Do you think the harming of innocents in games depends on the genre?

[Bebus]

An obvious way of tackling this problem would be to introduce massive disciplinary measures for killing civilians.

You know, like in a real war.

In the Middle East, it is not exactly WW1 where the only people you could see are goodies/baddies. There are plenty of civilians around, and I think the hypocrisy of any military condemning a game for allowing the player to kill civilians is disgusting (see civilian casualties in Iraq). I think keeping the feature would have added a really good level of tension and realism.

 

[drummond13]

GTA 4 got its own flak for this. I'd say the response to this scene in MW2 was actually rather mild; mainly a fox news debate where the worst part about it is the guy they got to represent videogames was a total idiot.

I agree the scene is disturbing, but that's because it's SUPPOSED to be disturbing. This isn't a scene about how gunning down people is fun. It's meant to instill a feeling of horror and disgust. And it succeeds in this.

 

[RuralGamer]

I would respond that its because in Skyrim, Fallout and GTA, you stick as closely to realism as George W. Bush to sensible public statements, whereas in CoD its trying to do the opposite. Skyrim and Fallout are completely fantasy and GTA, well GTA is GTA and if crime was as rosy as that in real life, with helicopters to hijack every five seconds and free weapons on practically every street corner, there would be no safe place left on earth. In these games, you CAN kill civilians, but the game never asks you to. In that level, that's supposed to be the reason you're there. Yeah, ultimately, they are just 1s and 0s, but that didn't stop No Russian feeling like a snuff sequence.

Normally I just meh at video game controversies in the media, but what I do find offensive though with the MW2 example the OP gave is the particular viscerality of it and I can't help but feel it was completely unnecessary. The sequence could have been done in far less... in your face ways; to clarify; CoD 4 never asked you to arm the nuke to wipe out the USMC or massacre the Azeri civilians in the village where Al-Asad was hiding.

 

[senordesol]

These 'controversies' are rooted in 1980's thinking wherein what you did in a game is what the game was about. I.e. there was a game called 'death race' wherein you could run over little stick figures for extra points, and how the media howled. Since then, they've never changed their tune, so I generally ignore the content of the controversy but for amusement.

Personally, I would encourage developers to stick more civilians in 'realistic' games. It might force the player to think a little more about what it is he's doing, rather than shooting everything that moves. Maybe add a few short-term and long-term ramifications for killing civvies unnecessarily; maybe challenge the player with some questions regarding morality and justification.

I remember there was one bit in fallout when I was trying to take out a Raider via natural aim (no VATS), and when I missed, my stray bullet hit and killed an NPC's dog. I actually felt bad about it (that is until the owner NPC showed absolutely no reaction to it).

 

[CannibalCorpses]

If the game you are playing involves you roleplaying killing on any level then of course there should be civilians. If i want to roleplay a psychotic killer that likes murdering innocents then why not? It's only a game. I think its better to live out these fantasies in a virtual world than being forced to try them out in the real world

 

[Paul]

I didn't even flinch during the mission "No Russian". It was integral to the story, and while you could skip it, I felt the game was better for letting you play it through. It got you into the mind of Vladimir Makarov and his allies, and it showed the distance that they would go in order to ensure chaos.

Harming innocents in videogames doesn't cause me a single issue, because I understand they are pixels and I would not do the same thing if the opportunity arose in real life. They're virtual, and therefore killing them isn't a big deal to me. If they were real people then of course I would not be prepared to kill them, because it's an entirely different issue.

Anders Behring Breivik's argument of using Modern Warfare 2 as a training simulator holds no weight, in my opinion. If that is considered a valuable argument, I can learn how to hotwire a car using Grand Theft Auto IV. Except I can't, because it doesn't show you how. Modern Warfare 2 shows you in the act of a terrorist attack but it doesn't show you how. If the game allowed you to plan your own strike against the west then yes, that would be controversial and rightfully so. Chinatown Wars includes a minigame for hotwiring cars but that doesn't make it any more effective as a tool for stealing a vehicle because it's not conclusive.

I'm not a believer of the whole "games cause violence" concept. If anything they allow you to escape from everyday life for a while and enjoy doing things you never could do. There are always minds out there that can corrupt a concept, and Breivik is just one of those, in my mind. There will always be people like him, who are simply different, and the differences manifest themselves in terrible ways.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Killing civilians in games is good stress relief. They don't fight back, so there's absolutely no risk in it and it makes one feel really powerful. And these are games, we play them to get away from reality, to do stuff we couldn't do for real. Of course we'll want to blow up entire towns if possible, if only for the entertainment.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Killing is killing, death is death but since you're doing it in a game it's completely consequence-free. After having gorged myself on generations of Grand Theft Auto and, State of Emergency (what happened to that franchise?) I found the airport level of MW2 to be one of the slowest and overall, least satisfying in any way. I didn't care much for MW2 much to begin with though, especially how the story ends with 17 back-stabs and 12 self-sacrificial deaths which amounted to basically nothing in the long run (citation needed)

I don't see why people get all up in arms over this sort of thing. Then again, I would spend a ton of time as a kid playing 2-player hockey on the sega on my on so I could bash pucks into the stands uninterrupted.

 

[Matt Dellar]

I don't like it when I'm told or shown I can't do something in a game where I should be able to do everything. On the other hand, I don't mind it in a less open-ended game

Exhibit A: Fallout and its children. They are immortal. I downloaded a mod that makes them killable and haven't killed any children in the game. I wouldn't kill them to begin with, but I don't like knowing that I can't do.

Exhibit B: Battlefield 3 and its immortal civvies. I don't care. I'd play Battlefield 3 just to knock over buildings and watch them fall like real buildings. Then again, it's an FPS and you're a military dude. You don't shoot civilians. I sure wouldn't if I was in the military. I actually prefer them being invincible. That way, they don't get caught up in the crossfire.

Exhibit C: Playing Rune Factory Frontier, I suddenly had the urge to behead everyone in the village. This being an E-rated Wii game, I knew it wasn't gonna happen, but I was slightly disappointed to find that NPCs wouldn't even move from their scripted paths if you blasted your most powerful spell at them or hit them with your biggest, most awesome sword.

I suppose, even in games where you're not supposed to kill civilians, it's a little strange that you can't if you suddenly decide to. In games that advertise freedom and players' choices, I expect a lot of options, which is probably why I was disappointed with Rune Factory. On the other hand, games without a ton of freedom, like Battlefield, don't matter to me. I never complained about not being able to kill NPCs in the Final Fantasy games, or even in Zelda. At least in Zelda they'd duck if you took a swing at them.

 

[Phisi]

I actually found this scene harder for me to play the more I though about what I was doing :/ but I think it is up to the developers. I can get really bored playing games and zone out and do what ever I want but the moment I try to rationalise what I am doing in a game it gets hard for me to continue. It is the developers choice but I think for some people like me that having civilians in a game like that will increase the experience for me as I would most likely try to avoid hitting the civilians at all costs. But the opposite effect will most likely happen to children as they try to have competitions as to who is the most manly psychotic murderer in the school but they shouldn't be playing the game. I really don't mind that much, I understand the reason for not adding them but I also see the advantages of adding them. But I really don't mind.

 

[Kevin Maccaull]

I cant really say I care. I don't quite know why, I just really don't care. I understand why some people are kinda freaked out about the airport thing in MW2,(hell I even killed some myself...) It hit kinda close to home for some people, and if anything like that happened to me or one of my friends then yes, I probably would care more.

 

[Kevin Maccaull]

Ok read some comments here,

1: SOME OF YOU PEOPLE NEED TO LIGHTEN THE HELL UP!!!
2: How people were raised, and feel about people seem to heavily influence this

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I never really have a problem with killing innocents in games, in fact it's usually a preferred feature, but I do definitely look at it differently depending on what game it is.

In Saints Row or GTA for example, the civilians mean nothing. They're generic character models that walk around the streets with no impact on anything other than to make the world look realistic. Killing a civilian has no serious implications other than "you'll have to run from the cops for 2 minutes"

In oblivion however civilians mean a little bit more. Most of them have names, and you can have conversations with them. Maybe one of them is a shopkeeper, and if you kill them you won't have access to the armor they sell. Maybe the had a quest for you that you missed out on by killing them. Maybe they can't help you in any way but if you kill them and loot their body they have some nice gold or equipment you can steal. Either way, there's more relevant repercussions when you kill a person in oblivion than there is in GTA.

The "No Russian" scene is also a bit different, because it's using the death of innocent people for storytelling. You get to see just how much of a piece of shit makarov is, and even though the people don't really mean much to the player, seeing that much innocent death on that big of a scale the way the scene is executed is enough to invoke at least some emotion.

I would say there's no way you can do the ability to kill innocents wrong, unless you put it in a kids game or something. On one hand, if you make it so they have meaning like oblivion or fallout, you give people incentive to not kill them (or kill them, depending on the character and player) which enriches the experience. If you make it so they mean absolutely nothing and can be killed en masse like in Saints Row, then the player can engage in guilt free murdering rampages for shits and grins.

 

[Vankraken]

Games like Fallout let you kill whoever because you are driving the story and typically people are associated with a faction and depending on who you work with or against they may be your enemy in one game or your ally (or neutral) in the next. In a military shooter you are suppose to abide by the laws of war and intentionally killing civs is considered illegal so the idea of losing from killing civs or allies isn't too far fetched (but i hate it when your allies jumps in front of you when you are shooting and it causes you to fail because of killing them.)

Personally I like games where protecting or killing civilians are a tactical decision with pros and cons. My favorite example is the original X-Com where you want to save civilians (gives points on your monthly score which impacts funding and approval from each nation) but there are tactical reasons to kill civs. Chrysalids turn civs into more chrysalids and sometimes its better to kill the civ and take the point loss than to let a civilian become an alien which could result in losing more soldiers and civs.

I do frown upon killing civilians in games when it has no practical purpose other than shock value or just plain childishness. Not because its morally wrong or anything but it typically cheapens the quality of the game and distracts from the purpose of the game (with exceptions like GTA because part of the appeal and purpose is to be able to dick around and do stupid crap).

 

[Renon]

I don't really care, it's just a game.. As long as they don't put a huge sign on your screen afterwards saying ''DO THIS AT HOME'' then there's no harm done, i guess.

 

[Rayne870]

And for good reason too, the entire scene is quite sickening, especially when you start considering what it may have lead to (Norway massacre).

This statement seems to have been put there just to derail it into "Video games don't cause violence." argument.

I only mentioned it because the murderer himself claimed to have practiced on Modern Warfare 2. There's no proof for or against that, but it all seems a little convenient.

I've got proof against that - my proof being that there are almost no similarities between MW2 and real, physical armed combat. Anybody who claims to have trained themselves to shoot on MW2 is talking out of their stupid ass.

Anders Behring Breivik only said that to try and take some of the heat off of himself and fork it over onto the 'Videogames cause violence' bandwagon.

To say that COD taught you armed combat skills makes about as much sense as saying that Viva Pinata taught you how to breed animals, or that Need For Speed taught you how to drive... none at all!

Sorry about that - rant over.

OT: I don't think it really matters tbh - I consider all 'innocents' in games to be nothing more than bits of squishy code put in there for me to kill anyway so why not just go for it?

In short - just have fun with what they give you and don't complain

Hell I got more proof than that for ya, I maintained a quarter sized grouping at 300 meters the last time I was at the range in my infantry days. I however suck balls at CoD the skills are far from transferable.

It's also worth noting that most of these video game "trained" psychos are pretty terrible shots. Statistically Anders was actually pretty damn good, but if you look at the rest you would swear they were cross eyed, had terrible depth perception, on hallucinogenic drugs and shooting from a boat in a hurricane during an earthquake. The prime example being Columbine, they killed 13 people and fired over 300 rounds, as well as used improvised explosives. One would think that people whom spent all that time training on Doom would be decent shooters...

Just reread all I've written and it's a very interesting thing to consider that I was infantry, studied at police college and am now going into game development...I may end up making or not making the next sensationalized game that Fox tries to get the world to hate.