Extra Punctuation: What Is the Matter with You People?

[Athinira]

The "Video games breeds violence" discussion is about whether or not violence in video games stimulate our brains in a way that makes us more likely to commit violence in real life. Who the target of the violence happens to be is 100% irrelevant.

You are mixing up two entirely different discussions.

I've read on this thread that people get annoyed by the kids in Skyrim, so they enable the mod and kill them, just for being annoying. And I find it funny that these are the same people that say that video games have absolutely no effect whatsoever on violent tendencies. Like I said, I was just highlighting that and putting it out there, not judging.

In GTA, I'm a relentless psycho gangster and cop killer because i find the cops in GTA annoying, and yes i DO enjoy killing them. That doesn't mean i would enjoy killing a cop in real life (even if i found him annoying).

I'll just quote Yahtzee himself here, because as much as i disagree with him in the latter part of the Extra Punctuation, he was still very right when he said this: "Who you are in a game is a very different person to who you are in real life" (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1651-Silent-Hill-Shattered-Memories] - 1:45).

It's a terrible argument to begin with, no matter whether or not you are just 'highlighting' it.

 

[iRevanchist]

the thing is, sometimes adventurers DO kill children. MAking these children mortal can also make them seem more precious to the town's atmosphere, considering you know that one misplaced fireball can decimate an entire playground. They kids just seem like roaches in a nuclear holocaust when they walk away unscathed from a near-genocidal dragon attack.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Consider these two scenarios:
1) A dragon attacks a town, everybody dies, except the children.
2) A super-Casanova comes to a town and fucks everybody, except the children.

I think the exception for children in the first one is completely unrealistic, while in the second one it seems very plausible. There's no reason why a dragon (or any other wild beast or force of nature) would spare children, but there is a very good reason why this casanova would not want to do children. Furthermore, I think Yahtzee's argument only holds if rape were a standard option in the game. If we're talking about consensual sex, it is again entirely likely that you'd be able to screw adults but not children.

I was getting ready to write a post agreeing with the points Yahtzee raised, but then I read this. After reading said comment I find I have really very little (if anything) to add. Well played sir, well played.

 

[sumanoskae]

This is a game where you can get married and then beat your spouses family to death while they stand paralyzed. You can find said kids and beat them within an inch of their life before butchering their parents.

The 900 year old murderous Vampire is immortal because she looks like a child, meanwhile the pregnant woman is not. Morality and tone my fucking ass, this is about avoiding controversy, we all know that.

To get immersed in a game you have to feel that your actions have consequences, otherwise the world feels token and unreal, and you can't put stake in it because it doesn't seem important. This is one thing Fallot 3 does better than Skyrim, the world feels more alive because what you do has real, immediate impact on peoples lives. Not on the world, on everyday life. Not some vague world saving bit that nobody even thanks you for(You know the world isn't going to end), but on characters that feel like real people, not because of AI or animation, but because they're written so well.

Like Yahtzee said, Skyrim isn't a game prepared to deal with subject as emotionally disturbing and complex as pedophilia, but I would argue because murder is much simpler the game world can react to it more appropriately(Still not as well as it should), so that way it can be worked into the character as a moral event horizon, a sort of "If you do this, you're beyond help" moment. By default, it's just red tape to keep you in line.

Once a game establishes it's rules, it has to stick to them to keep you immersed, and when it suddenly drops restriction onto an action you're used to being able to do, it yanks you out of the experience.

Even if you shouldn't to it you still have to be able to, if you know the game is going to bail you out and keep you in line then there's no reason to put stake in it because your actions don't matter.

And that's what it's about, it's about the game world reacting in a believable way, "I can do this so why can't I do this?, oh, that's right, this is just a game. My actions are restricted and ultimately don't matter, because the game has a certain experience in mind for me". The player should never reach this conclusion, even if it is true, the point is to sustain the illusion, the prestige. The same principal doesn't apply to sex because it would break more immersion then it would add, because the game is(Like Yahtzee said) working towards a different tone, something like pedophilia, even if it was a believable reaction, would be to bleak for that tone.

The game doesn't make pedophilia seem possible, so the thought never crosses your mind(I would hope it wouldn't anyway), but you kill things all the time, so the kids being immortal feels arbitrary, token and unreal, thus the prestige is broken.

 

[sumanoskae]

Why's it so bad for games to allow child killing? If movies can simulate sex with a child (in an artistic fashion, of course), or the murder of a child, etc., and if books can be written about horrible atrocities/oddities with children (Lord of the Flies anyone?), why is it so wrong for games to be able to express themselves in such a way?

Take this for example. Say you're some hero walking through a standard fantasy world, and you come across a village. This village is haunted, and every night demonic entities come out and take away the children and kill the adults. One of the village elders explains this to you, telling you that they seem to be coming from some ruins at the top of Ye Olde Mountain. You get a quest to save the children and extinguish the source of these hauntings. You go through the dungeon, discover a room full of children, and as you're about to unlock the gate that keeps them back, a child walks up behind you and demands what you're doing. As you talk to the child, it's clear he is demon possessed, and you have two choices - kill him and thus the demon, let him continue terrorizing the village, or making a pact with him that would spare his life but allow him to wander the world terrorizing people until the child's mortal body dies. Would it be so wrong to kill the child? Is this whole situation an invalid quest because it involves the harm of a child? Or is it an interesting, shocking artistic expression? I vote the latter.

and THESE sorts of possibilities are what we hardcore Skyrim players want. We see missed opportunities in quests for moral delimmas, confoundedness when an entire village is destroyed but the children survive (The Republic of Dave in Fallout 3 is a prime example of this), and disappointment at the general blandness of children. the truth behind the children in Skyrim has nothing to do with their immortality, but that they're added in as "realism fodder" - wasted polygons used to increase a sense of immersion. Yet what do they offer to the world? Outside of a single Dark Brotherhood quest, none of them have stories. None of them have abilities. None of them have anything interesting to say, no reason to effect the player, nothing extra to give the player in his/her experience. and I ask why? why are children so bland. why are they a taboo subject to include in the gaming medium when every other medium conjures up horribly pitiful ways of torturing children? Why can't we have the same artistic expression to create an emotional impact and say something about our society? It's not that I care about killing children (I have never harmed a child in any game - except in the aforementioned Republic of Dave when, in a fierce fire fight, I blew one over a chain link fence with a nuke by accident, forcing him to live an immortal life being perpetually chased by Yao Guai). It's not about killing children at all. It's about (in Skyrim's case) being given the ability to craft the best story possible, and the fact that children are so unimportant, carry so little weight, it makes me wish they just didn't add them at all.

Agreed, it's not that we're all murderous kitten rapists who have a long standing vendetta against our younger siblings, it's that we want the game to feel more real. I have the mod that makes children killable, but I've yet to exercise that ability.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Why's it so bad for games to allow child killing? If movies can simulate sex with a child (in an artistic fashion, of course), or the murder of a child, etc., and if books can be written about horrible atrocities/oddities with children (Lord of the Flies anyone?), why is it so wrong for games to be able to express themselves in such a way?

Take this for example. Say you're some hero walking through a standard fantasy world, and you come across a village. This village is haunted, and every night demonic entities come out and take away the children and kill the adults. One of the village elders explains this to you, telling you that they seem to be coming from some ruins at the top of Ye Olde Mountain. You get a quest to save the children and extinguish the source of these hauntings. You go through the dungeon, discover a room full of children, and as you're about to unlock the gate that keeps them back, a child walks up behind you and demands what you're doing. As you talk to the child, it's clear he is demon possessed, and you have two choices - kill him and thus the demon, let him continue terrorizing the village, or making a pact with him that would spare his life but allow him to wander the world terrorizing people until the child's mortal body dies. Would it be so wrong to kill the child? Is this whole situation an invalid quest because it involves the harm of a child? Or is it an interesting, shocking artistic expression? I vote the latter.

and THESE sorts of possibilities are what we hardcore Skyrim players want. We see missed opportunities in quests for moral delimmas, confoundedness when an entire village is destroyed but the children survive (The Republic of Dave in Fallout 3 is a prime example of this), and disappointment at the general blandness of children. the truth behind the children in Skyrim has nothing to do with their immortality, but that they're added in as "realism fodder" - wasted polygons used to increase a sense of immersion. Yet what do they offer to the world? Outside of a single Dark Brotherhood quest, none of them have stories. None of them have abilities. None of them have anything interesting to say, no reason to effect the player, nothing extra to give the player in his/her experience. and I ask why? why are children so bland. why are they a taboo subject to include in the gaming medium when every other medium conjures up horribly pitiful ways of torturing children? Why can't we have the same artistic expression to create an emotional impact and say something about our society? It's not that I care about killing children (I have never harmed a child in any game - except in the aforementioned Republic of Dave when, in a fierce fire fight, I blew one over a chain link fence with a nuke by accident, forcing him to live an immortal life being perpetually chased by Yao Guai). It's not about killing children at all. It's about (in Skyrim's case) being given the ability to craft the best story possible, and the fact that children are so unimportant, carry so little weight, it makes me wish they just didn't add them at all.

Agreed, it's not that we're all murderous kitten rapists who have a long standing vendetta against our younger siblings, it's that we want the game to feel more real. I have the mod that makes children killable, but I've yet to exercise that ability.

Still, they could have called it Immortality Remover Mod instead of Child-Killing mod.

 

[Sylvine]

Jesus wept... Did you just... Did you really just ask why killing an adult isn't as bad as killing a child? How about because of things like being innocent of the world? Or not being able to defend themselves? There is a reason why the most heinous, depraved and disgusting criminals are child killers...

Wow.

I might have to quit this internet thing.

You might rather start the using Your brain thing.

Skyrim. You're a lvl 45 ranger/mage. You go up to a beggar, or a farmer. Cast paralyse on him. Back up a bit just in case. Put an arrow through his kneecap. Then the other one. Continue hittin targets as You please until You get bored and aim for something lethal.

Wow. That guy sure was able to defend himself! And he should have known better than to... uh... go about his business, harming noone, and not getting in Your way.

But it's not as bad as killing a child, because... yeah... right.

~Sylv

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

The main reason I add in certain mods like the "child killing" mod in Skyrim is because they make the kids so fething irritating.

That little shit in Whiterun, the one that runs past you saying "i'm not scared of you, even if you are my elder" .... really, well then eat my axe you gobby little shit.

No, no I can't nor would I want to do it in real life.

And there lies the point.

Skyrim isn't real life, it doesn't even come close to real life. If something annoys me in a game I can kill it. If I don't like certain NPC's I can kill them. If i'm bored I can go on a rampage throughout the game world and kill everything.

It's a bloody game, it's pixels.

"Oh no, you killed those children you horrible murderer"

Now marvel as I reload to an earlier save and they are alive again ... it's magic.

Let alone the fact that in the last three games, the character starts off as some kind of prisoner. That is what really annoyed me about Yahtzee telling us what we "aren't" since the point of the game is that we are what we choose to be. Sooooo, in an open world, isn't it MY decision if I am a complete monster or not? Having demigods insult me as I walk past is grating when I know I can't do anything to them. A dragon attack also lacks impact when I see child immortals chilling out afterward. It also takes away the impact of the Daedra lords. I know they won't let me touch them and thus their invincibility has weight... Which is then taken away when I walk into a city, knowing that four or five Daedra lordlings will walk about and irritate me.

Have an increased bounty and stronger bounty hunters come about if you kill a kid. It would make sense and please both sides. A child's life would have impact instead of being an insult box that we just have to endure.

Funny thing is that I wouldn't make a point of killing them. Their vulnerability would simply make them more... human and thus perhaps I 'should' care.

 

[Necros_21]

When I see a dragon slaughter everyone in a town, I want them to be dead, not with 5 children standing calmly around the flaming corpses.

This. A savage massacre of this scale kind of loses its gravity when everyone under the age of 13 is magically invulnerable to it. You want one or two shell-shocked survivors still in the cellar where mom hid them for dramatic purposes? Fantastic. But having a whole village reduced to a pile of ash but half a dozen kids cluster around completely unscathed? Talk about immersion-breaking.

Agreed. I wouldn't go on a hunt to kill every little brat either, but I also don't want to see immersion breaking stuff like this.

The kids should be mortal, just like the NPCs. Trigger an event if you kill a critical NPC, everybody and everything starts attacking you. It would be kind of fun to go out that way before eventually dying and reloading your last save. Like when you attacked Sheogorath in Shivering Isles, that was a fun way to die too.

You should get some feedback though. If others see you intentionally killing kids, you should get a higher bounty and more angry people after you. Assuming you can get away and get rid of your bounty, which would cost more, the criminals would talk down to you because of what you did, treating you like crap.
I don't know if it's possible for the game to determine if it was accidental, but if it was, you shouldn't get a harsher penalty.
If you manage to do it without witnesses, you could get bad karma. Meaning you'd run into more powerful enemies more often, other thieves would steal from you and so on... And there wouldn't be any indication in any kind of menu about this. And if you want to have good karma again, you'd have to go through some hoops to get it.
But even if you weren't caught, you could get in trouble. For example, if it was some important/rich character's kid, there could be a chance for them hiring someone to investigate the death and sometimes determining that you were responsible. Then you'd have to deal with the law and/or assassins.
Of course if players knew all about this, or figured it out sooner or later, it could lose impact. Unless you're a real RPG fan, because then you'd still take it seriously.
Ok, it's probably not the best way to do it, but I'm no game designer either.

In Deus Ex: IW, when you killed a kid in the school (accidentally or on purpose), the game reacted to it, a character condemned your actions through your infolink and the guards were cursing you while trying to kill you.

 

[Something Amyss]

Turns out, a lot of people here think Croshaw is a Prophet of the way gaming Should Be. A messiah for the geeks of the internet...

Until he criticises them. Then all bets are fucking OFF.

You act surprised. This has been the deal for ages.

"LOL I LOVE IT WHEN YOU RIP INTO VIDEO GAMES...BUT HOW DARE YOU PICK ON THAT GAME I LIKE?"

It's been pretty common here on the Escapist since day 1.

Jesus wept... Did you just... Did you really just ask why killing an adult isn't as bad as killing a child?

A good number of people on here seem to lack a certain grasp of social nuances. I'm not trying to attack anyone, but again I'm hardly surprised a ton of people here seem to have this question of why it's wrong to do bad things to children.

 

[RJ 17]

As I'm sure many, many others have likely pointed out: in the case of wanting to kill children in Skyrim, at least for me it wasn't even about wanting it to be more realistic and have the laws of life and death extend to everyone. I honestly wouldn't care about not being able to kill children if they were smiling, happy-go-lucky little squirts who chased each other around singing songs and skipping down the road. But no, we've got little fuckers waiting inside shops to greet you with "Pfffft, I thought adventurers were supposed to be tough." Or walking into the Jarl's longhouse only to have his little brat say "*sigh* Another wanderer here to lick my father's boots, good job." It's not about realism, it's about good ol' fashioned vengeance. When some snot-nosed kid approaches the legendary Dragonborn after he just got done gleefully assassinting the emperor to please the dark lord Sithis and says "I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! EVEN IF YOU ARE MY ELDER!" it just REALLY makes you want to shank the little brat to get him to shut up.

In short: it's as though Bethesda specifically made every child in the game just the most obnoxious little bastard specifically to rub in the fact that "Nyah-Nwahhhh! You can't kill me so take my snide little comments and shove'em up your ass!"

If anything, it's not about wanting the game to be realistic, it's simply a matter of getting the respect a hero deserves.......by murdering children who piss him off. :3

 

[NotLikeOtherGuys]

Jesus wept... Did you just... Did you really just ask why killing an adult isn't as bad as killing a child?

A good number of people on here seem to lack a certain grasp of social nuances. I'm not trying to attack anyone, but again I'm hardly surprised a ton of people here seem to have this question of why it's wrong to do bad things to children.

And you'll commend me for doing bad things to everyone else? Without being FOR this mod, the idea is that it's pretty arbitrary that in this entire game, the children are built like Panzers.


Aside, you cannot bring Jesus into this, he would weep the minute he saw you in that prison cart in the first 5 minutes for whatever reason you RPed yourself into that situation.

 

[Sylvine]

And who the fuck asked for your input? Especially if what you have to say is completely not what we were talking about and insulting to boot.

In game, you can kill anyone you want however you want, and pretty much everything is pretty much equally powerless to stop you.

But he didn't ask that did he you tard, he asked, aside from everything, as in for real, how is child murder worse then regular murder, and what happens? You DEFEND that point of view. You're the kind of thing that makes people feel bad to be a gamer. I'm really not gonna take being trolled on this subject, and I reckon that another ban will be heading my way if I say what I actually want, so please do us both a favour and not quote me on anything, again, ever.

Wow. Classy. You might also rethink the "posting on a public forum" thing. Yeah, I AM going to quote You on what I perceive to be bullshit. It's a discussion board, not a soapbox.

It's really quite the same thing in real life, in any case. Both of Your arguments are just emotional appeals, having little to do with reality. If some random psycho decided to bust into my room right now armed with a gun and kill me, I couldn't defend myself either, and I sure as hell didn't do anything to him. Does it really matter whether I am 8 or 28 in that situation? It's the murder of a defenseless, innocent person.

Yes, I defend that point of view. I defend the point of view that murder is wrong, terribly wrong, and it does not get any more wrong. You say there is a reason "why the most heinous, depraved and disgusting criminals are child killers." Yes. The reason is that we view them as such. But that's not a rational reaction, and not a reasonable one, either. In a prison, regular rapists despise child rapists, regular killers hate child killers - what gives them the right? How dare they? How can they seriously think "Well, I am a killer, but at least I'm not a scumbag child killer?" Bullshit! You really think they are right to feel good about themselves?

That makes ME sick. Killing an innocent person is despicable. It does not matter whether the person is 8, 18, or 80. And as long as we think that killing a child is somehow the worst, we indirectly encourage the line of thinking that killing an adult is not that bad. This whole Skyrim thing actually goes to show it. That is not a position I am willing to take.

~Sylv