Should you be allowed to kill children in games?

[Crazycat690]

Yes, like in Fallout, those kids in Little Lamplight are so annoying I hate the fact that you can't kill them... When I play a game I don't feel the need to "KILL CHILDREN FOR FUN!" and if you do you're a sick man, but if they put children in a game don't make them unkillable =)

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

-snip-

I think it would actually be interesting to make a new typ of game. Of of the gritty realism you mentioned. I knowmy ideas are incredibly flawed, but I'd love to see where it goes. You see all these mafia games of dricing around, doing contract hits on "Made Men" and when you go to jail, you come out and feel no remorse and can still go on your killing spree.

Now the Irish Mafia was interesting: they didn't have the "No women, no children" rule. The IRA set bombs in squares where anyone could die. There were select members of the mob however that rerfused to do this, and it was a personal decision. I would love to have a videogame where the Irish mob asks you to perform dark work, and you have the option to botch the job and make it look like a mistake and go rogue.

Obviously a "Botched" job would not please the Mob, and the more consecutive jobs you abandon, the faster the game goes from "doing jobs for the family" to "fighting for your life."

One mission could ask you to plant a bomb in a square, but last minute you find out there's a field trip for kids there one day, or you're to assassinate a woman with you bare hands. I know this idea will never fly, but every now and then, give it some shocker value.

Mowing down crowds of civians turns them into sheep. It doens't mean anything because well.... You can do it anytime you want. GTA doens't have civilians anymore, it has targets that people go on a frenzy to punch holes into at their leisure. There is no effect on the player from one death to another. If you are told "Do THIS! We know there will be kids there, but too fucking bad, plant the bomb!" What would you do?

Specific, intended targets make the player think. Waves upon waves of targets that you have the option to kill don't.

 

[Gunner 51]

I don't see why not, if anything - I can see such things enriching a game. Take a game like Hitman: Blood Money and it's notoriety mechanics. (Even if they were something of an afterthought.)

Killing an innocent adult who's caught you in mid kill gave not only your mission rating a complete hammering, decreased your pay at the end of the mission but also raised your notoriety meaning you had to spend more money on getting the Agency to bribe witnesses.

But killing a child who's managed to catch you cheese-wiring your mark - now this does open up an interesting can of worms. The penalty for letting the child see you will be even more severe.

If you let the kid live: the Agency would have to pay off both parents and give you a stern talking to for being sloppy and unusually unethical.

If you killed the kid: Would the agency forfeit your pay totally? Because no amount of PR will save their reputation seeing how you chose to kill a child on their dollar. Plus if you do it more than once in the game - they might even decide to betray you by grassing you up to the authorities for being a loose cannon.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think it would be pretty cool. I mean, you can already kill the elderly, law enforcement and, government officials. Outside of GTA and Saint's Row, there was an instance of child-death. Remember Dragon Age Origin?

Spoiler

you have the option to kill the possessed son of...uh...I think it was The Earl of...hell, I can't remember the town's name. But the kid is possessed and it seems like he'll die no matter what. If you do the quest the long way you can save the boy though. I chose to kill him when I was an evil Elf. It wasn't gratuitous and it didn't show you slashing his throat but it was powerful and, very obvious that his mother would spend the rest of her days in a deep depression.

I like how they did it in Dragon Age. I don't really like children anyway so I think it would be fun to take a school bus in Saint's Row 3 and drive it over the field during recess.

 

[Ickorus]

No unless it's necessary to the story, we already get a bad enough press and that would just make it worse.

 

[Sindre1]

How is a childs life more worth than an adults?
Not that its less or anything..

 

[andrew.wright16]

Its a tough one,
logic tells me it shouldn't be a problem but something else tells me its wrong.

In DAO, I actually felt really bad when I killed Connor (in which people tried to dissuade me from for at least an hour of gameplay before i got there) and the response from that was really well done I thought- it made me really not want to do that again in my next campaign as I felt a bit like a monster- it was a needless killing.

Its a tough one. But as mentioned already I think that people can handle seeing that in video games without having the compulsion to do it in real life- at least I hope so, and those that already do it would probably have done it regardless of a video game.

Either way Im not gonna be killing kids in games myself, so it doesn't affect me either way.

 

[ShaqLevick]

Yes you should be able to kill children. I can't really say I'd buy a game where the point would be to kill children (couldn't imagine you'd sell over 10 000), but as collateral damage I don't see why not. You see the people who would get a "genuine" thrill from this sort of thing are probably damaged as is. On the other hand the act of killing a child either through plot device or accident the player may have a more raw emotional reaction to what they are playing. Censorship is wrong period!

 

[unit 10]

i think that there should be at least an age diffrance teenagers yes minors no

 

[ScroogeMcDuck]

If a game allows a game to kill children and shows it or makes you kill them, that could result in them receiving 3x the amount of coverage (most of it bad) than that killing pedestrians in modern warfare 2. It would be a very risky move but the coverage it would get could result in them not needing to advertise at all.

 

[cke]

What if you could turn your enemies into kids and then kill them?
(inspired by ZP:Singularity)

 

[Nifarious]

We're mostly talking about sandbox games, and of course any hamfistedly imposed limits will reduce the immersion and quality of the experience. I'm upset that Fallout 3's Little Lamplight is immortal the same way that it's stupid for the game to have any unkillable characters just to guarantee the flow of the main missions.

But really, I don't care about sandbox rampages. I want to see INTERESTING ways in which you kill children.

People have mentioned Dragon Age, which I think qualifies. The game gives you a very good reason for killing a child, so do you or don't you?
What also comes to mind is the first Silent Hill. Going through the school while child-shaped things with long knives drawn fall onto you out of the dark and hold on like a kid begging to be played with as they slash you mercilessly until you beat them over and over again with a lead pipe. That was my favorite part of the game. It's a shame that Konami went the safe way of eliminating their most horrific situation, all to avoid controversy from people who don't play games, people who don't understand the difference between reality and fiction.

Unfortunately, demon possession is a rather cheap trick for finding a reason to kill something you normally wouldn't want to. But it is a sort of currency in our culture that's easily exchanged. I don't think much of 'which do you save? you're forced to choose' scenarios via Sophie's Choice are good either--and in fact, given replayability, making choices like that often matter very little to the video games of today. But a little better reason than 'it's evil' or 'do what I say' would be amazing for killing kids in a game. Again, Silent Hill is the best example. You weren't on a demon killing rampage. You were just surviving, trying your best to avoid those little horrors. Perhaps killing zombie children in a real survival horror--not an FPS--would be a great direction for videogames...hell, any new and GOOD survival horror would be good for video games...

 

[teutonicman]

Yes, share the hate equally.

 

[PrimoThePro]

You kill everything else, right? Why not children?
I really don't see the issue. Can someone give me the other side of the argument?

 

[C95J]

Why not? Your already murdering hundreds of adults in cold blood, why not do it to children, there is really no difference...

 

[Desert Tiger]

Children in videogames aren't real. They have no rights.

House flies are real. They have no rights either.

What have we learned?

Maggots suck.

 

[cognitively_deprived]

If we can kill adults in games because they aren't real then I don't see why we aren't allowed to kill children, I can't think of a time when I have wanted to gun down children in a game but I would like to have a choice.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Meh ... never been a fan of violence for the sake of violence. Personally I don't see anything wrong with devs removing gunplay where it wouldn't be appropriate. I don't care how much of a fucktard you are, you don't just blow things away because you think it might be fun.

People seem to forget (and this is the big thing in tabletop gaming as well) that true evil is cunning, seductive, and subversive. It's not .... "Me hav shootahs. Me wrek ur shit".

Too many people get mixed up between fucking insane and true evil.

I don't know... maybe it's just me, but my opinion is sometimes less freedom in games is better to let the players experience what it's means to a very good or truly evil character.

Not just using the game to whack off to the primitive side of your conciousness that just wants to smack things about.

If we want games to evolve into an amazing experience we need to treat the experience of the game as an interactive movie of sorts to explore what we would do if we were morally righteous or heinously evil. All the whilst still keeping it within the realms of what we as humans would do in that situation... not a guy missing half a brain.

 

[C95J]

No.

Just no.
It is wrong.
the next worst thing you could do in a video game is rape someone.

last time I checked murder was a worse crime than rape.

To be honest, I don't notice the difference, I wouldn't care if they put children into the games, it would just me more dead pixels, with no actual difference.