There's also the fact that black humor does involve that, just look at how often Kenny got killed in South Park. Though those aren't realistic visuals (probably why most of the games with kid killing came before ten years ago) and it's meant to be a funny scene, much like why the Deus Ex videos can be funny there, just killing for the sake of killing isn't funny.
There's a difference between children dying as part of the narrative of a game, film or book, and the game allowing people to hunt them down in whatever creative manner they see fit with no consequences.
The OP question is 'should children be allowed to die in games?'
I say yes- if caught in dragonfire, or attacked by NPCs etc- it allows heroic players to try to protect them, and fail. Also there should be a game world reaction to all npc death, rather than people just stepping over the corpses as if they aren't there. The only dead things the population of Skyrim discuss is dragons, not bob the baker, local well-liked everyman, when he is left naked in the fountain. The thing is players are inherently brilliantly creative and would end up luring monsters in to kill children in that situation anyway- it would be cool if, in that case, you were blamed for bringing death upon the town.
If the question is 'should players be allowed to murder children just because they find them annoying?' Then I say only if the game world has a penalty other than 'pay a thousand gold to get away with it', and even then I wouldn't want to be on the dev team, having it brought up in every interview I went for, being asked 'why did you let players do that?'.
I wonder if the problem is that the in-game penalties for all capital crimes are practically worthless, they just cost you money or two minutes of time with no long term social penalties, as its far more important that they don't want to slow down players too much who make a mistake or are just experimenting. Would players still want to kill kids (or anyone for that matter) in Skyrim if, the first time you were caught, a message was sent to all holds saying you were a child-killer and a deviant? No shop keeper would serve you, no inn would let you stay, your old companions would treat you with revulsion and disgust, and the Jarls immediately seized your property and threw you out. Your defence of 'the Jarl's daughter didn't trust me so I killed her' mysteriously carries little weight, and both he and his men attack you on sight for the rest of the campaign. You'd be a hated outcast, living in the wild, with contacts and 50% of the quests lost forever, as no one trusts you. How about that? Same goes for murder- if you had a long-term reputation that had negative effects rather than positive ones of owning the loot of the dead, maybe it wouldn't be as appealing if the social consequences were more realistic, and maybe not as much fun.
People want to be able to do what they like with few consequences, thats cool, its a game, but if we argue for realism, I'm also ok with game worlds having realistic approaches to crossing moral boundaries, even if it costs the player access to content. I have no problem with NPCs not trusting a serial killer with their holy magic sword to save the world, and that's something I hope next gen systems get even better at in terms of role-playing games- I'll take a game world like that where the player isn't an all-powerful creature that can treat everyone as their plaything over even-better graphics any day.
However, I take people's point that some of the kids are very annoying and repetitive in thier dialogue. If anything that's the most realistic thing about them. Maybe big bad dragon hunters can shrug it off.
What about the developers? Games don't appear in a vacuum, and if the people who make a game don't want children to be killable in it, surely there is a decent reason why, whether its bad press coverage or some sort of moral stance. I mean, really, what does it add to the game, when virtually all major NPCs are adults that you can already mess with to your hearts content? Having kids around makes towns feel more real, more like places where humanity is still alive and well, I think that's the reason to include them, and it outweighs the disconnect of letting the player murder everyone else but them.
What about the developers? Games don't appear in a vacuum, and if the people who make a game don't want children to be killable in it, surely there is a decent reason why, whether its bad press coverage or some sort of moral stance. I mean, really, what does it add to the game, when virtually all major NPCs are adults that you can already mess with to your hearts content? Having kids around makes towns feel more real, more like places where humanity is still alive and well, I think that's the reason to include them, and it outweighs the disconnect of letting the player murder everyone else but them.
Personally even when I'm on an 'evil' playthrough, I don't personally kill everything that moves for the sake of it. That's not evil. It's just bizarre, (if no-one is left for a morality to exist, how can you still be evil?) stupid (too many witnesses) and inefficient (he thinks while poisoning the well being used by the whole town).
Yeah, I agree with that. It would be adding controversy for little gain, and just because a handful of gamers wouldn't find it controversial at all is little comfort when national newspapers would be asking 'why would you want to do this?'.
Sure, it's an interesting enough topic to discuss. I really do sympathise with players who find child characters really annoying, although I'd have to admit that I find JRPG adolescents with all their emotional issues far more tedious, and they are on screen for a far greater percentage of the time than the kids in fallout/skyrim.That's a perfect reason to kill everything
I'm just interested to see if there is a correlation between the two in this thread. Not for science, you understand, but my own curiosity.
'Dont like it? Don't play it' is a terrible argument when the opposite of what you are arguing for is what already exists.
To be fair, any dead thing can be used as a backpack as long as you can carry it. Ultima, from 4 to 8 at least, did have a special relationship to child killing as each game would somewhere contain a room full of aggressive children just so Garriott could say "You could have chosen to walk away or use a sleep spell, you're the one who decided to kill them" to any person who'd subsequently tell him that room was cruel.
I'm sure there will be a media backlash from Fox about MGS5. There was also a media backlash from Fox about Joseph Kony, the African warlord who uses child soldiers-- they were upset that the US wasn't supporting him. So, really, fuck Fox.
Alright then, I'll respond directly to your example.
It'd probably be a bit awkward to play in front of other folks, but I've had my fair share of that with other games. If it's necessary for Snake to kill the child soldiers for the safety of himself and others, and there's no other way of handling it, shit, get down to it.
Only transparent glass? You glassist! I demand representation of translucent and opaque glass!
Tranquilizers can be fatal if improperly dosed. I'd imagine that tranq darts dosed for a grown adult would outright kill children. Wouldn't that be a kick? Snake hangs back and tranqs a bunch of child soldiers to avoid killing them, but ends up killing them by accident?
