The developers need to take more chances when it comes to narrative

Dec 7, 2011 07:03 GMT  ·  By

The most successful first-person shooters of the current year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, all adopted near future narratives as their setting of choice, but one leading executive believes that current conflicts could also make for very good stories.

Frank Gibeau, who is the leader of the EA Labels division at Electronic Arts, spoke to Kotaku and said, “As a studio exec, I wouldn’t have any opposition to somebody saying, ‘No, I want to tell the real story as it unfolded.’ I’d be totally open to hearing that pitch; it would certainly be a twist on what’s out there in the marketplace.”

He added, “Medal of Honor frankly was ripped from the headlines more than a little and told the story of the SEALs that were helping us build the game. We had a concept about what it was like to be a Marine and being a part of very large events. It was really important for us to capture that emotional feeling of being swept up into things that are bigger than just one person.”

Gibeau believes that the graphics of video games might never become good enough to lead to confusion between in-game shots and real footage of war, but the executive says that, from a narrative standpoint, gaming can already try to portray real conflict.

The executive also said that introducing gay characters in military games is a possibility, after the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law, which restricted a soldier’s ability to express his sexual orientation.

The Electronic Arts leader believes that gamers reacted well to exploration of same sex relationships in the Mass Effects series from BioWare and says that something similar might be a possibility for the next installment of something like Battlefield or Medal of Honor.

Battlefield 3 managed to sell more than 12 million copies of Electronic Arts since its November launch.