An editorial on Gamasutra, "I Kill Children", examines the decision to cut childkilling from Fallout 3.<blockquote>Problematically, in singling out and self-censoring one particular type of 'crime' in his game, Pagliarulo by implication justifies all the others as being non-gratuitous and necessary. Last night I blew the head from a homeless scavenger girl, one who was barely into her twenties.
The slow motion camera tracked her head's explosion before lingering on the crimson fountain spurting from her neck stump. Is this kind of interaction and feedback socially responsible? And so then what's the difference to killing a minor?
Is the life of a make-believe child really worth more than that of a make-believe adult?
[..]
Self-censorship was the least effective course of action open to Bethesda if they are looking to morally instruct their players. Why not take the route less traveled and try to implement some meaningful consequence, something beyond an essentially meaningless "karma" stat?
Of course it is the route less traveled for a reason: it's a whole lot more work. The framework of systems and rules that govern Fallout 3 serve the setting: a place of lawless anarchy. As such it's difficult to introduce a potent enough disincentive to murdering children. And, in more general terms it's hard to make any game talk to a player in true terms of "good" and "bad," when the medium's primary vocabulary is one of "success" and "failure."
[..]
These are difficult questions with few satisfying answers. But no matter what, in removing the opportunity to kill children in their anarchic game, Bethesda has admitted video games' 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.</blockquote>Many of the comments are eloquent and passionate. And the first one rings with a tone of familiarity: "You offer no real argument as to why you want to murder children."
The slow motion camera tracked her head's explosion before lingering on the crimson fountain spurting from her neck stump. Is this kind of interaction and feedback socially responsible? And so then what's the difference to killing a minor?
Is the life of a make-believe child really worth more than that of a make-believe adult?
[..]
Self-censorship was the least effective course of action open to Bethesda if they are looking to morally instruct their players. Why not take the route less traveled and try to implement some meaningful consequence, something beyond an essentially meaningless "karma" stat?
Of course it is the route less traveled for a reason: it's a whole lot more work. The framework of systems and rules that govern Fallout 3 serve the setting: a place of lawless anarchy. As such it's difficult to introduce a potent enough disincentive to murdering children. And, in more general terms it's hard to make any game talk to a player in true terms of "good" and "bad," when the medium's primary vocabulary is one of "success" and "failure."
[..]
These are difficult questions with few satisfying answers. But no matter what, in removing the opportunity to kill children in their anarchic game, Bethesda has admitted video games' 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.</blockquote>Many of the comments are eloquent and passionate. And the first one rings with a tone of familiarity: "You offer no real argument as to why you want to murder children."
