Extra Punctuation: What Is the Matter with You People?

[vivster]

ok that was disappointing
reading through the article i slowly prepared myself for getting my arguments you so carefully pointed out crushed by hard logic
i thought you were successful with the child fucking but then i realized that the comparison was more than flawed
and by the end of the article i got somehow really sick of the moral bias
how bizarre is it to be just called a child murderer when i just killed a whole village that had by coincidence 3 children in it?

games are about to experience things we can't have in the real world... slipping into a persona that is not the one of our own but something different
you can be a saint hero or you can be (which is heavily encouraged by the game) a complete serial killer dick
i myself found it really hard this time around to be a good character
many quests just involved robbing, killing or lying to innocent people which i had to bar from my list

and now you are telling me that it is amorally for us to demand of a game that encourages us to act amorally to go all the way?
if we want children there to be killable then that doesn't mean we want to kill children but that the persona we took wants to be a dick to everyone and there should really be no limit to age
your article read as if you were saying that a child's life is more worth than that of a grown adult... which in my opinion is quite frankly rather amoral

should i count the things you can kill(and again are encouraged to by the game)in skyrim?

-innocent citizens that never hurt anyone in their lives
-any kind of animal from a gentle mammoth to scared bunnies and harmless butterflies
-prisoners that have no way of defending themselves
-injured people in tents
-injured people that pray for their lives

so are you telling me now that if you already killed all those that it's suddenly wrong to kill the orphans you just created?
that's a moral bias right there
an arbitrary line drawn with no basis

the comparison to fuck children lacks a bit too
killing a person can't be compared to it
killing in a game is something we were desensitized since the very first games
killing is a quick way to achieve our goals and is done in almost every game nowadays
it's not personal anymore... and maybe never was

now i assume that sex with a prepubescent child is non-consensual so i'll call it rape from now on
raping someone is nothing but a thing to satisfy very deep(and dark) desires
you probably agree that such a thing won't be found in the majority of gamers
it's something very personal and you will only do it if you're in some kind drawn to this kind of thing...be it an adult or child

killing on the other hand is almost arbitrary for gamers
we are desensitized enough to not much care about our victims without being morally corrupted ourselves
what i'm saying is that it takes much more to rape someone than to kill someone in a game so the comparison doesn't hold up very well(especially since we are genetically wired to not want to rape anyone outside of our sexual desires)

maybe you find a better argument some day but that wasn't it
and yes it breaks the immersion if you want to be a dick but are suddenly restricted in acting out your persona
it breaks the immersion because until that point the game has carefully created the immersion for you that you are free to be a dick

yes i will be replaying the game as a dickish crazy assassin and yes i will get the mod
not because i hate children so much but because i believe in equality
if all adults have the right to get knifed in the eye with my bloody dagger so should the children

 

[RA92]

Replace 'children' with 'humans' and you have a Fox News/Daily Mail article.

Poor show, Yahtzee.

 

[Smeggs]

I find it hilarious that I'm pretty sure what I said word for word when I first heard about the child-killing mod was, "The fuck is wrong with people?"

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

I *do* want to brain that little snot in Dragonsreach...

but I won't go and mod the game to do it.

Another wanderer, come to lick my father's-

SHUT THE ^%%(* UP YOU LITTLE *^&%&^% I'M THE GOD DAMN DRAGONBORN AND A THANE OF THIS DAMN TOWN!

He pisses me off too, but I also wouldn't mod it - couldn't anyway, console, but so it goes.

OT: I disagree with your having sex with children analogy, it's pretty week. I quite liked the idea of NPCs being able to harm em, though.

Also I don't get how everyone is experiencing entire towns getting killed by the dragons, my general experiences are usually like this:

Spoiler: Spoilered for size

 

[Silviu Iordache]

i dont want the kid murdering mod for realism,i just want to murder that fucking annoying prick in Skyrim,trust me that girl is the most annoying thing in the unniverse. And whats the big fuss about murdering children in games? OH NO IM A MAD MAN WHO LIKES TO RAPE AND KILL CHILDREN IN GAMES AND THAT MAYBE ONE DAY WILL GO OUT ThERE IN THE REAL WORLD AND DO THE SAME! Seriously Yathzee,seriously? So killing ,slicing,decapitating and ripping limbs off people is okay in video games,but when it comes to children...NO SIR! WE HAVE GONE TO FAR! Its just a bunch of textures and scripted models ,grow up,seriously,including you Yahtzee.

 

[Zombus]

If I were playing Skyrim on pc the child mortality mod would be one of the first I get. Not because I am some child killing sociopath but because they are annoying as shit and when I save and decide I am going to spend the next 10 minutes killing any npc who has annoyed me in this last session of my play; be they adult, child or whatever. It is the same reason why I would get a mod that removes plot armour from major npcs.

 

[Norix596]

For all the talk about burning small children with gasoline that popped up when reading the transcript of the Supreme Court hearing on California's video game law, it is recognized that this is a line that is NEVER crossed (in mainstream American games anyway) It's often kind of interesting to see how the situation is handled in each game. There are generally 3 methods -- 1) complete lack of children (ie Hitman/Red Dead Redemption) 2) Intangible children (Fable 2 and Skyrim apparently) and 3) Children who can absorb infinite amounts of damage without permanent harm (Fable 1)

 

[Mordwyl]

If the children can't die, why all the fuss about Thalmor? Just send the little runts on the front lines to tank the bastards.

 

[Yopaz]

Maybe its because I work around a large number of kids and teens with a criminal record and conduct disorder, but I don't see what the hell is annoying about Skyrim's kids.

I played hide-and-seek with a little girl in Whiterun yesterday. Though she did cheat and counted too fast when I went to hide. But then again...so did I.

Maybe The Escapist just attracts an unusually large number of child haters.

You should have downloaded the child killing mod and killed her for that. Cheating is a crime that should be punished with death.
Seriously though, I agree with you. The Escapist is a community filled with child haters it seems. Whenever someone reads news about a group saying kids shouldn't be allowed in restaurants everyone seems to agree. I have even seen people whining about there being kids at McDonalds.

OT: I also have problem seeing the appeal in games allowing us to kids. When I play Saints Row The Third and shoot the windshield of a plane ending up flying out on the other side of it to dive several miles to catch a person I threw away before I entered the plane I don't see the logic in the complaints about lack of realism.
Or Skyrim for that matter. After killing a dragon using a combo of magic and sword you don't hear anyone whining about realism.
When you're playing GTA do you complain about the realism after the cops stop following you just because you repainted the car?

If you can forgive that a team of S.W.A.T. stops following you because your car changes colour when they saw you enter the paint shop you shouldn't whine about the lack of realism when there's no kids around.

For me it's just that it's more immersion breaking than anything. I was playing Skyrim last night and while I'm working at the forge in Riverwood a battalion of Stormcloak soldiers show up and just start straight up murdering the shit out of everyone. Needless to say this pissed me off because they also killed my supplier of Iron Ingots while they were at it. While all this is going on a Blood Dragon and a Frost Dragon show up and start attacking. So I pull out my bow while the epic music starts slowly building up in the background and get to work poisoning my arrows, finding a decent sniping spot and keeping an eye out for any potential cover. Needless to say, it felt like quite a kickass moment.

So after this battle involving a battalion of soldiers, innocent townspeople and two dragons is over I take a moment to survey the damage. This little village that I frequented quite often is now deserted. Empty. They even killed the dog! I think about how just a moment ago I was shopping, forging weapons and helping people out...and know they're all dea-

"I'm not afraid of you..even if you are my elder"

FUCKING KIDS!!!!

My way of thinking about the whole thing is to either makes the obey the rules of the game world like ever other NPC or just don't include them at all. They barely add anything to the game save a quest or two out of hundreds of quests.

I can relate to that. If a village gets massacred it seems odd to leave the kids alive. What I don't get is the desire to kill kids.

It's not a desire to kill kids. It's a desire for the rules presented in the game world to be consistant. See....well, see my post that you quoted actually. Nowhere in the post do I mention a desire or anything close to that. We just want to be immersed and children that are immune to everything from Swords to Arrows to Fireballs to Bear maulings to Dragons prevents that not unlike a brick wall stopping any forward momentum.

You understood my post wrong there. When a village gets killed off it seems stupid to leave the kids alive for no reason. I just don't understand why so many (not you) wants to kill kids themselves. Kids should be killed if it is relevant to the story, sure. I just think that the desire to kill them for no other reason than "They annoy me" is a sign of a mind that's messed up. Not mentioning this because you said that or anything like that, but because I said that in the first post of mine that you quoted.

 

[walrusaurus]

There are two things that i take issue here. One is that allowing a random/accidental occurrence to effect children (accidental swing, dragon/bandit attack, etc.), is equivalent to willful molestation.

The other is that massacring an entire town is somehow less morally objectionable then a single child. If it were equally or more objectionable than that would be impossible too, no?

I reject the notion that violent crimes perpetrated against children are somehow more heinous than those against adults. It stems from a false notion of increased helpless. An adult with a gun (or in this case: a fireball) to their head has no more agency over their situation than a child. Certainly they make people cringe more, because they are conditioned that way, or perhaps just desensitized to violence against adults. I'd venture to guess that if you were to show footage of the crimes we see on the average crime drama to someone from the 50's they would have much the similar reaction that a modern person would have to a child being shot in the head.

Additionally the line at which we stop thinking of humans as children for the purposes of morality has an ugly correlation with when they stop being 'cute.' Its essentially the same as how many have no issue with slaughtering cows for food, but do it to a puppy, and it a crime.

 

[aristos_achaion]

What I see about child-murdering is less that you're not a child murderer, but you're a murderer from whom children are magically exempt. Not even just an amateur murderer...you can join the Dark Brotherhood! Sure, you start off morally justified with

Spoiler

a nasty woman who physically and verbally abuses children,

but you're eventually asked to kill

Spoiler

a defenseless beggar who lives in a burned-down house and an orcish bard who's just really bad at singing.

These are not the acts of a nice, warm-and-fuzzy individual...the game pretty clearly opens the door to being a cold-blooded killer.

Now, sure, there are some mechanics that the game omitted, probably intentionally. For instance, you can't rape anybody, but then again you can't have sex to begin with. However, in a game that clearly allows the slaughter of innocent civilians, it's a bit immersion-breaking to have them be immortal just because they haven't hit adolescence yet.

 

[S_SienZ]

Add a mod where you get the option of accepting the surviving kids as disciples. Problem solved. Free hair wax and dye for the japanese version too.

And since we're so into realism, the disciple thing would allow your character to age and simply die, and before you die you designate your favourite one and play as that one. All the others get jealous, and split off and make their own factions while some remain as helpful NPCs, and you have to continue your predecessor's story while dealing with it.

 

[Wolf Hagen]

After reading roughly 95% of the comments on here, I got his point even more then trough the Article himself.

A Dragon wiping out the children in a village is one thing, that bethesta literally failed to make it a scripted section.
Though, as I havent played the game, I cant tell if the Village really looks like Hiroshima 1945.

But, I wonder Why so many people are buggered by this, since the game is such a big thing.

Thats like complaining that you cant break the big streetsighns in SR3, even if you drive in a tank.
After ramming your car multiple times into them you know this ain't gonna work and avoid them as given Fact.

Such should be with the Kids in Skyrim.
Just dont get bothered.
And making them annoying... have you ever handled around children in Real Life guys? Then you know that Bethesta made a good job making them realistic. ;P

The point mentioned about Fallout 1&2 is a rather intresting one, since the Euro versions where censored in this way, but unfortunatly the children where sometimes nessecary for a quest or such a thing.

If you killed them (by accident or on your self set mission to wipe out a town) they would have sent Bounty hunters after you, wich where as far as random encounters go in this game, a damn serious thread.

But Interplay was intendet to do this, and Bethesta was not, like Voilition was intendet to not let the player plow aa tank trugh buildings and such.

there are always some constraints that we have to handle, unless we cheat. ;P

 

[newwiseman]

Number one reason I kill children in Bethesda games, they see a crime committed and instead of me being able to just kill them right there, I now have to fight my way through every guard in the city to get out; while had the kid been like every other NPC I could have snuffed them without witnesses and been on my marry way.

My basic reasoning, if your against the killing of children why have them in the game at all? I can't remember any whelps in Morrowind interfering in my escapades. If they're there then they need to be as susceptible to their surroundings as every other NPC.

As for going out of our way, enabling their 'death' is a hell of a lot easier than removing them from a finished game or disabling their reporting of crimes.

 

[Coldster]

Well would you look at that. An undeniable case against the modders and (some) users of Skyrim and put together very, very well to come to a logical conclusion. Outstanding work Yahtzee. I look forward to seeing more Extra Punctuation like this. This is the material that I really like to see.

No it's not. There is no case against the modders because they're not doing anything wrong. What someone does in their game (A fictional setting where no one real is hurt) is their business. Why do you care? Making the setting more consistent by making everyone susceptible to the same threats as anyone else doesn't make the modders freaks.

Can you please take your worthless argument somewhere else? I will not discuss this matter because it is obvious you have grounded yourself permanently on one side of it. All I will say is that I never dismissed the modders (or users) as "bad people". I will agree to disagree and leave it at that.

EDIT: Fixed.

 

[HK_01]

From what I've seen (I don't have Skyrim yet), the children are really, really annoying. Bethesda seems to have designed them specifically to troll people by making you want to kill them and then going all like "oh, you want to kill this child? Well, you can't! HA!"

Same thing happened in FO3. The only reason I didn't install a child-killing mod there was because I got the "Child at Heart" perk and that made it somewhat bearable. Honestly, none of the adult NPCs act like such jerks.