How Would YOU Explain This...

[Axyun]

I think the answer is pretty simple.

What value would showing people boning or having kill-able children add to a game like Fable or Oblivion? As a game designer, how would you justify to your publisher that you should spend resources making models, textures, sounds and animations for sexual positions or dying children? It has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with return on investment.

Game worlds are already devoid of life as is. If developers had the resources to spare, I'd rather they spend extra time creating more diverse body, facial and hair models so that villagers don't look like palette-swaps of each other. Or add more varieties of idle and active animations. In most games, villagers and NPCs adopt the exact same stance when performing certain actions or expressing emotions when, in reality, a person's body language is varied enough to uniquely identify the individual.

Unless the game's mechanics or atmosphere revolved around sex or acts of violence towards minors, there really are better areas to spend resources on.

 

[krazykidd]

Children are weak and defenseless. Who would harm a child? Nobody. So why add a feature that will do more harm that good?

I agree with this. I could not imagine what sick f*** would want to hurt kids in a game. I could never bring myself to harrvest the little sisters in Bioshock and i can't imagine what kind of sick perverted mind thinks even thinks about it.

And what exacly is the problem with killing children in a game? Key word being GAME. i can kill thousands are average joes in these games but a child is a no no? On top of that wanting to kill a virtual kid makes me a sicko? You can BURN , COOK and EAT children in the sims and no one makes a fuss about it. Children die in real life , what cant they die in a video games?

 

[Batou667]

I just don't see how having said option would make the game 'better', but them I'm the sort to avoid hurting non combatants in a game.

The more important question is this - why do you WANT to kill the kids? Why is this option to be able to do it so important to you?

I think it's more a question of principle. Of course I don't want to kill children in real life, and a game that was about nothing but killing childen would be sick. But in an open-world or sandbox game, it's unrealistic if there are no children, and doubly unrealistic if the children are invincible.

It'd be nice - well, let me rephrase that, refreshing - if a mainstream game (not a deliberately inflammatory game like Postal 2) included a realistic mix of NPCs including women, children, the disabled, the elderly, and so on. They wouldn't be gratuitiously thrown into the line of fire, but then again they wouldn't be invincible/invisible either. Wouldn't that add an extra dimension into the way we interact with games? What if you actually - shock! - were encouraged to make more moral decisions when playing a game? What if - horror! - you felt emotions like remorse as the result of killing an innocent bystander? Ah, but that's crazy talk. The only people who play games are kids and geeks, and they just want to blow up aliens and zombies. Right?

 

[Loonyyy]

Children are weak and defenseless. Who would harm a child? Nobody. So why add a feature that will do more harm that good?

Plenty of people would harm a child. It's not a good thing, but it's true. The feature isn't doing any harm, whilst their attempting to murder pixelated children, they're not killing real ones. And in the end, if you think somethings in bad taste, you vote with your wallet and don't buy it. Which is one of the reasons School Shooter games never top sales charts.

Personally, I really don't care whether you can kill them or not: But not being able to breaks immersion, especially if you've played Little Lamplight in Fallout 3 (I hate those kids so darn much).

And the reason they aren't "Boning" is because the programmers didn't account for that level of detail, and to do so would make the game R-Rated, and instantly more awesome, whilst cutting sales figures.

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

Whether or not it's human is more or less irrelevant. What matters is that the killer-zombie children in Dead Space was portrayed as having BEEN actual children (and babies) once.

In Dead Space 2, you walk through kindergardens, nursing homes etc. which are quite clearly portrayed as places where children used to grow up from when they where less than a year old, and the setting and story clearly conveys that these poor things have been turned into monsters. You don't actually see it happen, but it's there, and you get to see their new incarnations attack you, explode and you get to kill them yourself.

And as I said, as long as you can establish that they are no longer human then the unease of killing them is lessened, if not removed. If anything, those very scenes, culminating in having to kill these transformed children, would only help to cement the resolve in some people that the menace that caused this devastation needs to be destroyed. Now, if they were just regular, non-infected children who decided to climb all over you and take a bite out of your esophagus, and Isaac then threw them onto the ground and crushed their little heads in with his boot, it would send a much different message.

The same argument could be made for violent games in general. You could argue that GTA rewire people into killing civilians and cops.

Listen. Either we take a stand, and accept that all the "Games are turning people into killers" talk is bullsh*t or we don't. You don't just go half-way and say "It's okay if people get the impression that killing civilians, cops etc. is okay, as long as they don't kill children". I'm sure you can see how silly that is.

By not taking a stand, we as gamers (and game designers/publishers) are admitting to the very thing those anti-violent-games lobbyists are trying to make people believe, even if it isn't true. One game that stood out for me was Modern Warfare 2 and it's Airport Terrorist attack. Even if Infinity Ward made it possible to skip that level and warned you about it, i applaud them for taking a stand and basically saying "Screw this, we're going for something that makes sense, even if it portrays something terribly cruel that touches some peoples most primal fear of terrorism in this day and age".

We both can't and shouldn't let those non-gaming idiots affect our passion for the medium, because that just empowers them.

The problem is, there will always, ALWAYS be that rare case, that one teen in a million who didn't get enough love when he was little or had some serious psychological shit happen to him, who will play a game like GTA or MW2 and get it in his head to do something like what they saw in the game. Lobbyists won't care if this kid had the shitty life lottery and probably would've done something bad long before playing the games, and if anything those games helped prolong his sanity until it finally snapped, they'll see Violent Video Game + Troubled Youth + Horrible Event and it will ALWAYS equal the Video Games were at fault.

Again, I'm not saying we can't have child killing in games - although even just admitting to that makes me feel a smidgen more evil than I cared to be - but that killing has to serve a purpose, it has to have some sort of meaning behind it. The primary reason why so many people are so unwilling to see excessive violence in video games is because, up until now, very little of it was done with much taste. GTA is the most notorious for this, as most people will spend more time mowing down civilians in a mass killing spree than they do performing the "necessary" missions in the game. Yes it's cathartic, yes it helps vent steam, but I, for one, can vent steam just as easily by killing monsters in an RPG, I don't see why we need more games that feature killing humans and less that feature killing human analogues.

Again, same argument could be made for basically any game that involves any form of violence. You might as well have asked "Do we really need blood in shooters"?

My answer to this is, that if we are going to an immersive experience, then yes we need it. Fable 2, for example, pulled the ridiculous move that they did have children, but you couldn't hurt them. You could kill your wife, but your children were immortal. And guess what happened: People notice stuff like that. And they started asking how the hell that made any kind of sense. Why do you think this thread exists in the first place? Short answer: Because things that breaks immersion will always be nagging people. Hell, even Yahtzee noticed it and mentioned it in his review of Fable 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/346-Fable-2].

Every time you have something in a game that breaks immersion, then the reason that the immersion is broken is always going to plunge down in the gamers mind. If it's a bad game design decision that broke the immersion, then the gamer will think "Oh [Insert development team here], why did you c*ck this up". And guess what: When it's the attempt to comply with political correctness that breaks the immersion, then gamers will think "Oh, when are those damned violent-video-game-activist-hippies going to leave my games alone so i can have some damned fun!!" Being reminded that those annoying people exist out there is the last thing you need WHILE playing the game.

So yes, if having killable children in the game world means that the Immersion is going to stay alive, then that's what i want. Obviously it's been nagging people beyond me, so the short answer to your question is "Yes". If the Airport level in MW2 hadn't allowed you to fire your gun (even if it is entirely optional already), then people would also have asked the same question, because it doesn't make sense to not be able to participate given that you are an undercover agent.

If your immersion is broken because you can't kill a child, I just have to ask how immersive do you really need your games to be? Again, this brings me back to my original statement, how shallow of a human are you that you have to kill everything that the game gives you? Who was the original person who found out that you couldn't kill your kids in Fable 2? Why did he want to kill his kids in the first place? I know we adopt a separate persona when in video games, but please keep in mind what Yahtzee has mentioned before in that regard is because gaming logic is different than real world logic; again quoting the master himself, when one enters a female restroom IRL, you could assume they're doing it for some sort of sexual thrill, but in a video game you're doing it because you might find health or ammo packs. If your in-game persona is some murderous criminal who can't walk five steps without having an insatiable urge to gut the nearest thing with a brain, then a part of me has to wonder where the hell you're hiding that part of you.

Look, I've read all the studies, I know that games are more of a release than they are a tutor for violence, but it's also the only medium in this world where people are seriously debating that the killing of children could somehow improve it.

If we want to be taken seriously, yes, first we need to stop scurrying away from the lobbyists whenever they find fault with a particular game or two. HOWEVER, second and more importantly, we NEED to make games that don't take death so lightly. I'm fairly certain if you were to gather up all the radio shows, movies, and books in the world, the number of deaths portrayed in them wouldn't even come close to the number of "inconsequential" deaths that would come from the entire library of video games just in the last two generations. Regardless of their true effect on people, it's very hard to take video games seriously as a medium when it doesn't take much seriously.

 

[NLS]

Children are weak and defenseless. Who would harm a child? Nobody. So why add a feature that will do more harm that good?

its not realistic

Unless they smack kids around in real life its not going to be realistic anyway, so why add it for the vast-minority of criminals who do assault children? They will be too busy being shived in prison to play the game, everyone knows that even the majority of criminals HATE anyone who harms kids so that is an accurate representation of what their time in prison will be like.

Its pointless trying to make your game "realistic" by adding vulgar/cruel things, there is no WAY you could make a game that allows you the freedom of choice that you have in reality so since you are limited to what can be done... why choose beating up kids and barging in on people banging to be in it? Just seems like a waste of effort, time and space for something ultimately worthless or at most detrimental.

As this thread clearly shows, most people didnt even notice you couldnt do those things.

Yeah I mean what about: In-game characters and the player never takes a poop. IZ NOT REALISTIC!!!
There's a ton of other things that by definition are not "realistic", adding children that you can kill isn't gonna improve anything.

 

[teisjm]

Because, most games in which you could murder children would get the highest age rating possible, in most countries, and maybe even be banned in some, and would sell bad due to that.

Though i seem to remeber something... couldn't you toss children around or fry them with fireballs and lightning, or hurl boulders on them, or feed them to your gigantic pet in black & white?

 

[Panzervaughn]

"A Wizard did it."

 

[Lawnmooer]

Children are weak and defenseless. Who would harm a child? Nobody. So why add a feature that will do more harm that good?

I'm pretty sure that in Fallout 3 there was a cave full of children with guns and such constantly threatening to shoot you (Not that they could since they are invincible and therefore only run away while saying things while you attack them)

Also I'd kind of like to attack children in some games, since they can be annoying and it would add slightly more depth to certain cultures.

Before anyone calls me a sick freak I'll expand off this, in Fallout: New Vegas the Legion are portrayed as monsters, who attack towns burning people alive committing acts of rape on people they are murdering, their own women and when out on patrol their own men. If I decide to wipe them off the planet as part of one of the endings (In which you go through a lot of them and kill them all) I'd want to kill them all, including their children (Who by the sounds of what things they say when you pass them by have already been brainwashed into following the Legion and would grow up to act like them and probably set up a new settlement and due to surviving the attack would use it to gain more support) it also makes no sense that the Legion never send their children to work (Either going out on patrols, participating in attacking towns or even doing other jobs like luring wanderers into traps) or that bandits live a nice and happy childhood in a town/village before becoming bandits (There should be at least some children living out in the wastes with no family/bandit families that grow up doing what they need to in order to survive)

That and I don't like being given a game where I appear to have a lot of freedom but have something as simple as that being restricted (I believe there were mods to allow it but they got taken down, yet there are still a lot of mods left that allow the children to be naked (Via changing how clothing looks, intended only for adults but has a side effect of applying to the children))

I can't really speak of other games as they tend to not have children in and the ones that do I haven't played.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

Children are weak and defenseless. Who would harm a child? Nobody. So why add a feature that will do more harm that good?

I would. Those things piss me off.

I might too, though I wouldn't be proud of myself. Mostly I would do it in Fable games. Those citizens piss me off so much, but killing them reduces my rent if they own a house (which most of them do).

Their children though? I can work with that leverage.

 

[Jack Rascal]

Look, I've read all the studies, I know that games are more of a release than they are a tutor for violence, but it's also the only medium in this world where people are seriously debating that the killing of children could somehow improve it.

It really troubled me in Oblivion that there were no kids around, especially when NPC's said "children are our future". What children? Where do you keep them, in the basement? Can't be, I was there ten minutes ago and I robbed you blind.

To make a realistic world there should be people of all ages and I would love to see a game which had that. I'm not saying that children should be killable, but it would make more sense to have them there. But then again, if you put them there they are in my game world and at my mercy. Should I feel like it, I should be able to kill them. Immortality just doesn't make sense anymore at that point. To be completely honest, I'd even like to be able to kill butterflies in game. If I cast fire around, I should be seeing little singed bugs fall to the ground. Not that I would actively go and do that, but I'd like to see it...

But it depends largely what type of game is in question. In big sandbox RPG's I find it troubling that there are only adults. For me, it breaks immersion every time.

I don't see a difference in killing an adult or a child in a game. One is a bigger character than the other. Neither is real. I would never do the same things in real life I do in games. After all, it's only a game.

 

[Athinira]

If your immersion is broken because you can't kill a child, I just have to ask how immersive do you really need your games to be? Again, this brings me back to my original statement, how shallow of a human are you that you have to kill everything that the game gives you?

I decided just to pick this part out, because you're missing the point.

The point isn't that i need to kill children to vent steam.

The point is CONSISTENCY.

If a game is inconsistent, then it breaks immersion. And having children in a game world that are immortal while you can stab everyone else to death is inconsistent. In addition, portraying a human world but not putting children in it also breaks immersion (particularly when a game like Fable typically has you start out as a child yourself).

To go back to Fable 2 again, they could have solved the child killing inconsistency by making ALL civilians unattackable. That would be consistent and wouldn't involve any childkilling, but apparently Lionhead/Peter Moleneux insisted that the player should be able to be an asshole all the way through if he wanted to. Fair enough, but then you can't just leave the children in the game world out of that equation and expect people to not notice.

Consistency is the entire basis of this discussion, because at the end of the day, having human worlds without children doesn't make sense, and having immortal children doesn't make sense either. So how do you solve this? One way is to allow players to kill children obviously. Another way is to make the game take place in areas where children aren't expected to be found, like most military games. A third way is the Dead Space route, where you make the children non-human, meaning that they are practically 'dead' before the player gets to shoot at them in their afterlife. There are certainly more ways, and bottom line is that as long as they don't break immersion, then i won't complain, even if i don't get to introduce 12 year olds to my 12' gauge with automatic reload. In Fable 2, however, it seems like they are insisting on civilians being attackable is a part of the game, so in that game I'd say that should include children.

 

[badgersprite]

The media goes insane when we get a shot of blue side-boob in Mass Effect. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would happen in this day and age when people see the headline, "GAME LETS YOU KILL CHILDREN!"

Yeah, it's a totally pragmatic reason for not doing it, and maybe they are sacrificing artistic integrity in the process, but, let's be honest, if that media outcry did happen, there would be a significant number of gamers saying, "Gee, thanks [game dev] for putting this feature in the game and making us all look bad."

So, yeah, if them not putting this feature in a game saves me the headache of having more people try to ban one of my major interests, I'm not going to care about not having children in games or having them be invincible.

 

[Daffy F]

Because the last thing we need is Fox News and the Daily Mail banging on about games full of child murder.
Sadly, until the medium is viewed as mature enough to handle such subjects, there will always be a shit storm should we try to.

This deserve an Amen and a [/thread]. Well said.