Poll: killing in-game kids?

[Drakmeire]

I enjoy freedom in games and I like the idea of letting you kill everything. I just wish that games like Fallout and Skyrim which explicitly contain unkillable children would give you the option because quite frankly, it breaks the immersion and those kids are really really annoying.

 

[Double A]

They should be as killable as any other NPC. Personally, I would never, ever harm a video game child unless it was a COMPLETE asshole, like Mayor McCreedy or any kid in Skyrim that says "Oh, another adventurer come to lick my father's boots?" just like how I don't kill regular NPCs unless they attack me first or downright deserve it.

Or they're a completely blank slate. Then they're just a nonsentient robot.

 

[Ninjat_126]

...but NOOOOO. We have to get our "on fire" badges.

How did you get yours? (Legit question.)

Good Example Of Child Killing: Open world games like Fallout/Skyrim, where you should be able to kill everyone you want to.

Bad Example Of Child Killing: Dead Space. The Pack is at least justified by the fact that you're in a residential space station, I can accept that. Lurkers I can accept, they're creepy space zombies that just happen to be babies. Crawlers are just sick. For the uninitiated, Crawlers are suicide bomber baby zombies. It's like they were trying to offend people.

Cherubs in Doom 3 were similar, but they were at least oversized and part insect, and they dissolved on death meaning that they were demons and not actual babies. Plus, they sounded creepy as all hell.

Little Sisters in Bioshock are possibly the best example of child killing, with actual morality tied to it.

 

[Tarrker]

The offense people take to killing children in games has always been kind of baffling to me, personally. It's just such an arbitrary thing. It's only a game. You're not killing an actual person, you're "killing" a collection of ones and zeros that looks like a person and anyone who can't tell the difference needs to seriously consider the state of their mental health.

 

[lord.jeff]

I'm all for killing kids in certain games like Skyrim or Fallout but I just gotta say I really hate the it's just pixels arguments, there is a point in any media when a character becomes real to the viewer/player/reader and I think the it's just pixel thing fails to recognize the experiences that games are willing to give and insult writers and others that worked on the project. If we really believed games were nothing but pixels would we be spending are time discussing them?

 

[Phisi]

I would prefer to have killable children in games not because i want to kill them but so it adds a degree of risk to my actions. I have the Skyrim mod for that reason now, I have to be more careful casting and making sure no children are around.

 

[LordSchucker]

games like gta I would say no. But skyrim and fallout they should.

 

[hashtag]

If it was presented in a moral choice type thing I'd love that. A lot more intense than just killing an adult and would actually make me think about the rampages I go on in towns.

 

[JemothSkarii]

Child-killing? Can anyone say CAVIA? Drakenguard, its sequel, and Nier featured lots of child-killing (among other things)

Was that a good thing? Eeeeeh not really.

Cavia really hated children, though.

And happy endings. MAN did they hate those.

Yeah, I love how people focus on a Skyrim mod, when there's stuff like this:
I loved Drakengard, Nier, all of those, and the thing about this (and the Skyrim mod) is that ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE OPTIONAL.

Drakengard? It's a sidequest
Skyrim? You can just not attack the kids
Fallout? You CAN kill kids, but the Childkiller trait is very, very bad and makes the game quite a bit harder.
So I like the option of having killable kids in my games, but if they're gonna be involved, they deserve to be killable, otherwise they're an annoyance (like Little Lamplight)

 

[dragonsshunter]

for me it is fable 2 that comes to mind, I the main character is allowed to be shot out of a window as a child, but i am not allowed to attack children let alone my own kids. i found that strange and mildly upsetting...so i took it out on the wife (in game).

 

[Eve Charm]

Here's the thing, it just doesn't fit in a game where you can Kill anything but not specific whatever on some bs morality. imagine how pissed you'd be if you weren't allowed to attack a character of the opposite sex for sexism or race for racism or whatever other isms might offend someone. Don't give the free choice to do anything and add stupid restrictions to it. it just pulls you out of being sucked into a game and just starts people griping on it.


Also if your that offended or afraid of what people would do, then don't even put the kids in the game, How many kids do you kill in GTA or saints row, zero.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Depends on the point of view.
Mine was and is as follows : there are much better activities than debating over existence of killable models of smaller people often called "kids". We can't consider ourselves serious if we're trying to prevent our kids from - i don't know what - by censoring some game content while we do nothing for those living and actually dying in slums. Especially if we're talking about games that aren't PG-rated for Christ's sake !

No one said it was about "protecting the kids;" the central argument seems to be that it's inherently wrong in the same way people argued that the school shooter mod is wrong. I get how you were connecting the two now, but the jist of what I said earlier is still true. It's not wrong to deal with a smaller problem in lieu of a bigger one, even if it's very similar, especially if your power to fix the smaller problem is greater. It wouldn't be wrong to give meals to poor, lower class families just because they have more than other starving people in other parts of the world. Dealing with street children is a complex and difficult issue, but if you think you can also protect children by curbing the inclusion of offensive material in video games (somehow), that would be much easier to accomplish. And you should do so, even if you're not helping to fix the greater problem.

If not kids, then who ? Adults, that are suposed to tell the difference between bunch of pixels and real life ? Average gamer is in his 30ties if i'm not mistaking. The younger - kids - should be simply supervised by their parents or whoever cares about them, and on top of that : "Parental Guidance". We invented it ealier than last Thursday. Case closed.

And it's not about fixing smaller issues either. It's creating problems where none exist, while other, much serious matters are still unresolved. I don't buy this "it's not wrong" part. That's exactly what's wrong with our world - people deal with things they shouldn't instead of those that need to be fixed as soon as possible. We waste resources instead of focusing on a single task.

...and that's why i think this kind of discussion is pointless and people offended by such things simply don't deserve their existence obviously filled with luxury and spare time they waste on bulls*t.

 

[Lyri]

Of course you should be able to. If killing children is such a big deal to people then it could be used as an effective tool. For example you could have a moral choice decision where you are forced to kill a bunch of kids or watch your best friend die or something, I don't know. All I know is that it is an excellent way to convey a message and shouldn't be banned simply because some people are a bit squeamish (I know I am oversimplifying that a bit).

Why?

A question you haven't really answered in your post, you say you should be able to but you never really gave specifics as for wanting it.
Yes it could convey a message of sorts but do we really need to lower the already terrible moral choice system?
The example you gave doesn't really stand up to support your argument either, "kill the children and save your friend or freind dies and children live" what message could this be used to send?

I find the argument for killing children to be borderline asinine, whilst yes it's not entirely realistic that you can't axe murder a child as they frolic down the streets of Whiterun.
Does it really need to be in there to help you have fun whilst you play Skyrim?
If the answer is yes then I'm happy you're staying indoors away from the rest of society.

People wonder why gaming and gamers aren't taken seriously, we have a millions of worlds to explore, people to meet and enemies to slay.
Yet we're complaining we can't kill children, really?

 

[Necrofudge]

Personally, I'd just like the option.

That situation with the child in Skyrim that keeps saying "I could take you" is supposed to show that the little girl is arrogant. It's not supposed to be that she's some sort of undying monster who CAN actually take you on, if only because you would eventually grow so tired of hitting her that you'd crumble under the weight of your own exhaustion/madness.

 

[Soviet Steve]

So long as it fits with the rest of the game, sure. I don't feel children should be above other things seeing how video games don't involve actual people getting killed. We can have children being killed in all other form of media and for the folks who want a realistic modern setting for whatever they want to happen it'd be jarring not to have kids around.

 

[Ninjat_126]

Now, such games could (especially the now-SRSFACE Grand Theft Auto series) include a story arch that includes child death. Specifically in Grand Theft Auto IV, when Niko mentions encountering child war victims and the effect it had on him, could have worked exceptionally well as a flashback sequence even if children were absent from the rest of the game. It was an event that clearly had a massive impact on the protagonist, and could potentially have had the same effect on the player. This could have given us, as gamers, a closer connection with Rockstar's character.

That's about emotion and story, something most games refuse to acknowledge. Unfortunately. Imagine a survival-horror game where either you were a young child (which couldn't respawn), or you were protecting a young child (that could die without causing a game over).

I downloaded the child death mod for Skyrim and proceeded about my adventuring. Didn't change how i play the game, didn't make any difference to my behavior or conduct all ti did was make me treat them more like any other NPC...

I'd do that as well if I had a PC that could run Skyrim and a copy of Skyrim. The option should be there in open worlds. Something like the Child Killer perk would be handy to keep players in line: yes, you can kill kids, but it's a special kind of evil. Same goes for things like rape and torture mechanics; you shouldn't be rewarded for it.

(Yes, I approve of rape mechanics in games, as long as the gaming public was mature enough to never use them.)

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I'm confused. You argument seems to be "child killing is upsetting to me, so it shouldn't be in games," but that doesn't sound right. Did you switch sides while I wasn't paying attention? Or was that never your position to begin with?

I think you misunderstood me.

Logically, there's no difference between killing a child and killing an adult. Emotionally, that can carry a lot more weight - so if it is done it has to be an "unreal" child.

(Bioshock's Little Sisters, Isaac's Bretheren, House of the Dead's Zombies.)

The problem comes when it happens in a "realistic" landscape (realistic in this case being something you're involved in) - then your emotions are tuned in to reacting as "you" - even if you're being this big ass hero.

Possibly why The Scouring of the Shires wasn't done in detail...?

Certain events rank really high on stress levels - and can carry over into fantasy - rather than the other way around. You wouldn't give a guy who had just escaped a burning building Left 4 Dead 2, for instance.

TL;DR: Killing children can be OK, but - out of kindness - we should limit them so they don't resemble real life tragedy. Because that shit is tough enough to get over. Equally, watching someone die slowly from disease is very rarely shown.

Killing Adults is emotionally "easier", because we're already trained to see them as a crowd rather than individuals through our own coping mechanisms.

(As a test, see if you can record one of your friends squealing in pain, and then fit that .wav into a civilian in game. Not quite so easy now, is it?)

 

[LordCyril]

I think that if you put children in a game where you have the freedom to kill normal friendly NPCs you should also be able to kill the children.

This is because if you put children in a game like WoW/Oblivion and so on, where you may want to behave like a total ass and slaugther a whole village then you should also be able to slaugther the the whole village seeing as the game experience will be broken when you stand amongst a sea of corpses together with a bunch of immortal children.

 

[lunam-kardas]

Depends....are they really REALLY creepy like that one kid in Haven(DA:O)?

Because that little monster scared the crap out of me and yet he wasn't one of the crazy villagers you end up killing.... which means that he's roaming the countryside of Ferelden... with that human finger bone in his pocket... singing messed up nursery rhymes...

...yeah I'm just going to sleep with the door locked and the light on tonight.

 

[Weentastic]

I think in some games it breaks the idea of freedom that a game strives after if they disable the killing of children. Its absurd to make a game like Skyrim, boast that you can do whatever you want, be whoever you want, and then stop you when you want to see how evil you could be, since child killing is "too bad". I get it if they just keep kids out of a game altogether, but purposefully making them immortal wizards in Skyrim was stupid. If you are going to get all upset at how awful it is that anyone would ever want to kill a virtual kid at all for any reason, wouldn't you think its just plain awful that anyone would want to kill a virtual adult?