Recently, the Mass Effect 3 promotional material has been doing this, but it isn't the only one. Using children being killed as shock value.Dead Island's trailer, the parent execution in Homefront, and Modern Warfare 3 are also guilty of this. And it pisses me off.
Each of these scenes have been used to squeeze sympathy out of the player because "won't someone think of the children!" is in full swing. Kids are innocent in fiction, and to see one die means that you are supposed to feel sad.
So the death of a youth is used as a means of eliciting a response, to make the game seem more serious. And I hate it, because it is a manipulative practice that does little more than to show how desperate the developers are to make you think that what is happening is a big deal. Oh no! Now the kids are in trouble! This is super serious!
The problem is that the children never play into the story at all. Their sole reason to be there is so that they can die and make the audience feel bad.
I can think of two games where children are involved, where not only does it make sense for them to be there, but also makes their suffering work within the context of the story.
The first was Bioware's own Dragon Age: Origins. In the Cousland Origin, you have a nephew, who gets murdered alongside his mother in their sleep. Now this is miles ahead of the Modern Warfare 3 death, because not only did the character get some lines beforehand, he was also family. Even if you didn't care for the child at all, he was still your character's nephew, so it makes perfect sense for the Cousland Warden to be devastated. The fact that Bioware is also up on my above list makes this baffling. They know how to use the impact properly, yet all I see from the Mass Effect 3 side is manipulation.
The second game is Dead Rising 2, where the main plot of the game involves finding a cure for your daughter. Again, she is involved in the main story, and that gives the game the context to include child suffering without it coming off as manipulative. It isn't thrown in to make things seem more serious, it's the whole bloody focus of the game.
TLDR
If you are going to have a child be killed or subjected to horrors in your game, make sure you have context for it. Don't just throw it in there for the sake of shock value, give it a reason to be there. Otherwise, it seems like a means to elicit a response because you were too damn lazy to build tension and emotions otherwise.
Each of these scenes have been used to squeeze sympathy out of the player because "won't someone think of the children!" is in full swing. Kids are innocent in fiction, and to see one die means that you are supposed to feel sad.
So the death of a youth is used as a means of eliciting a response, to make the game seem more serious. And I hate it, because it is a manipulative practice that does little more than to show how desperate the developers are to make you think that what is happening is a big deal. Oh no! Now the kids are in trouble! This is super serious!
The problem is that the children never play into the story at all. Their sole reason to be there is so that they can die and make the audience feel bad.
I can think of two games where children are involved, where not only does it make sense for them to be there, but also makes their suffering work within the context of the story.
The first was Bioware's own Dragon Age: Origins. In the Cousland Origin, you have a nephew, who gets murdered alongside his mother in their sleep. Now this is miles ahead of the Modern Warfare 3 death, because not only did the character get some lines beforehand, he was also family. Even if you didn't care for the child at all, he was still your character's nephew, so it makes perfect sense for the Cousland Warden to be devastated. The fact that Bioware is also up on my above list makes this baffling. They know how to use the impact properly, yet all I see from the Mass Effect 3 side is manipulation.
The second game is Dead Rising 2, where the main plot of the game involves finding a cure for your daughter. Again, she is involved in the main story, and that gives the game the context to include child suffering without it coming off as manipulative. It isn't thrown in to make things seem more serious, it's the whole bloody focus of the game.
TLDR
If you are going to have a child be killed or subjected to horrors in your game, make sure you have context for it. Don't just throw it in there for the sake of shock value, give it a reason to be there. Otherwise, it seems like a means to elicit a response because you were too damn lazy to build tension and emotions otherwise.
