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[dirkzen]

So, in Dwarf Fortress,  you're able to not only trap children in cages, you can raise them there..  as well as feeding them nothing but beer and cheese until they grow up.
They die just as easily as adults,  some infants even dropping right there on the battlefield as they crawl next to thier mothers against a stampede of elephants and a rain of elven arrows.
Children are sometimes used as fodder, or workhorses.

I've yet to hear a single peep about this.

Now enter a certain...  'larger,  more realistic looking' game that seems to be rather popular at the moment,  which i'll refer to as 'game X'.
In 'game X',  some of the largest, nastiest threads i've seen have been over the simple act of striking down a child.  (which you can't.. until you install a certain mod)
People just.. go nuts on each other about it.

I often smirk a bit when I wonder exactly how they would react if they discovered some of the dark, horrific things you can do to the young in Dwarf Fortress.

I guess the point of this thread...  if there is a point to be made..
..is it the thought of killing a child that bothers people in a fantasy game?
....or is it the animation of the death itself?

I'm not wanting to argue over weather its right or wrong,  i'm just curious about the thought process that goes on behind it all.

[Sirus]

Is "game X"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dead Island?

Or is it something more recent?

[Flying Carcass]

I think he's talking about skyrim

[Sirus]

I see...(don't have Skyrim yet )

My guess is that it's the animation itself. With Dwarf Fortress, everything is hidden by happy little smiling faces and letters, so it's easy to conceptualize it away.

Then again, it's not like DF is mainstream to the same degree as Skyrim, which is probably why Parental Guardians haven't invaded to complain.

[Argonnek]

I think that it's a combination of the fact that most gamers aren't DFers and the animation of the death of the child in question. We here that play dwarf fortress will, on occasion, do abhorrent things to our subjects at the slightest provocation (something I am guilty of). We tell others about it on the forums, and we all are a little desensitized to it simply through exposure.
We are also more likely to not care because it's all in ASCII or some other tile graphic. If I were to, in real life, watch as a baby fell off of a bridge and into a moat, thrashing in the water until it drowns, I would most likely need counseling afterward to help me deal with the trauma. In DF, I can watch that little red smiley's background blink from black to blue to red, and read the death announcement and think nothing of it.

[Cthulhu]

I think that it's a combination of the fact that most gamers aren't DFers and the animation of the death of the child in question. We here that play dwarf fortress will, on occasion, do abhorrent things to our subjects at the slightest provocation (something I am guilty of). We tell others about it on the forums, and we all are a little desensitized to it simply through exposure.
We are also more likely to not care because it's all in ASCII or some other tile graphic. If I were to, in real life, watch as a baby fell off of a bridge and into a moat, thrashing in the water until it drowns, I would most likely need counseling afterward to help me deal with the trauma. In DF, I can watch that little red smiley's background blink from black to blue to red, and read the death announcement and think nothing of it.

This is probably a big part of it.  It's one thing to read "The baby has been slain."  It's an entirely different thing to see a graphic visual depiction of a baby or child being killed.

[loose nut]

DF does carefully detail where all the little bits of dwarf-child wound up, however.

[Sirus]

DF does carefully detail where all the little bits of dwarf-child wound up, however.

Yes, with a bunch of little red 2's.

Face it, if DF were a graphical game like Skyrim, or even Super Mario World, the censors would be raising hell. Argonnek had it exactly right, it's the fact that the deaths in DF are so abstract that we can laugh and joke about them.

[Crustypeanut]

I think that it's a combination of the fact that most gamers aren't DFers and the animation of the death of the child in question. We here that play dwarf fortress will, on occasion, do abhorrent things to our subjects at the slightest provocation (something I am guilty of). We tell others about it on the forums, and we all are a little desensitized to it simply through exposure.
We are also more likely to not care because it's all in ASCII or some other tile graphic. If I were to, in real life, watch as a baby fell off of a bridge and into a moat, thrashing in the water until it drowns, I would most likely need counseling afterward to help me deal with the trauma. In DF, I can watch that little red smiley's background blink from black to blue to red, and read the death announcement and think nothing of it.

Man if I saw even a graphical representation of even a tiny portion of what I've read happened to my dwarf children.. I mean, seeing a baby drown is one thing, but seeing a pair of twins getting their arms ripped off by a giant worm while their mother is still holding them? Seeing a child get its foot sliced off by a goblin, only to have it be abandoned by it's mother on a hill as she runs to safety?  Have a child punch a turkey's beak off, only to have the turkey kill it with it's talons seconds later? Have a baby and its mother dropped from 8 stories, only to have the mother explode upon impact but have the child survive, crawling around with broken bones until it grows up? 

Yea.. some of the things we do in this game.. if it was graphically represented or seen in real life.. I think we'd all be a tad bit traumatized.   

[Argonnek]

... Is it bad that I giggled at the above post?

[Felius]

... Is it bad that I giggled at the above post?

If it is, I'm going to hell with you.

But there's the issue that the description is so over the top, it kinda cross the line twice.

[UltraValican]

... Is it bad that I giggled at the above post?

No

My two cents on the subject:
We are very different people when we play videogames
For example: Upon seeing a dead body in a game, your first instinct is to loot it, usually. You would either faint or scream if you saw the same thing in real life. This applies to almost everything in videogames, a dead guy in a video game is just a few pixels that won't interact with you any more.


This is a fairly normal scene in a videogame, the humans and orcs that were just slaughtered had no family, friends, or children. Their deaths were just a waste of a few gold. nothing less nothing more.
The primary "issue" that many "non" gamers do not understand with mass death or gruesome slaughter in a videogames is that the death of anyone that’s not you has rarely  have significant consequences, and is in fact beneficial. In the case of RTS games, mass murder and raiding in esential.

[Nighthawk]

I have absolutely no problem killing children, regardless of the graphics in the game.
To me, the fact of the matter is that the game is just a game. It's not like the difference between murdering a child in DF and murdering a child in real life.

If it's a video game... do whatever the hell you want.

[Sonlirain]

Personally i avoid doing morally iffy things in games i play my best try at being darkside in KotOR ended in my character being only slightely dark or grey at best.
Same thing with every single other game who gave you the option of being a jerk (Fable and Jade Empire) i always ended up being middle line at best... and being neutral always SUCKS because you don't get any special bonuses for it.

And the only time i killed directly killed a kid in a game was when i had to kill some fanatics in fallout and leave no evidence or witness... i had to kill a kid... so i sent a bullet right into his eye socket.

I'm quite sure media would raise a'n alarm if DF were more graphic.
Imagine fox news trying to make DF look bad in the US... what could they show to the masses?
A bunch of smiling faces and "G" spitting 2's around?
Sure we know those are Dorfs fighting goblins and the asci flying around are limbs teeth and spilled guts but the average person sitting at home has no idea what's going on.

Now games like Skyrim, Dead Island or Fallout 3 on the other hand...

[Sirian]

I wouldn't care at all, regardless if the game is photorealistic, or just ascii. Killing a child in a video game only means you change the state of a bunch of polygons with a texture, animations and a couple scripts. It's like mangling a plastic doll. I wouldn't have the bad taste to make it a hobby, but there is no moral consequence to it. Why would it be worse to kill kids in "game X", compared to killing adults (which you do all the time, and are encouraged to do) ?