Killing Kids in Games

[TheSummoner]

Simply put, do you think the player should be able to kill kids in games or not?

Please, no one word responses. If you want your opinion to be worth anything, you need to back it up with reasons why you feel the way you do.

Also, please keep things civil. I believe the GitP forums are both mature and intelligent enough that I really don't think this will spiral out of control (otherwise I wouldn't be posting it), but I acknowledge the possibility and I don't want that happening.

My Opinion: It makes no sense for children to be magically invulnerable little demigods in any games where they appear. If you're playing the sort of game where you have the ability to kill anyone, then children should be no exception. The game should in no way reward or actively encourage you to kill children (if anything, there should be a penalty), but for the sake of game immersion and realism, it should be an option.

Really, in the sort of game where anyone character can die, you have three options regarding children.
There are no children in the game.
Children are present but cannot be killed. If you shoot them, the bullet will either have no effect or it will knock them down but they will get right up. Don't expect swords, arrows or tactical nukes to be any more effective.
Children are just as mortal as anything else.
The first option is just makes no sense... If there are no children in this world, where did all the adults come from? The second makes even less sense. If these children are magically immune to bullets/swords/anything else, the only logical choice would be to skin them and wear their hides as armor since the stuff is clearly the strongest material in the universe (Ok, maybe that’s a bit much. I do not encourage the harvesting of leather from children! Promised!). Really, the third choice is the only one that makes sense. A child's life is no more valuable than any other person's life. It's no worse for a child to die than it is for a grown man or woman.

The only reason the (lack of) mortality for children in games is even noticeable is the fact that no matter what they get hit with (you shoot one with a gun, one runs into your line of fire and gets hit with an arrow you were aiming at the giant advancing on the village, that same giant steps on the child), they get right back up. There would likely be no challenge to killing a child nor would the game reward you in any way for doing it... There would be no real incentive to do it unless you were trying to wipe out the entire population of the world (or maybe you wanted to wipe out a family because one of the adults made you suffer in some way... or maybe you don't want to kill the entire family and just want to make the parent suffer... Essentially the scenario a certain elf and dragon went through not too long ago). Point is, the only reason people even care is because it’s impossible and this breaks game immersion and is incredibly unrealistic.

Likely the biggest reason developers make children immune to... everything... is fear of backlash. "Think about the children!" is the cry typically associated with this sort of thing. Honestly though, does anyone here think a kid should be playing games where you have the option of killing anyone? To those of you who think that’s fine, do you think it would "damage their delicate sensibilities" any more to see a child die than it would to see an adult die? (I doubt there are any) Final question for those who answered yes to both previous questions, do you think this is the responsibility of the game developers to raise the children of the world and to protect them from content deemed unsuitable? (I seriously hope there aren't any) The fact that any rational person would say no at some point along the way won't change the fact that SOMEONE out there will cry about things that happen in games they never have and never will play, but these type of people aren't the ones whose opinions should have any bearing in game design.

Another issue that arises is that certain countries have laws that forbid the sale of games that depict the death of children (Germany is one example I know of). Nothing can really be done here, but it wouldn't take much effort to make the minor immortality change for that country/language/whatever's version of the game. Perhaps even add a bit of snarky lampshading. "If this was a Rammstein music video, we could show you what amounts to porn, but since it’s a game, children are immortal demi-gods and Nazis never used the Swastika")

Still, there’s much worse in the media and most of it is much more available to children than most games. This and many other arguments against video games are just classic examples of "New Media are Evil." It’s nothing more than people with no clue what they're talking about whining about things they don't understand (it’s much easier than having people take responsibility for their own actions!).

I would like to hear your opinions on the question. Whether you agree with me or not, please tell me your thoughts. Just remember to keep it civil ^_^.

My name is TheSummoner, and when I'm making my own games, the children will be no less mortal than any other NPC.

[Mando Knight]

It depends. Children might not be present due to the nature of the game, or they might not be acceptable targets. However, if for some reason the child is the enemy, then you should be able to kill him/her barring some kind of superpower or deus ex machina.

However, if you're killing children, either the children you are killing should be shown as horrible monsters beyond all else (demoniac child, baby Not-Appearing-In-This-Thread-By-Name, etc.), or you should be shown that you're a horrible monster for killing children. Bioshock, for example, lets you kill the Little Sisters. If you do, you're horrible, even though the Sisters are monsters themselves, as the Sisters themselves are implied to not be beyond redemption.

A baby-eating Mother Theresa is out of the question. Such a horrible "balance" would create only one of the most disgusting characters of all time.

[Starbuck_II]

If these children are magically immune to bullets/swords/anything else, the only logical choice would be to skin them and wear their hides as armor since the stuff is clearly the strongest material in the universe (Ok, maybe that’s a bit much. I do not encourage the harvesting of leather from children! Promised!).


How do skin something immune to your blade? You didn't think #2 through did you?

[Spiryt]

Honestly...


It all depends on the game I guess. If it's some 'realistic like" shooter, like Operation Flashpoint, to not search long, it would be stupid to make anyone invulnerable. I don't even recall many NPC in this game at all.

If it really doesn't change anything about "the feel" of the game, since it's something like, dunno, your average Bioware RPG, where attacking most NPCs generally doesn't make sense at all in the first place, because everyone in the game becoming "red circled" is most of which you'll accomplish... I don't really care, they can as well make children invulnerable, to lower the age category or whatever.

[Arcanoi]

It depends on the game designers. Many of them have families and children and the guy who has to design the physics ragdoll for a child's corpse might find the idea of killing children a little too close for comfort, so he refuses to make one. It's extremely unlikely that his bosses or coworkers are going to fault him for his decision. I'm pretty sure this is what happened in Fallout 3, the only recent game I can remember with invulnerable children.

[TheSummoner]

It depends. Children might not be present due to the nature of the game, or they might not be acceptable targets. However, if for some reason the child is the enemy, then you should be able to kill him/her barring some kind of superpower or deus ex machina.

If a good reason is given (for example, every setting of the game is a battlefield and the enemy isn't such a complete monster that they would use child soldiers), then yes, the total absence of children is justifiable. However, I'm generally referring to games where no such explanation exists. Generally sandbox games, but there are plenty beyond that.


However, if you're killing children, either the children you are killing should be shown as horrible monsters beyond all else (demoniac child, baby Not-Appearing-In-This-Thread-By-Name, etc.), or you should be shown that you're a horrible monster for killing children. Bioshock, for example, lets you kill the Little Sisters. If you do, you're horrible, even though the Sisters are monsters themselves, as the Sisters themselves are implied to not be beyond redemption.

I can't disagree. As I said, if anyhing there should be a penalty for any childkilling that the player takes part in. It should be no less than the penalty you would get for killing any other civilian (I personally don't think its any worse, but I could understand why some would want the penalty to be higher).


A baby-eating Mother Theresa is out of the question. Such a horrible "balance" would create only one of the most disgusting characters of all time.

Now I can't get the thought out of my head. Thanks :smalltongue:


How do skin something immune to your blade? You didn't think #2 through did you?

DAMN! Hes got me!

Ok, theres got to be a workaround here. What if we liquified the insides and drained them through the eyesockets and then... No, how would we get inside of the armor then...

I'll think of something... Just give me some time...

[Zevox]

Ought to be no different than anything else in the game. Though honestly, the only game where I've ever seen kids given some strange immunity when others weren't is Fallout 3 anyway. Everywhere else you usually just don't have the opportunity to attack them anyway, because you don't fight anything that isn't hostile to you or there aren't any kids around.

Zevox

[Mando Knight]

Now I can't get the thought out of my head. Thanks :smalltongue:

Blame Yahtzee. He's the one who came up with it. (It was in reference to some game with a morality system, pointing out that you either have to be a baby-eating monster or Mother Theresa, and he'd like it if you were able to be somewhere in the middle. Cue the image of Theresa eating a baby.)

[Kaiser Omnik]

Still, there’s much worse in the media and most of it is much more available to children than most games. This and many other arguments against video games are just classic examples of "New Media are Evil." It’s nothing more than people with no clue what they're talking about whining about things they don't understand (it’s much easier than having people take responsibility for their own actions!).

Hmm, strawman much? Opening a discussion with this kind of remark is not the best way to do it in my opinion.

[Kizara]

As for another example, I believe Fable 2 had the same issue.


I'm in the realism camp, although I certinally would expect some kind of drastic consequences to such an action.

[tassaron]

Really, it's just something that bugs people. I never felt like the absence of children in Grand Theft Auto (for example) had a real impact on the immersion/realism. It's just a minor point that I'm fine with avoiding altogether when possible.

[Knaight]

Ought to be no different than anything else in the game. Though honestly, the only game where I've ever seen kids given some strange immunity when others weren't is Fallout 3 anyway. Everywhere else you usually just don't have the opportunity to attack them anyway, because you don't fight anything that isn't hostile to you or there aren't any kids around.

To some extent, I agree. However, most sandbox games are awful at making the player deal with the results of their characters actions in character, and something like killing a child is a big one. Someone who kills an adult is a murderer in societies eyes, but there are other murderers, there will be people on their case (quite literally in the case of police), but no more than another murderer. A child killer is seen as a horrible monster, and will see a lot of resources directed towards their removal.

If this were a tabletop roleplaying game, I would say there are no issues at all, but considering the inevitable media backlash, child immunity is probably a good idea. Plus, if poorly implemented it will come off as horribly tasteless, I approve of the right to do it, I don't approve of it in most cases.

[warty goblin]

I've always figured in a game like Oblivion or Fallout 3 the solution was completely obvious: Let you kill children if you so desired but have it be a capital crime. That's right folks, you get caught, you get axed. That way the realism people are kept happy because nobody's stupidly immortal, and the think of the children people are happy because somebody is thinking of the children. Actually the realism people should be doubly happy, because in the violence happy fantasy lands of most videogames, killing kids would absolutely be a capital crime.

RE: games taking place on battlefields. This usually feels like a bit of a cop out to me, particularly the urban levels. I'm thinking here of the Battlefied Bad Company 2 level wherein you level (har) an entire village with airstrikes. Thankfully ARMA II solves this problem, not only are there civilians, but killing them pisses off the survivors and makes your life more difficult.

[Zevox]

If this were a tabletop roleplaying game, I would say there are no issues at all, but considering the inevitable media backlash, child immunity is probably a good idea. Plus, if poorly implemented it will come off as horribly tasteless, I approve of the right to do it, I don't approve of it in most cases.
Frankly, I don't give damn about media backlash. That happens over some of the most ridiculous things - Mortal Kombat's blood back in the day, Mass Effect's sex scenes a few years ago, and who-knows-what else at this point - and honestly I suspect it's inevitable anyway. It's not like there's never been a game where you could kill children before, nor like there never will be another; eventually the media will raise a stink about one or another that gets popular enough, or when they run low on other sensationalist stories to run.

Zevox

[Bouregard]

A good implementation example is JA 2

Kids are vulnerable like any other civilian.
Most of your Mercs will refuse to fire on kids or civilians (However you can work around that and open fire on a spot of ground behind them...and there are some moraly challenged ones who have no problems regarding that...).
If you still manage to injure or drop a civilian accidently, for example with stray bullets or some mortar strikes/grenades/ rockets your mercs morale will drop, and they will leave you either quite fast/ don't fight as well/ or will not prolong their contract.
The much bigger problem is that kids are usually found in cities. So killing one there will
a) make your own militia turn on you
and
b) drop civilian morale in that sector extremly fast, so you have trouble training militia again thus you'll have no chance defending yourself and your income will be reduced horribly.

[The Orange Zergling]

I have absolutely zero problems with child-killing in games.

Some people would argue that it's an "unnecessary" or "uncalled-for" thing that only sick, twisted bad people would put into a medium designed for entertainment, but I argue that it can actually aid in both realism/immersion and in gameplay mechanics.

For realism: Encountering an invulnerable, unkillable avatar of a child will stand out like a sore thumb and will feel jarring and incredibly out of place, doubly so if the game is going for a dark and gritty atmosphere or if it makes a big fuss about giving the player choice. Fallout 3 is an excellent example of this - the whole world's gone to hell and both the planet and society are beyond repair and if the children of the world were fair game for killing it would help in displaying precisely how permanently damaged the world is. But no, you can't do this, so it not only does not help but actively hurts the setting.

For gameplay: Taking another example from Fallout 3, at one point the main story demands that you go through a town populated solely by children. Because you can't kill children in Fallout 3, you have to help them and comply with their wishes, even if you are an evil, cannibalistic vampire who nukes cities because he got paid for it.

Now, I can stand it when some games make you lower your weapon when you mouse over an ally such as Half Life 2 with Alyx, because in those games you are playing a pre-established character who would never gun down those people. Fable and Fallout 3 try to push as much choice on the player as possible - which has no inherent problems, it's just that when you choose to limit the player in such a game the limitations feel so much more massive and out of place.

After re-reading this post it sounds like a rant against FO3, which it most definitely is not - I loved the game despite this rather gaping flaw.

[TheSummoner]

Some people would argue that it's an "unnecessary" or "uncalled-for" thing that only sick, twisted bad people would put into a medium designed for entertainment.

At this, I feel the need to mention the irony that no one seems to mind if a child dies in a movie or on TV.

[Xefas]

Honestly, the issue itself doesn't matter even a tiny bit to me. I doubt the true issue for anyone/most people is the killing kids or not killing kids thing.

The issue is censorship itself. Censorship is stupid. All of it.

Rant
Three primary things get censored. Profanity, Sex, and Violence.

Censoring Profanity is stupid because you've arbitrarily chosen a set of sounds with a generic meaning (bad = bad, craptastic = bad, bull**** = bad, etc - they're all fundamentally the same word with different sounds attached) and decided that someone will be somehow effected differently by hearing them. In this way, Censorship works in reverse. By censoring certain words, you add the stigma that those words are somehow worse. Without censorship, words would just be words and meanings would just be meanings.

Censoring Sex is stupid because, guess what, it's a completely natural process that every human being is likely to experience in their life, and is our sole means of continuing our species. It's a glorious, wonderful thing responsible for every single human life, and by extension, everything we know and love. The idea that the most natural process in the world is somehow unsuitable for the very beings that were created by it is just a hold-over from a more superstitious and barbaric time. And Censorship just perpetuates that. If Sex stopped being censored, after all our current old people die, no one for the remainder of the existence of the human race would care - sex would be perfectly normal, because there's nothing inherently wrong with it.

Censoring Violence is the only thing that has a leg to stand on, but that leg barely exists. At that point it's just a matter of 'Kids can take a lot more than you think - a scant few hundred years ago, you were expected to have 2 kids by the time you were 15', and for any scenario completely outrageous - such as a 6-8 year old witnessing horrifically graphic violence on television, it's more an issue of the guardian of that small child to take better care of them. The horrifically graphic violence still shouldn't be censored, because there's nothing wrong with a grown person judging for themselves what their tolerance for violence is, and choosing to watch something graphic. By giving into the inattentive parents' irresponsibility, you infringe on the rights of everyone else.

And once again, censorship perpetuates itself. Really ask yourself how many times you've tried to kill a child in a video game. I bet the number is less than or equal to the number of times you realized a game wouldn't let you. Once you realize the game has arbitrarily decided that children are immortal, it becomes a morbid fascination to see if you can cheat the system of the game and off them anyway.

Every sensible person should stand up against any institution of censorship. They're wrong, end of story. It's a rare case of being on the perfect moral and logical high ground. Censorship will never be okay - there's really no justifiable amount that will ever be okay.

[Trazoi]

As for another example, I believe Fable 2 had the same issue.
There's also a big sense of dissonance in Fable 2 due to gameplay and story segregation, as (keeping spoilers to a minimum) the main villain kills children multiple times.

[Klose_the_Sith]

Generally, I don't wake up in the morning and think "Oh man, I sure wish I could digitally slaughter little kiddies", but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible in a game like Fallout 3. It's not like you're even hunting girl-scouts, either. These children are annoying and they're cruel. I tried so hard to murder all of them, but to no avail :smallfrown:

Were it possible, I'd have killed one or two then just loaded a quicksave. Morbid curiosity satisfied, I've got a game to play and a hero to be.

I don't think that it's that big a deal, but if kids are in your game and so is mass-slaughter of anyone else (potentially) having the kids immune to death just grates on me as a player.


Rant

I couldn't have put it better myself :smallsmile:

Just by the by, this (http://www.sexed.org/archive/article10.html) is an excellent, if potentially somewhat NSFW (it's pretty much only text, but I guess the themes are kind of explicit? But then it just seems like I'm missing your point :smalltongue:) essay on the psychology of some features of censorship.

[factotum]

You forgot option 4, the one followed by Fallout 2 in Europe--have the kids there, but make them invisible and therefore completely impossible to interact with in any way! I have absolutely no idea why they did that--was it actually possible to otherwise kill them in that game?

Anyway, not having any kids around isn't all THAT much of an immersion breaker, because you can assume that the adults got them out of harm's way before you came along in most cases. I've also played games where everybody in a town is invulnerable--Borderlands, for instance, where you can empty a Hellfire SMG into the people standing around in New Haven and not see the slightest flicker of a response.

[Trazoi]

You forgot option 4, the one followed by Fallout 2 in Europe--have the kids there, but make them invisible and therefore completely impossible to interact with in any way! I have absolutely no idea why they did that--was it actually possible to otherwise kill them in that game?
Yes, although I don't think in my playthroughs I ever did (I tend to play as decent characters). You get a negative perk called "Childkiller" which means several NPCs will shun you and bounty hunters will be after your head.

I think they removed the more gory animations for children's deaths though - unless you had the Bloody Mess perk.

[RS14]

Either homicide is justified, or it is not. In the former case, what is it about children that makes an otherwise acceptable homicide no longer acceptable? In the later case, what is it about adults that makes an otherwise unacceptable homicide acceptable?

'I'd never hurt a kid!' exclaimed the protagonist, as he gunned down his fifteenth police officer that day.

[Mystic Muse]

Sex is a glorious, wonderful thing

I disagree. But then, I can't stand nudity past a very moderate point anyway so that's not a surprise.

[Zarah]

I think there's something that affects this whole matter that hasn't really been brought up yet: A game's rating. Now, I don't work for the ESRB, but I think being able to kill children would easily bump a game up into the AO rating category. And frankly, it seems like developers do everything they can to avoid that rating, likely for the reason of sales. For whatever reason, I think the AO rating has a bit of a bad connotation with it, even if it rightly shouldn't.

[Cubey]

I do not mind games where there are no children around.
I do not mind games where you cannot attack civilians, children included.

I do mind games where you can kill almost everyone but for some reason, kids are immune to your attacks.

Especially in titles where they are annoying and bratty, like the Witcher or Fallout 3, and less moral PCs would be willing to teach them a lesson for their asinine behaviour the hard way. But no, the game designers are afraid of media outrage of having a game where you can hurt the little angels (the aforementioned "angels" calling you nasty names and trying to boss you around, for the former and latter of mentioned games respectively), so no go. That's despite these games giving you a lot of opportunities to be an evil, unrepentant bastard who can do things that are at least as bad as murder. And what the NPCs do is even worse. And yet, there's this artificial limitation - there goes my suspension of disbelief.

That's what mods are for.

[Trazoi]

And frankly, it seems like developers do everything they can to avoid that rating, likely for the reason of sales. For whatever reason, I think the AO rating has a bit of a bad connotation with it, even if it rightly shouldn't.
My understanding is that several large US retail stores and many of the consoles refuse to carry any games rated AO. There's also the problem of international ratings which vary from country to country; in Australia for example the equivalent of an AO would not be allowed for sale.

[X2]

You can kill kids (among other bystanders) in a few rail shooters but whenever you do it takes away one of those hearts. :smallannoyed:

Then again the only reason you should feel immersed in a rail shooter is if you happen to be high or something. It feels like youre controlling just the arms of the individual, he looks where he wants, walks where he wants and says what he wants. Inconsiderate individual.

[Dhavaer]

I'm okay with not being able to kill kids, except when the game penalises you for their presence. Example: Purging the Republic of Dave in Fallout 3 makes it impossible to fast travel from, due to the children counting as a hostile despite being completely harmless. Not being able to murder your way into Vault 87 or whichever it was due to Little Lamplight being lesser example. Children should either be effectively scenery, or killable.

[Zen Master]

Lots of games have zones where you can't attack at all. Personally, I'd place children there and be done with it.

[Ranielle]

Fallout had this trait you got when you killed a child that made every good person hate you :]

[dsmiles]

Children are just as mortal as anything else.

This. In war there is collateral damage. And, when all is said and done, it is just a game.
If you can't distinguish between games and reality, then maybe you should stick to games rated 'E for Everyone.'

[Knaight]

This. In war there is collateral damage. And, when all is said and done, it is just a game.
If you can't distinguish between games and reality, then maybe you should stick to games rated 'E for Everyone.'

And even then, you probably shouldn't be playing them.

[Blayze]

The best part about Fallout 2 and its invisible children wasn't the way you'd end up accidentally killing one and not noticing until later that you were now a Childkiller--which absolutely ruined that playthrough if you were trying to get anything done.

No, it was the fact that the invisible kids *stole* from you. Constantly. I went through so much trouble trying to find a mod that made them at the very least visible, so I knew where not to stand.

[Trazoi]

The best part about Fallout 2 and its invisible children wasn't the way you'd end up accidentally killing one and not noticing until later that you were now a Childkiller--which absolutely ruined that playthrough if you were trying to get anything done.

No, it was the fact that the invisible kids *stole* from you. Constantly. I went through so much trouble trying to find a mod that made them at the very least visible, so I knew where not to stand.
Oh, did they really just make them invisible instead of inactive? That's irritating, especially because some quests involved children.

They did a similar thing in Duke Nukem 3D in Australia where they forced the kid safe setting to be on, which simply made anything objectionable invisible. This included all the scantily clad women in the game, who would occasionally block paths and if you shot them would cause loads of enemies to spawn. Really annoying.

[Coidzor]

Number two is entirely infuriating due to the break it creates in suspension of disbelief and verisimilitude if civvies are targetable.

Have 'em be mortal (The good Fallouts) or not featured (GTA) in such cases.

[Athaniar]

I have nothing against mortal children in games, either. Just like every other thing in games, they are fictional, and there is no reason for them to be any more impervious than adults. If a game allows you to be a violent mass-murderer of innocent civilians, it's kind of a double standard to not allow you to kill children.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Seriously, this just has "bad idea" written all over it as a topic of discussion. Locking now before anything infraction-worthy happens.