletter if you want to know how pervasive racism is in policing and how policing harms innocent marginalized people.

It's the same problem I have with board games glamorizing going to the Caribbean in the 1800's. Let's just ignore the slavery part.

Well, the problem is, few people are going to want to make and/or play a game that includes slavery as part of the game mechanic. It's like how WW2 grand strategy games ignore the Holocaust and treatment of Soviet POW's. No game like that is going to have a part where you ship concentration camp workers/Soviet POW's as slave workers to factories, or build factories by concentration camps or POW camps, or force you to divert scarce resources to the Holocaust. HOI is the biggest best WW2 grand strategy game and the Holocaust is totally absent from it. Nor is there any real discussion about Allied bombing of cities - it has such bombing but I don't think there's any discussion in any way about the civilian toll in any real way.

Look further at AC Valhalla. You do some relatively minor looting but there's no enslavement of Anglo-Saxons, or real pillaging or burning of churches or killing of priests, no sacking of cities that I am aware of. It's a sanitized version of history. There may be others, but the only game I think that incorporated anything like this was Rome: Total War where you could occupy, enslave, or exterminate the population of a conquered city. It was an important game mechanic, and I suspect most people merely saw it as such and didn't think much of it. They might have thought differently if it has been graphically presented to them after their decision, but who wants to show a cut scene of a wailing woman and her children put in chains and marched off due to a decision you made?

So then the question I ask you is this - what would you want? Is your preference that such games not be made? I suspect a fair number of historical games might not be made as history is pretty unsavory in large part. Or that games include the unsavory parts of history? Or perhaps at least acknowledge them in sort of of game preface even though that aspect may not be playable?

FYI, I think this is a much more worthwhile discussion than trying to compare ME to policing in America.

Well policing in the US as depicted in the game and the 'profitable' journeys to the Caribbean both have the same problem. They encourage the belief that Black lives don't matter.

For the board game Maracaibo which is a game about Europeans making money in the Caribbean, the designer is going to make an expansion showing how the indigenous people fight back. In Mass Effect they could add the complexities of policing and even show mistakes made by the space police and how they dealt with them in a fair way. But none of that is there. It's all about how it's totally fine for the space police to always be correct in their police activities.

For more on this, you could also read Isaac Chiidress (designer of Gloomhaven the board game) discussion on how he dealt with real world repercussions in his fantasy world. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fr ... ts/3185807. You probably won't like this either, but for me it's exactly what polygon is talking about.

[Lorini]

Uh huh.

I want to preface this by saying that I absolutely believe that popular culture influences how people approach society, and vice versa. It's all one big stew, and there is often wisdom to be gained by critically examining the themes and messages present in entertainment. But I don’t think this particular article does a very good job of that, at least in relation to Mass Effect. (maybe it’s more on-point in reference to Brooklyn 99 – I don’t watch that show.) In fact, I find myself wondering if the author ever actually played the game.

Because there’s a pretty fundamental problem with the article.

Sheppard is not a cop. Cops have rules. They may break those rules with various amounts of impunity, but they have them. Sheppard is a Spectre. We are explicitly told at the beginning of the first game that Spectres have no rules. (outside of some vague “Keep the Council mostly happy” type thing) Spectres can go anywhere, interrogate anyone, and serve as judge/jury/executioner at will. The tamest Spectre in the galaxy makes the most out of control cop imaginable look like a teddy bear by comparison.

For obvious reasons, Spectres have no real-life counterpart that I’m aware of, but the trope shows up ALL THE TIME in sci-fi universes. Star Wars has the Jedi Knights, Warhammer 40K has the Inquisitors…even the Culture series has the Special Circumstances committee. You find them in more mundane settings too…James Bond is pretty much a Spectre, and in lots of stories, Batman is kind of this figure as well. (sure, he’s technically outside of the system, but he sure works closely with law enforcement most of the time) I suspect that’s because such a person makes a fantastic vehicle for story-telling – they can go wherever the story takes them without worrying about pesky things like laws and licenses, and can engage in constant deadly drama without winding up in prison.

But because such a person is so deeply detached from anything resembling reality, I’m not sure we can really pull much insight into reality from them, outside of “people love power fantasies,” which is true, but not particularly enlightening. The game quite deliberately never goes very deeply into exactly how people become Spectres (although Garrus mentions a “Spectre training course” at one point…thinking about how THAT would work for more than about 10 seconds gets hilarious) or how such a system weeds out bad apples, because it’s very important that the audience NOT think about such things – all that would do is detract from the fun. This is the problem Star Wars eventually ran into. Jedi can kinda work (from an audience perspective) if there’s one of them and you follow him around having adventures. Once you have actual Jedi Councils doing actual government work, everything starts getting either silly or dystopian (or both!) in very short order.

It’s not like the Mass Effect universe doesn’t have cops. It has lots of them, and the player interacts with several of them. They have actual cop jobs (mostly keeping order and paperwork) which they attempt with various methods and levels of success. Many of them are envious of Sheppard’s expanded authority and more than a few will try to utilize Sheppard to “solve their problems” but virtually all of them will remark on the differences between them and Sheppard. They have rules – Sheppard doesn’t.

There’s a fascinating discussion to be had on what, exactly, the role of art and entertainment should be in society. Not every culture has come to the same answer that we have. Should art always contain a moral lesson? The communists certainly thought so. (and I’m not using that as some kind of slur…many cultures have come to the conclusion that art is powerful…probably because it is…and must therefore be carefully managed by the powers that be to promote the public welfare) I’d love to dive into that as well, but for now I have to get back to work. So…maybe later.

Shepard is part of the space patrol if I remember correctly. So if you read the article you'll see that's what they are talking about.

White male heterosexual supremacy in entertainment is a huge problem. To all marginalized people. As we can see from the 72 million who voted for Trump and Jan 6, people use what they see as reasons to justify hate. Many of them think the police act just like they do on TV because they aren't exposed to anything else. They have no idea what the police actually do, whether it be for good or for bad. What they see on TV/in the movies/in the games absolutely affects the real world.

[Skinypupy]

In Mass Effect they could add the complexities of policing and even show mistakes made by the space police and how they dealt with them in a fair way. But none of that is there. It's all about how it's totally fine for the space police to always be correct in their police activities.

I'm not sure that's a very accurate statement. Having just finished it yesterday, I can think of 3-4 instances in the first ME game alone where the space police were faced with "grey area" situations that had repercussions (positive and negative, depending on how you were playing) on both the populace and the space cops themselves. Without getting into any specifics, both Garrus and Harkin brought some very negative things to light regarding C-Sec (the space cops), how they operate, how corrupt they may or may not be, and the effect it had on both other cops and citizens.

I certainly never got the impression that the game was pushing a "space cops were always right" narrative, but perhaps that's just a blind spot for me. If so, I'd love to hear your perspective so I better understand.

[LawBeefaroni]

The issue for me is that they don't use context in showing what policing is like in the US at least today. I highly highly recommend following The Marshall Project newsletter if you want to know how pervasive racism is in policing and how policing harms innocent marginalized people.

It's not "policing" as a concept. It's policing as implemented by a government constructed to preserve and protect the wealth of the ruling class. When racism is institutionalalized in all aspects of a society, is it really a shock that the society's police force is racist?

[Little Raven]

Shepard is part of the space patrol if I remember correctly.

With respect, I think your memory is failing you here. Shepard has a variety of backstories, all of which are military in nature, and is never part of any law enforcement agency. Specters are quite explicitly NOT cops. They sometimes work adjacent to law enforcement, but even that is relatively rare. Most of Shepard’s antagonists are not criminals...heck, many are expressly law-abiding even as they do bad things. “Enemies of the state” is maybe the best descriptor, but real world terms won’t translate well because Shepard is not a person that could exist in the real world.

I did read the article, and like I said, maybe the point they’re trying to make works better in relation to Brooklyn 99, which is ostensibly about real cops. But Mass Effect is very expressly not about that.

White male heterosexual supremacy in entertainment is a huge problem.

I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but Shepard is only white or male if you want them to be.

[El Guapo]

Shepard is part of the space patrol if I remember correctly.

With respect, I think your memory is failing you here. Shepard has a variety of backstories, all of which are military in nature, and is never part of any law enforcement agency. Specters are quite explicitly NOT cops. They sometimes work adjacent to law enforcement, but even that is relatively rare. Most of Shepard’s antagonists are not criminals...heck, many are expressly law-abiding even as they do bad things. “Enemies of the state” is maybe the best descriptor, but real world terms won’t translate well because Shepard is not a person that could exist in the real world.

I did read the article, and like I said, maybe the point they’re trying to make works better in relation to Brooklyn 99, which is ostensibly about real cops. But Mass Effect is very expressly not about that.

White male heterosexual supremacy in entertainment is a huge problem.

I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but Shepard is only white or male if you want them to be.

Yeah, at the start of ME1 Shepard is part of the military, and quickly becomes a Spectre (which is most closely analagous to being a CIA agent, but as others have said more so in terms of unaccountability. Sort of a super UN agent, I guess.

Part of the issue is that it's almost impossible for ME1 to address the broader context of US policing since Shepard's not a policeman and it's not set in the U.S. So that's a story that's better addressed in a game that is in those contexts.

[Isgrimnur]

And all the marketing.

[Skinypupy]

Shepard is only white or male if you want them to be.

Or hetero

[Little Raven]

And all the marketing.

Now THERE is a legitimate gripe. Don’t get me wrong, Mark Meer did fine, but Jennifer Hale simply blew him out of the water. I can’t believe how many players never try FemShep, and I do blame marketing for at least some of that.

[Grifman]

White male heterosexual supremacy in entertainment is a huge problem.

I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but Shepard is only white or male if you want them to be.

I was going to point this out. Your Shepard can be straight, gay, bi-sexual, and one of several human races. This is one of the problems with trying to fit ME into a certain narrative.

[Grifman]

Well policing in the US as depicted in the game

No, it's not. The game has absolutely nothing to do with the US.

and the 'profitable' journeys to the Caribbean both have the same problem. They encourage the belief that Black lives don't matter.

No, those games totally ignore the issue. And if they were totally historical, they would only reinforce the idea that Black lives don't matter. So I'm still not clear on what you would like to see here.

In Mass Effect they could add the complexities of policing and even show mistakes made by the space police and how they dealt with them in a fair way. But none of that is there. It's all about how it's totally fine for the space police to always be correct in their police activities.

As people keep trying to point out,the game has nothing to do with "policing". Shepard is as much of a "policeman" as the Jedi are. And as noted elsewhere, the real "police" in the game are shown as a mixed bag. It's a game about traveling across the galaxy, identifying a threat (the Reapers) and figuring out how to stop them. ME is space opera, not a police simulator.

[Grifman]

For more on this, you could also read Isaac Chiidress (designer of Gloomhaven the board game) discussion on how he dealt with real world repercussions in his fantasy world. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fr ... ts/3185807. You probably won't like this either, but for me it's exactly what polygon is talking about.

And you would be wrong. This doesn't bother me in the least. I have no problem with a game thinking about how certain parts of a game story could be perceived by all sorts of people, and giving the player an option on how to participate or not in certain perhaps controversial aspects. What I object to is the original article you linked to and how IMO, the author totally missed the boat in their article. To me it was like they came up with the idea for the article, and then tried to fit ME into it, whether it really fit or not. I just think the ME article is poorly reasoned and very superficial in its treatment.

[Lorini]

Less warm recollection is spent on the jobs these characters hold, which exist (in various forms) in the military arms of the galaxy’s major political players. Whether it’s as Earth Alliance Military, Cerberus Commandos, or reinstated Alliance Navy Officers, Shepard and their crew are always some version of glorified space cops. They travel the galaxy, maintain security, and enforce order, while largely being unaccountable to any power beyond their own.

I'm assuming you folks disagree with this statement? This is what I'm stating my opinion on.

[Little Raven]

I do, hence my question about whether or not the author actually played the game.

Some of Shepard’s crew have some background in law enforcement, although they’re the distinct minority. Garrus is expressly an ex-cop, and spends much of the first game coming to terms with the difference between what he was and what he is now. (You can help him either embrace that change or reject it, but by the later games he moves on entirely) Samara is...kind of a cop, in a very alien Jedi way. That’s about it, though. Everyone else is either military, a super connected scientist, or a flat out criminal.

But the crew spends almost no time doing cop things. They virtually never ‘provide security’ generally, the situation get much, MUCH less secure once Shepard shows up. They don’t do law enforcement and almost never arrest anyone, though they do sometimes partner with local cops for limited terms. They’re basically an extra-judicial paramilitary force that has no real world counterpart.

[gilraen]

I literally don't relate anything in sci-fi/fictional universe/fantasy/etc. games to the real world. And I don't play anything that actually takes place in the real world.

[Alefroth]

I literally don't relate anything in sci-fi/fictional universe/fantasy/etc. games to the real world. And I don't play anything that actually takes place in the real world.

Really? So much of sci-fi is a metaphor for the real world.

[Isgrimnur]

They’re basically an extra-judicial paramilitary force that has no real world counterpart.

That you know of...

[Little Raven]

That you know of...

But that’s the thing - in the ME universe, EVERYONE knows about the Spectres. There’s an entire movie franchise about Blasto, the Hanar Spectre. Shepard can show up anywhere, wave her Spectre badge, and everyone either falls in line or starts shooting pretty much immediately. But somehow nobody ever asks “Wait, in what universe is creating a nigh unaccountable position and giving them access to top military equipment and a license to use it however they see fit a GOOD IDEA?!?”

[Kurth]

Read that article and thought it made some interesting points, but seemed like the author was referring to some game that was absolutely NOT the ME that I played through twice. Like, an entirely different game altogether . . .

[LawBeefaroni]

Read that article and thought it made some interesting points, but seemed like the author was referring to some game that was absolutely NOT the ME that I played through twice. Like, an entirely different game altogether . . .

Like maybe they watched a Let's Play instead of actually playing?

[Skinypupy]

Read that article and thought it made some interesting points, but seemed like the author was referring to some game that was absolutely NOT the ME that I played through twice. Like, an entirely different game altogether . . .

Agreed, and I imagine lots of this comes down to how each individual person chooses to play the game.

There are lots of variables and decision points in ME that - if you play in a certain way and make certain decisions - could leave the player with a problematic impression of how the game approaches law enforcement. However, there are just as many choices that lead in the complete opposite direction, with yet others that leave you somewhere in the middle.

The author's experience with the game certainly wasn't mine, and vice versa.