¡°They want to play as the law. The series wasn¡¯t built for it, but, with the help of mods, chat-rooms, and some imagination, players of recent GTAs, including the hugely popular GTA V, have found a way to roleplay as cops. Thousands of people use the LSPDFR mod, for example to turn GTA Online into a sort of police simulator. Some do it for the fun of pretending to arrest other players who roleplay as criminals. Others do it to satisfy the fantasy of driving in to save the day. The ones I¡¯ve met do it with unabashed admiration for law enforcement, drawing no connection between their fantasies of what police can be like in a video game and the frequent headlines about police killings of people of color in America or even of the killing of police. [...] The people who play as cops in GTA have a variety of motivations. Some players are into the thrill of being helpful. ¡°I have always found it pleasurable to help people when they are in need,¡± explained Corporal Smith, a Youtuber who records himself and friends roleplaying as police officers. Smith uses GTA Online to handle things like mountainside crashes and even suspicious clowns. People can have problems in the game.¡°I enjoy being the one to point them in the right direction,¡± he said. Some, like Corporal Smith, say they want to join a real-life police force. Smith explained that GTA V roleplaying was, in his mind, a way to help him experience some of the scenarios he might face as an actual police officer. Another roleplayer, SteveTheGamer, wanted to be a GTA V police officer because it was a means of restoring order to the otherwise unhinged game. ¡°Even though this is a video game, it seems like it always bring the worst out of everyone, ¡± he said. ¡°I wanted to do something different then just being a criminal.¡±¡±

¡°Though smaller efforts such as Police Force 2 have popped up over the years, Urban Chaos: Riot Response, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, and Battlefield Hardline seem to be more the norm as the police steadily become more militarized and action games continue to dominate. "Turning actual police work into a game is hard and skews towards ridiculously violent sensationalism," says Jeremy Stein, a developer who previously worked for EA but has since moved on to mobile development. "It's seemingly the same problem devs often face when making Star Trek games. They're peacekeepers with guns, but since it's easier to make gunplay fun versus diplomacy, they opt to make a shooter." But when the conversation turns to the notion of a more realistic Police RPG, he seems a little more optimistic: "That is an encouraging aspect of games today: we're getting a little better as an industry at trying on new themes and subject matter. A police RPG feels inevitable instead of silly, the way it would have at the start of last generation."¡±

¡°The list of people and things that it is acceptable to mercilessly slaughter in video games is not that long. Mostly it consists of Nazis, cultists, criminals, monsters and robots. To get onto that list you have to be seen as less than human, or to have divested yourself of your humanity to the extent that a player can not only stomach violence against you, but enjoy that violence. We can safely say given recent trends in games design that police officers are now on that list too. Why are so many games portraying police as cannon fodder or villains? Who, if anybody, is to blame? I would contend not the games developers themselves - they serve the market, and if games about shooting cops didn¡¯t sell so well we would not have so many games about shooting cops. Nor would I blame the media at large. We¡¯re still seeing movies about hero cops, good guys and bad guys, natural justice being served and that old timey morality. The old media has remained loyal to those ideas and you would never see anything like a movie with the profile of a game like GTA V or Saints Row 3 show that same level of disdain for the police. It seems more plausible that the blame for how police officers are being portrayed lies with the police and law enforcement agencies themselves. The simple fact is since the turn of the century the reputation of police officers, around the world, has been sinking faster than a socially awkward submarine. Plenty of groups have had problems with law enforcement over the years for legitimate reasons - particularly those from ethnic minorities - but in the 21st century mistrust and hostility towards police has become normalised to an extent few could have predicted.¡±

¡°In some ways, it's to be expected. Games about police and policing have been kicking around every now again for the past couple decades, after all, and the recent past has given us some big ones. Doorkickers made a big splash as an indie strategy game about cops in 2014, Battlefield: Hardline took the familiar genre of the first-person shooter and put it in the context of cops and robbers in 2015, the SWAT franchise recently returned to the minds of the gaming public with the re-release of SWAT 4 earlier this year. Nostalgia, blockbuster games, and indie hits are all ways of setting the stage for a resurgence, and the release of This Is The Police, Beat Cop, and the alpha for tactical game Police Stories in the last calendar year all seem to be following on a trend of games about cops. [...] I'm not bashing the creators of these games. They are, after all, only creating games, and each of the people that I spoke to over email was reflective about what a game about the police can mean. What is worth focusing on and thinking about in the future is how the fantasy of the exciting, heroic cop jumps from media representation to actual life (and then back again). These games are holding a mirror up to the world, though. They show us a world where police can always squeak by without consequence and where the rules of engagement always bend toward forgiveness of those figures and rarely justice for all. And that world, that fake world presented to us within the game, that's the world we live in now. How those worlds operate is how our world operates.¡±

¡°I like it when action games like Metal Gear Solid and Dishonored challenge me to minimize how much violence I dish out. One of my recent favorites, Watch Dogs 2, gives me every opportunity to tackle fun action scenarios with non-lethal melee and a stun gun. Other times, I have to be more creative or simply give up the playstyle altogether. But with Police Stories, that constraint is the game. It¡¯s a cop game that looks and plays like Hotline Miami but has more in common with the slower, more tactical first-person SWAT series in practice. To achieve the best score in a given level, not a single shot should be fired, nor a single body dropped. Instead, it¡¯s about arresting suspects while utilizing a kit of police gadgets, like tactical cameras, stun grenades, pepper spray, and breaching charges. Yes, you and your partner have guns. Yes, you may have to use them when a suspect tries to kill you. But you don¡¯t just shoot first and ask questions later. Killing a suspect without first tapping E to shout ¡°HANDS UP, GET ON THE GROUND¡± will dock you with an ¡°unauthorized use of force¡± penalty. The same goes for a suspect that¡¯s carrying a gun but has yet to raise it to you. I commanded an armed drug dealer to stand down, and they replied with ¡°I¡¯m not afraid,¡± creating a high-tension standoff. My instinct was to shoot. He wasn¡¯t shooting at me, but he had a gun and wasn¡¯t putting it down. Then I remembered a loading screen tooltip¡ªsomething about ¡°warning shots.¡±¡±

¡°The clan tag for Joe Cristando and Tom Browne in Call of Duty: Warzone is ACAB. The four-letter tag (¡°All Cops are Bastards¡±) next to their user names in the online battle royale game informs other players, in a tongue-in-cheek style, exactly how they feel about police culture. ¡°Dudes have MAGA clan tags in there all the time,¡± says Cristando. ¡°So Tom and I recently changed ours to ACAB. We'll just talk trash nonstop. Especially the dudes with MAGA tags. I'll fucking go off. I can't help it.¡± ¡°I am, admittedly, extremely left,¡± says Browne, 32, a chef who lives in London. The same goes for Cristando, 35, a gym co-owner who lives in Brooklyn. Since the Covid-19 quarantine measures went into effect in March, the two play Call of Duty together about three hours a day, usually seven days a week. The tension between the game¡¯s military cosplay and their firm political beliefs is something they talk about often, especially after the protests and marches formed worldwide following the killing of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis. ¡°It is weird,¡± says Cristando, who has been playing the game for 10 years. ¡°I've actually thought about this stuff a lot, just the dichotomy of it. ¡°I¡¯m anti-war, anti-militarization, anti-imperialism. And like, I'm playing a game that's just killing people.¡± Browne and Cristando both recognize the contradiction in their politics and the military action game they love. Cristando says Call of Duty feels like gambling ¡ª ¡°just one more game¡± ¡ª and they play into the late hours, shooting, looting, camping, and sometimes actually winning.¡±