Pedophiliac Protagonist.

[Jandau]

The Question dear escapists, is weather this is a good idea, should this angle of characterization (ever?) be explored? Or is it to raw and emotionally charged to make good media? Please; thoughts: pros, cons and criticisms are necessary for good dialogue. Fire away.

I'm pretty sure Japan has been doing that for as long as they have been making video games, so it's hardly a new idea...

 

[SoulSalmon]

The only reason this won't work is because this isn't the kind of thing you base a game from.
Having a "X" character purely for the sake of having an "X" character is always a shallow and childish stab at either having a 'deep' storyline (in the case of subjects like rapists, paedophiles, cultists, alzheimers patients, etc) or some half-arsed attempt at forced equality (Including minorities for the sake of having minorities and going "We see these people only by their race/culture/gender/etc, but we're better then you because we included them!"))

 

[viranimus]

Methinks thine doth protest too much

Why can't anyone get the second person singular conjugation right?
I don't mean to be rude. This just catches my attention in a bad way just like hearing a knife scratching porcelain or a child cry.

Really? Knife on porcelain or children crying huh. How much worse can the grating get? Then what if I point out that that the quote is

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

And using your "thou" indicates direction to a specific individual whereas while mine may been better served by using they, using thou is not correct because It was not directed in response to anyone in specific or the speaker. Sort of like using You instead of they. But are we really going to go all grammar nazi-ish over middle English/early modern English influenced dialect?



So.. what is the analogous level for that? The point here is, the overall message was conveyed, or else you wouldn't have responded. So perhaps nitpicking about someones accuracy when similar mistakes are made is not such a good idea and looses some of its weight when it is absent accuracy.

_______________________________________

Anyway, back on topic. I mean if your determined to do it, You might be able to make it work. I mean Nabokov managed to pull it off and his work is tolerated. But the problem is like trying to push a boulder up a hill. Do you really expect people who cannot distinguish between pedophilia, Hebephilia, ephebophilia, Gerontophilia or any other sort of chronophilia to be willing to tolerate references that might inadvertently paint pedophilia in a less than evil light?

If this is in the context of a game, you need to be prepared for it to have vehement backlash on the level of Zogs nightmare or Ethnic Cleansing. The general populous will not consider it no matter how well it is written, no matter how much thought it might provoke, because the populous is afraid of what considering that could even mean. Regardless if you crafted the most human and realistic char seen in any form of literature since Shakespeare, at best it will be dismissed, and at worse it could get you killed.

 

[Eternal_Lament]

I like the idea. It will not happen because our society consists partly (or mostly) out of biggot hypocrits.

Oh and to all those special nay-sayers out there who seriously think that a psychotic pedophile maniac raping and killing half a dozens kids is far worse than someone who nukes a city killing 50.000 people, irradiating 25.000 more: You might want to revise your moral standards, they seem quite rotten to me.

Spoiler: Want another example?

Nico Bellic (the Protagonist from GTA IV) can be a mass murdering psychotic on a killing spree. How many innocent people can he kill? Hundreds? Thousands? In cold blood without being provoked. Why should he be a better guy than a random 19year old who rapes the 15 year old girl? Explain that to me... That makes absolutely no sense at all.

Well first off I think it should be made clear that what you just described isn't pedophilia, that is ephebophilia, and even then in the case of a 19 year old the only really illegal and disgusting part about what he did was that he raped her, not the age difference (depending on where you are of course this can change, but for the most part police usually turn a blind eye to 19with15 year old relationships). And secondly, want my honest opinion, people will probably look at Nico and the hypothetical rapist and will still hate the rapist more. Why? Because killing, even for the sake of killing, is easy to play off as sometimes necessary, that for Nico and his line of work it may be the only way he can complete his job and actually survive. What does one accomplish by raping someone? What job, what purpose can only be fuliflled that they may have to rape someone all the time? Gain dominance over them? We already got a game like that with Rape Lay, and look at the shit-storm that game got. There is hypothetically say a game where you play as an occupying force and rape can be one of the ways to torture someone for information, but I highly doubt that an already controversial game at that point (the hypothetical one) would be even more controversal by making rape the ONLY method of torture for information.

 

[GenericPCUser]

Gay, bi, or trans? OH WAIT, forgot to mention, Naoto Shirogane, ANOTHER character from Persona 4, who is a girl and wishes to become a man, the game company for this jewel encrusted gem? ATLUS, again look it up.

I think what he meant was a game who's main character is gay/bi/trans. Persona 4 is good, but the main character is decidedly straight.

 

[lovest harding]

I think this idea is much better suited to film or book.
There's no real way to make an interesting or good game around that idea.
I can see the interest in making this kind of thing in media (exploring a person's deepest thoughts and secrets can always be interesting if done well), but as a game I don't see it.
What would the gameplay be? Try to keep the main character's hands from touching a kid with quick time events? It's just a bad idea all around.

I think there's one instance where it might work and that would be the Psychonauts/The Cell approach, either entering his mind or his dreams and having the events be more symbolic than real, but that's sort of a catch all. Pretty much any subject can be tackled like that. But then what would be the point? If we're not actually confronting the entire idea, then there's no need to use it all.

EDIT: So, overall, I don't see a way to make a good game with a pedophile as a protagonist. And if we aren't making games to be good games, then I think we're missing the point (don't get me wrong, I love artistic games, but if they're artistic for the sake of art and at the expense of game, then they're interactive art not artistic games).

The gameplay doesnt actually have to have anything to do with pedophelic (is that a word?) acts. The stigma surrounding pedophiles is quite obvious (as can be seen in this thread), and this would be a very sound way of creating a protagonist that is quite hated by most of the other characters in the game, and then this can play out in the story etc. Think of it as creating a protagonist that is hated/despised and how that affects the world around him and the way people react to him.

If that's the case, I don't see the value in it at all. What's the point?
What makes being a pedophile any different from just being a douche then (say the main character went around kicking puppies or buying land and evicting people or was a hideous monster who bites off the heads of the innocent, people would still hate him to the same effect)?
That honestly has no bearing on the game. You could simply have it set to say "People hate him because..." and fill in the blank with anything. If that's the game we're talking about whoever would make it would be making it solely for the sake of shock value. And I see no merit in a shocking protagonist for the sake of shocking.
As I said, it's a subject much better suited for movie or film. In a game, if it doesn't have any relation to gameplay, it's not necessary. There'd have to be a strong tie to gameplay. There are just things that games shouldn't do because (as I said) that subject just wouldn't translate into being a good game.