Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach doesn't seem to have the highest opinion when it comes to discussing the in-game morals of shooter fans. In his opinion, if you give a player a gun (in a game) and put a civilian in front of him, chances are he's gonna pull the trigger. After all, it's just a game. It's a naughty thing with no chances of ever being caught.

It's this opinion that led DICE to decide not to allow players to outright kill any civilians in Battlefield 3. That, and because FPS titles are just way to easy to slap a murder simulator label onto. If watchdog groups get wind of it, the developers would be the ones sitting in the hot seat, not any of the players involved.

"If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side - because people think it's cool to be naughty, they won't be caught," he explained in an interview with RockPaperShotgun.

"In a game where it's more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child. We would be the ones to be blamed. We have to build our experiences so we don't put the player in experiences where they can do bad things.

For what it's worth, I think he's right. Some people will probably decry the perceived lack of choice that DICE is giving players, but Battlefield 3 isn't an open, sandbox-style game where players are free to do whatever they want in whatever way they want to do it. It's a military-based shooter, and in a game like that you have a set objective that you must complete without stepping over some set boundaries. The actual military does have rules about shooting civilians, after all, so just think of it as an extra touch of realism.

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