Should We Be Able To Kill Kids in Games?
Call me sick, but in my time with Fable 2, I’ve tried to kill kids. Multiple times. You see, my character’s evil. He’d do that. He seduces men and women and takes them under the bridge and puts a flintlock rifle in their faces and pulls the trigger without remorse. He soaks up the upgrades to evil and corruption stats like they’re candy.
But kids, no matter what you do, seem to have an invisible forcefield around them. Just like GTA IV, just like in Fallout 3. Games that are about moral choices, that seem to say – we won’t go this far.
In the case of Fallout 3, lead designer Emil Pagliarulo had this to say on the topic:
We began to think, really what benefit would there be in killing the kids in the game? It just seems gratuitous, unnecessary and cruel.
Some people would say it is necessary, though.
Simon Parkin over at GameSetWatch specifically. For him, the moral depth of making the decision to kill or not kill a child is something from which games shouldn’t shy away or bar themselves from. In putting up a big “we’re not going there” sign, developers who would make a game that, on the one hand, lets you blow up an entire suburb (and probably kill some kids in the process) but doesn’t let you kill a child face to face, are failing the potential of their artistic medium:
In removing the opportunity to kill children in their anarchic game, Bethesda has admitted videogames’ ineffectiveness in providing meaningful disincentives and negative repercussions for in-game atrocities. That the team chose to carve the issue out of their game rather than attempt to engage it head on, speaks volumes.
I side with Parkin on this. Though I understand the pressure on Bethesda to avoid as much potential controversy with their game as possible, I do wish more games (like the first two Fallouts) would allow these kinds of moral choices – and if they do deliver them, to be mature, realistic and brave about it.
What do you guys think?
