Extra Punctuation: What Is the Matter with You People?

[EvilRoy]

"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?"

Here you bring up the age thing, but deny that the point is that children are drastically incapable of self-defense/security/generally protecting themselves from things that you know are in the world that children don't have a clue about. And while age doesn't factor into that, your general state in life does, of which age is a factor, because aging takes away your naivety, gives you knowledge about protecting yourself, makes you wise to the world and makes you much more physically capable.

Sorry to just jump in here, but I feel it's important to bring up the point in regards to self defence.

The problem is simply that the other guy having a gun or a knife is essentially an 'instant win' button. Sometimes people let movies and cop dramas fool them into thinking that they could potentially stop even a weaker enemy wielding either of those weapons, but 8 or 80 you actually do have roughly the same chance of survival, a bit higher at 18.

Next time you buy a melon from the grocers, pull out one of your pointed butchers knives and, starting at the hip, thrust the knife forward into the melon (you don't even need to hold the melon with your other hand). Now, piercing the melon with the knife was approximately 1.25-1.5 times more difficult than it is to pierce a human. The melon is now in shock from the stab, and fluids from their stomach or bowels are leaking into their bloodstream, poisoning them from the inside out.

So you can't really argue that when faced with a weapon carrying enemy, an older person has much more chance. They don't even need to be skilled with that weapon, simply thrusting forward will most likely cause substantial damage. An 18 year old might have a better chance of dodging the attack, though its more likely that they would just take the damage but be able to survive assuming the attacker stops there. At 8as young as 60 any of the benefits age gave the person are long since gone, and past 70 with the onset of advanced aging diseases and affliction the person is more likely less capable than a child at self defence.

So... Y'know. Just don't think that being older makes you less at risk than a child against attacks with a weapon. It can be very dangerous.

to counter that, if both the attacker and I (i'm 23) had knives the stakes would be, barring outside training/quality of the weapon, etc, essentially equal. this is not so at all for a child. yes, there are child soldiers out there who know how to wield a weapon with relatively deadly efficency, but in this case the children are just that...children. I'd expect people to be sad if I got killed by some dude with a knife, but if I also had a knife in the engagement, then it was, at least to some degree, a "fair" fight. Discounting the child soldier thing above, there's no way an 8 year old with a knife against a 24 year old with a knife is as "fair" of a fight

This is true, but the problem is that functionally within the game you are almost always a 24 year old fighting an 8 year old. After only a few hours it becomes generally unusual for you to be defeated, and armed civilians pose roughly the same threat as unarmed children. Sure they have the capacity to defend themselves in a way that children do not, but when so vastly outclassed by an opponent, a knowledge of the basics of stabbing tactics is unlikely to even cause a hindrance.
One might call it a case of bringing a knife to a gunfight, but even if properly outfitted they are still fighting an enemy that is smarter, faster, stronger and with substantially more experience in a fight.

 

[Athinira]

Sorry, this is where I stopped reading because if this is the kind of analogy you're making, the rest of your post was probably just going to make me angry.

Thats a horrible example because the pigs in a GTA game are a constant threat and depending on how you play, are probably going to be your chief aggressors.

Then maybe you should not be on a forum if you can't even bother reading peoples post.

If you had actually read it, you would have seen the following paragraph:

And in Skyrim, the children happen to be set up as a kind of antagonists, for the simple reason that they're simply annoying, and there is nothing morally wrong with removing annoying elements that detracts from your gameplay experience. As another poster pointed out earlier, the game even has a mechanic where NPC's can report you if you commit any crimes, which can be countered by killing any witnesses.... except if a child happens to be the witness, in which case you're screwed.

So the game gives you two heavy incentives to kill the smug pricks

If you can't stand arguing in the first place, why are you here?

 

[drivel]

Immortal chilluns running around after a dragon has murdered everyone else in a town doesn't make any sense. Also, how about the added incentive to be careful when blasting off spells or swinging an axe because you might just kill little Susie or Timmy?

My point is there are elements of immersion that can be achieved by allowing children to die that have nothing to do with players wanting to murder children personally.

 

[jessegeek]

I draw the line at watching gamers protest their lack of child-killing options in a game where it is irrelevant to the story.

It's a sandbox game. There's a ton of stuff you can do that's irrelevant to the story. Kind of the point of a sandbox.

Granted, me using the word story there was incorrect: world or environment would have made more sense. My point is pretty much the article's argument about the fact that you are an adventurer, maybe you are playing a scurrilous one but you're still an adventurer as opposed to a sadistic psychopathic, Manhunt-esque character, where a child-killing mechanic would make complete sense.

But you can be a sadistic psychopath. You can run around killing every single adult you come across.

There's a video of a player in Skyrim who literally keeps decapitated heads in his house as trophies. I don't recommend watching it it's creepy as all hell.

I've seen that video (the title is the worst thing about it, imo) but just because that player has been physically able to do it does not mean it's in-keeping with the game's internal world. Whilst he's been able to do it, it somewhat defeats the "point" of the game. I know you can choose your own destiny etc, but within the context of the DnD-esque type roles. It's like if he played Saints Row II and just walked around the city observing the green cross code; even if you can, it seems like you're probably playing the wrong game if that's all you want to do, therefore adapting the game world to include aspects of gameplay that facilitate it seems kinda redundant to me.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I've seen that video (the title is the worst thing about it, imo) but just because that player has been physically able to do it does not mean it's in-keeping with the game's internal world. Whilst he's been able to do it, it somewhat defeats the "point" of the game. I know you can choose your own destiny etc, but within the context of the DnD-esque type roles. It's like if he played Saints Row II and just walked around the city observing the green cross code; even if you can, it seems like you're probably playing the wrong game if that's all you want to do, therefore adapting the game world to include aspects of gameplay that facilitate it seems kinda redundant to me.

The thing with the Elder Scrolls series is that aside from a main quest to provide a driving force behind the game and a dramatic question, and the plethora of lore available at the player's perusal via dialog and in-game books, it's a largely context-less fantasy RPG setting. The very point of the game is to maximize player choice vis-a-vis nonlinearity and a relative stripping of context that subconsciously shoehorns the player into a necessarily heroic or villainous path. Even upon completing the main quest in later Elder Scrolls games, there's a perfunctory "well, you're destiny's complete. Go do whatever it is you really want to do now" scene.

Being able to be a serial-killing psychopath is perfectly in line with the game's internal world. Look at the Morag Tong (ethical assassins), Dark Brotherhood (religious zealot assassins and psychopaths), the "Blood on the Ice" quest, and the cults of the Daedric Princes (especially Malacath, Boethiah, Molag Bal, and Mephala). Some of these quests and plotlines actually have an (unspoken) prerequisite of the player-character being mentally-unbalanced at best and an utter, unrepentant sociopath at worst.

Really, look no further than "Blood on the Ice" which is in Skyrim itself (big time spoilers ahead):

Spoiler

First, you have the implication Calixto rapes and murders his victims...and the order of those events is highly questionable. Then you have the Butcher's Journals which describe his victims in purely sexualized terms; he wants their body parts because they represent to him sexually-desirable features, he's trying to Frankenstein the perfect woman. The final Butcher's Journal reveals the identity of the woman he's trying to use necromancy to bring back from the dead...it's his dead sister he's trying to bring back in the "perfect body".

Yuck, yuck, yuck.

 

[MimeticLie]

For me the issue is that NPCs in Skyrim have 3 major functions. They talk, they fight, and they die. Children don't do the latter two, and they barely do the first. Aside from a throwaway quest in Whiterun and a game of tag in that first village, all I've gotten from children are single lines of dialogue.

If you're going to put them in the game, make them a meaningful part of the game. They don't have to be killable. Children in Fallout 3 couldn't die, but they did more than take up space. There weren't many around, but the ones that were there were as characterized as their adult counterparts. In Skyrim, they just feel like filler. I'd rather have a mod that took them out entirely than a mod that let you kill them.

 

[BlackWidower]

I'm surprised Yahtzee would take this stand. The man who often preaches the fact that how you act in a game is often very different to how you act in real life.

So, why shouldn't you be allowed to play as a child rapist in Skyrim? Of course he's right. Restrictions are okay, but so is modding. Being allowed to seduce the children makes little sense, they should be programmed to simply not be interested. But killing or raping them is wrong whether or not they're children.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

I can get why you can't kill children in Skyrim. As far as I've gotten, you can't be KOTOR-dark-side-evil, at least not in the story sense. I know I killed a few innocents with no names, but that's about it.

However I absolutely can't get why you couldn't in "Fallout 3". You could be a slave trader in "Fallout 2". Heck, you could annihilate an entire town with a nuclear device in "Fallout 3", but killing children is where the devs draw the line? And yes, that town had children by the way.

That reminded me of an incident I had whilst playing "Fallout 2" back in the days when it was still new. I was never a child killer by choice, however one of my stray bullets, well strayed and ended a life of a six-year old. A total accident, as I was trying to shoot a guy 90 degrees to the side of that kid, with the kid being about a hundred feet away.

That child's prostitute a mother then started screaming and charging at me, her death was entirely my choice. The death of that child at my hands was one of the most powerful experiences I had whilst playing a game. It truly brought out the dread of that barren world. A world of cruelty, inhumanity and "moral bankruptcy", where nobody's clean, not even the protagonist.

I think that there is another reason why child murder shouldn't be exempted from games. It reminds us that murder is a monstrous act. Interplay interpreted it well in their Fallout-series: once you'd become a child murderer or a slave trader there would be some very dear consequences. In the first case a bunch of mercs would once and again appear on the world map to claim their reward for claiming a head of a child murderer and these guys were tough and well equipped. In the second case, if you would choose to become a slave trader that would forever screw your relationships with the democratic NCR, since you had a slaver tatoo on your forehead, "Inglorious Basterds" style.

In short, you could permit child murder, but don't make it consequence free. Children make great collateral damage. For what I see it, a murder is a murder, it is also a thing that games make you do 90% of the time. Killing a child with consequences once in a while could remind you that genocide isn't all it's cracked up to be... and killing a child from the shadows with no witnesses (or perhaps disposing of witnesses) would teach you that some people get away with it, you know, if you want realism and shit.

 

[Limos]

The reason that unkillable children ruin immersion is that enemies still aggro them and they didn't bother programming them to run the fuck away. So you get invincible children standing around in the middle of an epic dragon battle getting chewed on while saying "Oh look another adventurer here to lick my father's boots."

No, fuck that. I would rather have no kids than have invincible kids. They are so fucking annoying.

 

[cefm]

It's more of an extreme litmus-test of whether or not a game is truly "open" and allows you to "do anything". From a game-play perspective it's totally f*ing annoying when you are able to hit your allies, kids, townspeople, guards, dogs, etc. with attacks when you DON'T want to because it can totally screw up a quest and cost you some serious coin to pay off the fines. I hated the crappy lack of targeting in Oblivion which had me hacking the subject of my quest instead of the attackers. But if you're looking to test the edges of an "open sandbox" that's one logical test - are the kids target-able?

Other tests would be "can you cut down the trees?" or "can you dig a hole through a mountain?" or "can you block or divert the couse of a river or stream?" or "can you start a forest fire?" or "Does my character defecate/urinate?" or even "If I eat enough beets will my character pee pink?". These are all tests of the "sand-boxiness" of the world, and in almost all cases the answer is "no". So when people harp on about not being able to hit kids with attacks but aren't equally concerned with other instances of less-than-reality in the gameplay, I can only conclude they're creepy lunatics.

 

[Bodyless]

How do you know that immortal children and mandatory undergarments are actually meant to be in there? These were invented to appeal laws and reduce age restrictions in the first place:
Fallout 2 US -> Fallout 2 UK children made invisible
Daggerfall (yes you dont need a nude patch for that) -> Morrowind
As a sensible adult, one could argue that these patches turn the game into what the devs wanted to make, if it wasnt for the legal consequences and publishers.

 

[internetzealot1]

Everyone has their limits. I guess we've found Yahtzee's.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

I'm not saying that there are some IRL violent people here and games are to blame, I think i've put myself across in a less than ideal way...

Fact is, as far as I see it, if seeing dead kids is something you need to have a game world feel complete, you're a pretty desensitized individual. And that is what I'm trying to say.

And you are wrong.

(snip)
Listen. Every single game-world invites to specific kinds of action (like GTA invites you to go on a kill-frenzy rampage), and there is no universal rule that says that child-killing in games are wrong. It differs from game to game. Modern Warfare 3 did it in a cutscene (not to mention the airport level from the previous game).
(snip)

Finally there is the point of story consistency (note: not 'realism', CONSISTENCY, which is what creates immersion). As someone pointed out earlier, when a dragon attacks a village, your first thought should be "Get the women and children to safety", not "Lets use the children as a diversion while i pump the dragon full of arrows". Immortal children also raises several questions that breaks consistency, like for example why no-one would use them as a fighting force since they are basically untouchable. Even if you were a good king who wouldn't want to use children that way, sooner or later one of your enemies is going to. It raises questions, questions that the game can't answer, which equals broken immersion.

I'm with you on this one: pretty much all games are ROLE PLAYING games, i.e. games WHERE YOU PLAY A ROLE. The role isn't a reflection of your personality, it's A ROLE. There's a difference between acting out what you think the character you're playing would do and what you would actually do in that situation. Barring young impressionable children (who shouldn't be allowed to play these games without an adult putting it in context, or perhaps at all), you would have to have some preexisting form of mental instability to confuse yourself with the character you play.

Yahtzee went on about how killing children isn't allowed by the roles Skyrim lets you play, but if that was the case then they wouldn't have the dark brotherhood questline where you kill and torture innocent and defenseless people for profit and fun. (And this is from the character's perspective, not the player's, as the dialogue options imply that you're character enjoys killing people.) Am I supposed to accept that a dark brotherhood assassin who goes on and on about how good it feels to tear out the intestines of innocent defenseless people is somehow going to draw the line at children? That's just stupid. In fact, I could have sworn there was a little piece of NPC dialogue where they described how they assassinated a child (I think it was in Oblivion). Hell, anyone who played the dark brotherhood storyline in Oblivion will know that it revolved around some sick stuff:

Spoiler

It revolved around the actions of a traitorous member of the brotherhood. This person's mother was killed before him when he was a child by Lucien Lachance (a speaker in the Dark Brotherhood), which caused him to became obsessed with destroying the Dark Brotherhood and killing Lachance. For god's sake, the traitor worshiped the severed rotting head of his mother on an alter in a basement with a bunch of dead bodies. His betrayal forced your character to perform the ritual of "Purification" on the Cheydinal sanctuary, which meant hunting down and killing all the NPCs who were actually made out to be the friendliest and perhaps the most likable characters in the game. (It was actually kind of heartbreaking when the one Khajiit who had been antagonistic to your character up until that point apologized and said that he wanted to be friends, unaware that you had been ordered to kill him.) His eventual plan was to destroy the DB by killing the Night Mother.

The Night Mother was originally a member of the Morag Tong (a much older organization of assassins) who was told by Sithis (supposedly the primordial destructive spirit of the empty void in which everything exists) to start a new organization of assassins. She formed this new organization (the DB) when she killed the 5 children she was impregnated with by Sithis. The townspeople, horrified by her act, burnt her alive, but her spirit was sent to the void where she could communicate to the "Listener" of the brotherhood through her corpse. Much of the plot of the DB in Skyrim revolves around your character embracing and speaking to the ancient corpse of the Night Mother.

So all that stuff is perfectly alright, but killing children isn't? How about some freaking consistency.

I understand it in a game like Fable, which doesn't try to be dark (except for the random Cthulhu wannabe in #3, but that just made the game seem schizophrenic considering you could fight him in a chicken suit). But you need to have some consistency in the game. If you allow the player to play as an evil twisted murderer then you have to allow them to play that way, or else you'll destroy immersion. If you're going to allow a character to be really depraved and evil, then you probably shouldn't even have children in the game if you have a problem with the player killing them.

 

[TheWizardWhoDunIt]

Yahtzee's pretty right. What a lot of people are forgetting is that all games are trying to achieve a sort of narrative; games aren't tools for you to escape from your daily lives into some fantasy world. Getting the player sucked into a game and the game's world should not be the objection of a conscious, moral, and talented game designer. I would say that's unethical if someone did. Rather, the goal is to make the player say the game is pretty good and maybe make a statement. Perhaps the designer just wants to tell a good story to someone and make someone's evening go smoothly; maybe the designer wants to inspire future generations of producers. In that way, the designer must be careful to craft a coherent narrative for the player in order for one to experience these pleasures and other feelings the designer wants one to feel.

When Yahtzee defines the word "immersion" it's not about putting yourself in the avatar's shoes. "My own definition of immersion is the point when you have stopped noticing the actual nuts and bolts of the game and can enjoy the experience as intended." 'Intended' is the key word in that sentence. Some people have valid arguments, in that Skyrim's 'intended' purpose is for the player to create some sort of mythology around them (although killing children is not considered a feat legendary heroes do). I still don't think Yahtzee is wrong, and this is why.

Yahtzee, I think this is what you have to do: Admit that killing children is in poor taste, but concede that by disallowing players to do so is also simply a problem game designers have simply been ignoring for too long. Give examples for ways for designers to avoid this, and list examples of great games where designers do avoid it (Infamous series is a good example). However, you must also say that those people who hack the game--make real, non-leisurely, effort--in order to kill children are really just weird as hell. Make a distinction between those who act poorly in games as a result of leisure and those who act poorly in a game as a result of intending to do real, substituional harm. Then make a joke about murder or something, usually pertaining to yourself, you lovable, lovable killer.

 

[hooksashands]

Strangely enough, the dragons are programmed to attack children. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NUHJkSNid8]

 

[Raioken18]

I think the thing that bothered me about not being able to kill children was context. I've done two playthroughs, on as a goody two shoes like saint that sided with the Empire, and another psychopathic thief that joined each faction, pretending to be friendly then murdering entire towns.

Now the reason this is important is because one of the most commonly used tropes in superhero mythology is that villains kill the parents and allow the child to live, it always bothers me especially since half the time the child in a known potential threat. So after killing everyone in... I think it was Whiterun, I saw this child that had bragged about her fighting skills, yet was hiding in a corner. I thought to myself... if I let her live, there would be the potential for her to go Batman on my ass years later.

But... it's not like it ruined my game, I figured that it would be more sadistic to just let those children live unprotected with monsters and bandits surrounding their town. You also can't kill some of the storyline characters like the jarl and his associates.

 

[xdiesp]

The killing of civilians and children IS modern warfare.

Wikileaks a couple months ago uncovered a case of US marines executing a family and ordering an airstrike to level their building to cover up their tracks. Try that as the shock scene for MW4.

 

[laserwulf]

*dons armchair philosopher fez*
Although I understand the desire of a developer to shape the experience though the available actions in-game, the ability to do evil things in a game world makes 'good' choices meaningful. In any game for that matter, are you the "good guy" because the game says so, or because you're avoiding killing civilians and going out of your way to help NPCs because it's the right thing to do?