VOID Interactive’s 2023 gritty tactical shooter Prepared or Not is copaganda. Not essentially in a nasty means — however like all recreation (or media, actually) that facilities on the heroics of regulation enforcement, it inevitably shapes and reinforces how we understand the police.
Copaganda is the shorthand critics use for media that paints policing in an uncritically constructive mild, smoothing over its flaws and presenting officers as the skinny blue line between order and chaos. It runs the gamut from shiny community dramas like Blue Bloods or Legislation & Order — the place the cops are all the time proper and the system largely works — to schoolhouse “outreach” applications like D.A.R.E., which critics say had been much less about educating youngsters to not do medicine and extra about placing cops in school rooms, and encouraging youngsters to report on their very own households.
For the previous month, I’ve been enjoying the newly launched console model of Prepared or Not on PlayStation 5 — a port surrounded by controversy and fees of censorship. VOID Interactive, the studio behind the sport, stated in a Steam submit that modifications had been made to the sport to assist it get printed on consoles. Not that Prepared or Not is a stranger to backlash. Again in 2021, throughout its early entry part, the sport’s builders parted methods with writer Team17 after confirming to followers that, sure, a college taking pictures mission can be included — and it will definitely was.
At its most cynical studying, Prepared or Not performs to the reactionary fever desires of right-wing paranoia: a dystopian city hellscape — Los Sueños, a fictional model of Los Angeles — overrun by gangs, cartels, and pedophiles, with solely closely armed tactical models assigned to “deliver order to chaos.” It is a narrative that echoes the real-life messaging typically pushed by regulation enforcement, particularly when crime intersects with race and poverty.
Credit score: Screenshot by Mashable/VOID Interactive
VOID Interactive — and probably the most vocal corners of its fanbase — place Prepared or Not as an unflinching, hyper-realistic police simulator. Its lore and tactical realism method have additionally made the sport particularly in style inside the MilSim (army simulation) group — a distinct segment gaming group crammed with former and lively service members alongside die-hard army fans.
The sport, they declare, is supposed to immerse gamers within the grim, high-stakes world SWAT groups face each day, regardless of how ugly that world will get. And to be honest, the sport performs all the best hits of contemporary American trauma: a college taking pictures, a Pulse nightclub-inspired bloodbath, a hospital siege, residence block shootouts, and even a number of standoffs with libertarian and anarchist compounds.
Constructing missions instantly modeled on a few of the darkest chapters in latest U.S. historical past requires a sure urge for food for edginess — and a noticeable lack of tact. Don’t fret, Name of Responsibility does it too. And but, right here’s the irritating fact for gamers like me who aren’t aligned with its imaginative and prescient: Prepared or Not is admittedly fucking enjoyable to play.
One of many greatest promoting factors of Prepared or Not — and an enormous a part of why I like it — is that it’s functionally a survival horror recreation disguised as a tactical shooter. VOID Interactive mainly stated, “What if we took the vibe of SWAT 4’s Fairfax Residence mission and constructed a whole recreation round it?” The stress of breaching a door, the uncertainty of what’s ready across the subsequent nook, the push of pulling off a flawless takedown, the oppressive ambiance of dread — all of it clicks so completely that it’s straightforward, for a second, to overlook what precisely the sport is asking you to purchase into.
That’s no accident. As a result of for all its fame as an ultra-realistic shooter, Prepared or Not completely leans into violence, and it doesn’t do a lot to discourage it. In observe, the sport rewards you for clearing rooms and dropping suspects with deadly precision. Each encounter calls for it: fail to observe the principles of engagement, and also you’ll be slapped with failing grades on the finish of a mission.
Nevertheless, whereas non-lethal play is part of the sport, it’s handled extra like a problem mode for gamers chasing excessive S-rankings relatively than a significant core mechanic. Your non-lethal arsenal in Prepared or Not is proscribed: a taser, a beanbag rifle, pepper spray, fuel grenades, and flashbangs. You’ll be able to attempt to incapacitate suspects with low-caliber rounds as a substitute of killing them outright, however that calls for split-second decision-making in high-pressure situations the place NPCs can whip out a gun and shoot you useless with out warning.
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Credit score: Screenshot by Mashable/VOID Interactive
On this means, the gameplay echoes police narratives on coping with crime. The builders, in any case, did converse with a number of regulation enforcement officers to precisely replicate their expertise. An expertise that, if they’re to be taken at their phrase, entails a world the place each door conceals an armed suspect, each name may spiral right into a shootout, and hesitation can imply demise. It is a perspective that reinforces the concept fixed, overwhelming drive is probably the most rational response. It is deeply problematic — and it additionally makes for unimaginable degree design.
“You nearly must go on to each site visitors cease assuming there’s a firearm in that automobile,” stated an Ohio police sergeant to Spectrum Information again in Could. But, based on a Mapping Police Violence report, police killed 108 unarmed civilians in 2024 and 77 to this point in 2025. Out of the 1,260 whole deaths by the hands of police MPV reported final yr, the group stated 619 occurred throughout responses to suspected non-violent crimes — or in conditions the place no crime had been reported in any respect.
If Prepared or Not had been actually chasing police realism, you would be filling out infinite studies, working site visitors stops, and standing round at live shows whilst you acquire time beyond regulation.
Early in growth, the builders promised that no topic was too controversial, no tragedy too delicate to depict. Prepared or Not would dive into the darkest corners of society with out restraint — and gamers liked that. It’s why the sport has spawned a complete ecosystem of YouTube video essays with titles like “THE MOST DISTRUBING SHOOTER I’VE EVER PLAYED.”
And it is also why the sport was review-bombed when it lastly hit consoles. Relying on who you ask, the modifications are trivial at finest: toned-down gore, beforehand bare feminine NPCs coated up, and a convulsing youngster swapped out for a sleeping one. However to the hardcore fanbase, it was the builders caving to company strain, promoting out the very “no compromises” ethos that made Prepared or Not stand out within the first place.
The information doesn’t precisely again up the fan outrage concept. When Prepared or Not dropped on consoles on July 15, it offered over 2 million copies in simply two weeks — this regardless of getting review-bombed on Steam over the censorship modifications. The numbers make it clear, although: individuals are enjoying, and so they’re having a very good time.
Actually, they’re having such a very good time that some gamers have been sharing their very own gameplay clips — a lot of which function, uh, gleeful examples of brutal extrajudicial police violence. So… yeah.
For a very long time, as a child after which as a teen, I by no means actually understood why individuals hated FPS video games. To me, it was only a recreation. Research have proven repeatedly that they don’t trigger real-world violence, regardless of how a lot the Jack Thompsons of the world tried to construct careers pretending in any other case. My mother hated them, and as my dad obtained older, he grew extra ambivalent too — though a few of my finest recollections are sitting subsequent to him watching as he gunned down enemies from an AC-130 in Name of Responsibility 4. They had been enjoyable then, and I nonetheless consider they’re enjoyable now.
However enjoyable doesn’t imply innocent. A research within the Nationwide Library of Drugs concluded that “publicity to violent video video games will increase the chance of desensitization to violence, which in flip might enhance aggression and reduce prosocial habits.”
Credit score: Screenshot by Mashable/VOID Interactive
Video games don’t flip youngsters into killers, that we all know for certain, however they do form how we take into consideration violence and authority. Spending hours in digital meth homes and rundown residence complexes can normalize sure concepts — that violence is the quickest resolution, about who “good guys” and “dangerous guys” appear like, and that taking pictures your means out is the pure finish to battle. It’s not cause-and-effect within the cartoonish means ethical panickers attempt to declare, but it surely does depart an imprint.
This isn’t me saying that everybody who performs Prepared or Not or different tactical shooters like it’s waving #BlueLivesMatter flags. Name me woke if you need, however a number of the sport actually does boil all the way down to busting into low-income areas and arresting poor POC. And for all of Prepared or Not’s deep gun and equipment customization, it feels damning that I can’t change my character’s pores and skin coloration in single-player (although I can in multiplayer).
But right here I’m, gunning down a Black man in a durag. I don’t know — possibly that does add to the “extremely gritty realism” the sport prides itself on.
This text displays the opinions of the author.
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