latina (cuban?? am I racist for being unsure…) mommy
Open ended question to anyone - in terms of problematics, how much difference does being able to kill a child in a game make?
If the argument is that it’ll make people more likely to do it in real life, couldn’t that be extrapolated to the game in general, and the murders of countless virtual civilians? If people want to make that happen, couldn’t they pretty easily mod it in anyway?
Thinking about it, in my head I think shooting/knifing a GTA child would feel make me feel uneasy.
More comically evil options like a monster truck or a rocket launcher wouldn’t bother me though.
Skyrim had those killable children mods, complete with killmoves for decimating a child with a giant hammer, but I think Skyrim’s children are so weird and obviously video game looking that it wasn’t really big news. I’ll clarify I never owned the mod, so I don’t know how it would make me feel in practice.
I think the concern is less that people will be more likely to do it and more about how people might become desensitised to it. I think it’s honestly healthy that we talk about this as a taboo thing, it shows we have a healthy concern for the protection of children. Little things that cut into that concern could cut into our sensitivity to it, I don’t particularly want people to view crime against children as the same as crime against adults. It used to be ok for random people to clout a kid, mistreatment of kids was normalised and that is still in living memory of some of our Gen X and Boomers. I wouldn’t want to go back on that so I sort of think we should try to be conservative with where we’re currently at. We’d gain very little from it, but stand to risk a lot.
My biggest concern is that if we took away the pedestal of protection we put kids on we could make it easier for capitalists to re-exploit them. People finding mistreatment of children abhorrent plays into our hands when it comes to preventing their labour exploitation from returning.
I dont want to moralize over it or anything, but i really don’t think it adds anything to the gameplay, or the thematic or narrative elements. It doesn’t bring anything to the table, and the number of people who want it is entirely too low for anyone to bother with the time, effort, or controversy.
