JesterRaiin said:
If not kids, then who ? Adults, that are suposed to tell the difference between bunch of pixels and real life ? Average gamer is in his 30ties if i'm not mistaking. The younger - kids - should be simply supervised by their parents or whoever cares about them, and on top of that : "Parental Guidance". We invented it ealier than last Thursday. Case closed.
And it's not about fixing smaller issues either. It's creating problems where none exist, while other, much serious matters are still unresolved. I don't buy this "it's not wrong" part. That's exactly what's wrong with our world - people deal with things they shouldn't instead of those that need to be fixed as soon as possible. We waste resources instead of focusing on a single task.
...and that's why i think this kind of discussion is pointless and people offended by such things simply don't deserve their existence obviously filled with luxury and spare time they waste on bulls*t.
I don't mean to suggest that it's "corrupting" adults or harming them in any direct way. The main argument about this is one about ethics. The argument is that killing virtual children is wrong and people who want to be able to be able to kill virtual children are bad. I don't agree, and I wager you don't agree either, but you're arguing a straw man. No one is talking about how this affects young gamers.
If someone were making a "think of the children" type argument, and
if there is actually some real and preventable harm that could result to kids from killing virtual children, then it would not be wrong to try and stop that (which is my response to your original point). If someone were making that argument and, as is far more likely, there is no real danger, then your new response to me here is correct - people really shouldn't be making up stuff to get angry about when we have real problems to deal with.
But, not many
are making such an argument, which leaves me giving you your own advice - stop making up arguments to rip on when there are actual arguments to discuss.
IamLEAM1983 said:
In that case, the only argument remaining is the devs' own moral standpoint. For some reason, the fine folks at Bethesda feel that killing virtual kids is wrong, even though you can submit them to crushing and awful personal losses.
...
Then there's the argument of personal preference. Even if you bought me a game when I could unlock an achievement called "Complete Monster", I probably wouldn't be able to drive myself to try and obtain it. Heck, I could never goad myself into starting an evil Fable III game!
Try to imagine it from a different perspective then. What if the Bethesda Team felt that killing innocent NPCs is just "wrong?" You impatience in Riverwood would have had no consequences. But you made the decision to kill them, and by all rights (within the context of the game) you should be able to kill them. But you can't because it gave one of the developers a belly ache. It strikes one as silly doesn't it? So what if the dev doesn't like it? I like it, and I'm the customer. It does nothing but enhance the intended experience (providing a world with real consequences for player actions and open choice), so withholding it simply because of some arbitrary seeming ethical reservation seems... well, dumb.
In the same way, a lot of people are made uncomfortable by the idea of even pretending to be a homicidal maniac without regard even for the lives of children, but that doesn't mean everyone should be. This notion that people who would actually use the option to kill children are just horrible people no one should cater too is weird and bigoted.
The_root_of_all_evil said:
Killing children can be OK, but - out of kindness - we should limit them so they don't resemble real life tragedy. Because that shit is tough enough to get over. Equally, watching someone die slowly from disease is very rarely shown.
Killing Adults is emotionally "easier", because we're already trained to see them as a crowd rather than individuals through our own coping mechanisms.
(As a test, see if you can record one of your friends squealing in pain, and then fit that .wav into a civilian in game. Not quite so easy now, is it?)
Ok, I was ascribing a much harder position to you than you were actually maintaining.
I agree that the death of a child is more emotionally moving in general than that of an adult. However, presentation effects emotional response more than actual content. I might be uncomfortable hearing my friend's death knells in some games, but if he was screaming in a slightly more exaggerated way, or if his death in game was presented with a certain character of tone, it wouldn't make me uncomfortable at all. Take Yhatzee's opinion on the "shock moment" in MW3. I mean, I know he's a heartless bastard and all, but the point is that it's possible for a child's death to be unmoving in a certain context and given sufficiently unmoving presentation. Understanding that, I'm not compelled to say children dying in particular should be a limited resource in the developer's handbag of game elements. Rather, I would just say that emotionally traumatic things in general should only be wheeled out every so often so as to not completely depress everyone, as even dark and somber games need a few moments of levity, if only for contrast.
