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GreasyDogMeat: Don't be such a fucking pantywaist. Trigger warning!? GTFO.
Trigger warnings serve a useful purpose. Some people, particularly those suffering from various forms of PTSD, can be triggered when they see or read about events that they have experienced in the past. For example, seeing a clip of war could trigger someone who has fought in a nasty war, or (more relevant to this topic) could have had someone (probably someone they know) take out a weapon and attack (possibly even kill) their children. If such a person encounters such a trigger unexpectedly, it could trigger a relapse of their condition.

The trigger warning, then, serves two purposes:
1. It allows the person to make a decision of whether to engage with the triggering content. The person might not be ready to deal with their trigger when first seeing the warning, but might be more comfortable later.
2. It makes the person expect the trigger. If they know that there's triggering content (and it helps to be specific about *what* the trigger is), then they can mentally prepare, and I believe studies have shown that the consequences of exposure to the trigger are significantly less severe if they are prepared for it.

It's quite similar to the reasons why some content (Cyberpunk 2077 at release, for example) would need an epilepsy warning.
Oh snap you are back, i was wondering where you was lol.
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samuraigaiden: And it could generate unwanted controversy and possibly even cause the game to get a stricter age rating or need to be censored in certain territories.
I'm going with this. Dead or Alive Dimensions (3ds) was banned in Sweeden for violating "child pornography laws." For context, as someone who has the game, there are flashbacks in the game to when certain characters were children. They were not portrayed in a sexual way as children, but were as adults.

The argument comes down to Characters Kasumi, Lisa, Ayane, Alpha-152, Kokoro, Eliot, and Kasumiα having their ages not listed (according to certain wikis, Eliot and Ayane were 16 as of the game, but i noticed the Japanese text doesn't clarify this, so i imagine this was never actually specified for one reason or another). One could argue Alpha-152 and Kasumiα are children depicted as adults, because, well, they're "clones" of Kasumi. Here's where it gets interesting: the same didn't apply to Dead or Alive 5... Where the clones are very much still under age (that's a whole other can of worms). Photo modes in the 3ds game were limited to poses of character models, which is supposedly the big no-no. But, interstingly, a quick google tells me that sweden's age of consent is... 15.... If it's 15, and the youngest character, in theory, is 16 (as far as potential sexual representation goes), where as the characters as children were restricted to flashbacks....

And, of course, that's just one game. We don't know what all hell was going on behind the scenes with other countries and other games. It's very clear that regulatory agencies will ban stuff on flimsy evidence, but let stuff through on a whim. I'm aware of a certain chinese game on android that is probably not banned in any country, but arguably includes loli. It's called PanzerGirls if anyone in europe wants to confirm it's still in the android store. here if you need a damn link, too. It just makes sense to not bother playing the silly game of trying to flirt with the lines when you can't even get a proper appeal. I would imagine it's why all these companies have "patches" for naughty games, even on adult game websites.

But, that's just "sexual content." Imagine the littany of other things, including the new trend of social media outrage mobs. Let's not forget that, and feel free to call me sexist for this (i tried finding actual science on this, but good luck getting anything that isn't related to covid in your search results), but we know that as more and more women have been getting into gaming, the likelihood of a dead child on the screen is going to evoke some reactions (because, well, we all know most women have this naturally innate response to seeing the suffering of children).

The fact is, society has become rather thin-skinned to certain types of controversy. Devs out there feel it in the sales, and would much rather avoid the damage. Me, personally, i'd much, much rather allow people to do that. If i ever get off my lazy as and get back to working on my game that i'm making, I plan on allowing everything shy of having sex with children (out of a desire just to permit literally any action, i'd wish to allow that, too, since no children are actually getting harmed [and the only thing that would identify them as children is a number, anyway, because the sprites will just be letters, rather than pictures], but we know damn well how that would cause legal repercussions). Let's face it, it's getting easier and easier by the day to get a product, or even yourself, banned from a particular country, region, or website. I've actually considered abandoning the project, because, well, I have enough games and clearly the world isn't interested in that level of freedom.
Maybe we need more games where everyone can kill the children... Like Limbo...
Post edited January 14, 2021 by rtcvb32
Random fact: Some of the Final Fantasy games have children as party members, and these games allow you to target party members when attacking (and doing so might even be useful for certain advanced strategies).

In fact, there's a part early in Final Fantasy 4 where the 2 party members at the time, both adult men, are fighting a child. Of course, the battle ends in a scripted manner before you have a chance to kill her (it's one of those battles that's meant to be unwinnable).
It's frowned upon, therefor, I want it! The mod to blow up children in Fallout 3 is good fun.
It should be fine , it is just pixels not real kids. Same for adults, in games it is fine to kill them.
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Truth007: Oh snap you are back, i was wondering where you was lol.
My money is on OP has completed Cyberpunk and now has time to spend on the forum.

In response to the OP question, I'd imagine it's a product of the increased market penetration of video games, coupled with the trend in the last 15 years for increasingly vocal minorities to scream and shout about everything they don't like. I blame social media.
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Sachys: O___o
Either I'm having a huge dose of de ja vu, or you made this exact same thread about two months ago.
Here's the link
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_are_some_borders_that_you_think_games_shouldnt_cross/
The title is different, but the post is about killing children in games.
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dtgreene: Trigger warnings serve a useful purpose. Some people, particularly those suffering from various forms of PTSD, can be triggered when they see or read about events that they have experienced in the past. For example, seeing a clip of war could trigger someone who has fought in a nasty war, or (more relevant to this topic) could have had someone (probably someone they know) take out a weapon and attack (possibly even kill) their children. If such a person encounters such a trigger unexpectedly, it could trigger a relapse of their condition.

The trigger warning, then, serves two purposes:
1. It allows the person to make a decision of whether to engage with the triggering content. The person might not be ready to deal with their trigger when first seeing the warning, but might be more comfortable later.
2. It makes the person expect the trigger. If they know that there's triggering content (and it helps to be specific about *what* the trigger is), then they can mentally prepare, and I believe studies have shown that the consequences of exposure to the trigger are significantly less severe if they are prepared for it.

It's quite similar to the reasons why some content (Cyberpunk 2077 at release, for example) would need an epilepsy warning.
They do FAR more evil than good, they make people even more hyper sensitive, miserable and enclosed you stupid degenerate.
In Bioshock you could kill the "little sisters" and even had an immediate positive outcome. But I don't remember any media outrage. I wonder if it was released now. I have found an article from 2018 taking that into analisys that is a quiet and objective exposition and not in the form of outrage11!!1 It simply says that while they are shown as actual people pleading for their life they are treated as a marketplace which can be problematic (and it is given that it was a way to shock the player giving them a moral choice) and defines it "intreresting", but doesn't say that is should be forbidden to kill children (characters) in games or else. It's just looking into that.
https://medium.com/@natalia.mecner/bioshock-unexplored-female-representation-3a2f8c0d36dd
On the other hand there are many games in which you can kill an animal. Being someone who loves dogs I always found it uneasy to kill dogs in games even if it's just pixels or poligons. Leaving alone hunting games, in the recent Deadly Premonition 2 the player can punch any harmless animal they see and I found that over the top (that was the devs intention). I think it's bad taste but also exagerated and unrealistic (punching bees?!).
Post edited January 14, 2021 by Dogmaus
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GreasyDogMeat: Don't be such a fucking pantywaist. Trigger warning!? GTFO.
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dtgreene: Trigger warnings serve a useful purpose. Some people, particularly those suffering from various forms of PTSD, can be triggered when they see or read about events that they have experienced in the past. For example, seeing a clip of war could trigger someone who has fought in a nasty war, or (more relevant to this topic) could have had someone (probably someone they know) take out a weapon and attack (possibly even kill) their children. If such a person encounters such a trigger unexpectedly, it could trigger a relapse of their condition.

The trigger warning, then, serves two purposes:
1. It allows the person to make a decision of whether to engage with the triggering content. The person might not be ready to deal with their trigger when first seeing the warning, but might be more comfortable later.
2. It makes the person expect the trigger. If they know that there's triggering content (and it helps to be specific about *what* the trigger is), then they can mentally prepare, and I believe studies have shown that the consequences of exposure to the trigger are significantly less severe if they are prepared for it.

It's quite similar to the reasons why some content (Cyberpunk 2077 at release, for example) would need an epilepsy warning.
Or if you are a Californian university student... people need to grow a pair.
Post edited January 14, 2021 by Wishmaster777
Imagine someone creating Carmageddon today..

A few mentally sick people are trying very hard to sound like they need to be heard and acknowledged to the point where they see themselves entitled to tell developers and artists to censor their own games (creative art).

I recently came over a video about a developer who got death threats for not caving in to this sick minority, and I applaud them for standing up to such neo-liberal fascism. These are the same people who want trigger warnings everywhere and wants to impose these "pronounces" on others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxevt0_T9cE

In Cyberpunk 2077 you can't shoot children or use drugs in a big way (among other things), but today's games go far beyond that - they are so limited and so censored they are practically dumbed down to the point it's made for children (because violence is ok but nudity and drugs is down-right damaging for a mature person). Even the story in many modern games are like that where so-called mature themes are watered down..

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

In the context of a game world that makes you the player in a world where you're supposed to affect the world, it seems silly and completely illogical to not being able to shoot children, use different drugs, run over people or having nudity just because it might offend someone that won't play the game. The basis of most, if not all games, is to roleplay.

EDIT: If I want to roleplay as a terrorist with a so extreme perversion for onions, that I create my clothes with onions, use hair products with onions, and makes bombs with onions and garlic, and then throw them on people, no matter if it's men, woman, or children, then that's my choice.

It's still a game, not reality, which some seems to completely forget. :D
Post edited January 14, 2021 by sanscript
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dtgreene: Trigger warnings serve a useful purpose. Some people, particularly those suffering from various forms of PTSD, can be triggered when they see or read about events that they have experienced in the past. For example, seeing a clip of war could trigger someone who has fought in a nasty war, or (more relevant to this topic) could have had someone (probably someone they know) take out a weapon and attack (possibly even kill) their children. If such a person encounters such a trigger unexpectedly, it could trigger a relapse of their condition.

The trigger warning, then, serves two purposes:
1. It allows the person to make a decision of whether to engage with the triggering content. The person might not be ready to deal with their trigger when first seeing the warning, but might be more comfortable later.
2. It makes the person expect the trigger. If they know that there's triggering content (and it helps to be specific about *what* the trigger is), then they can mentally prepare, and I believe studies have shown that the consequences of exposure to the trigger are significantly less severe if they are prepared for it.

It's quite similar to the reasons why some content (Cyberpunk 2077 at release, for example) would need an epilepsy warning.
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Wishmaster777: Or if you are a Californian university student... people need to grow a pair.
Exactly, if some people have PTSD(I bet most don't even have it just very immature and gets triggered because they can't control their emotions) then they shouldn't use the internet(at least this social part), that's all.
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sanscript: Imagine someone creating Carmageddon today..
It was happening in games even long time ago. Heroes of Might & Magic III for example should originally have had Forge instead of Conflux. But people got triggered and sent complaints and death threats to NWC because they demanded it does not fit in the universe (a universe which had omnipresent sci-fi elements in it for a long time) and had a Naga Tank unit with exposed tits (in the concept art). They caved in and we got the most bland, generic and imbalanced town in Heroes existence instead - Conflux.

Or Titan Quest for example. The publisher had ridiculous demands on the developer in order to "stay accessible".
I have this copy pasted on my PC as a constant reminder of this pure idiocy. I've found it on some forum written by a TQ developer:

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There seemed to be a constant fear during the development of Titan Quest about upsetting this or that segment of the audience or someone's grandmother. I was literally told by one of the higher-ups that the game should be designed so that his grandmother would want to play it (even though his grandmother had never played a game before in her life). We were building a game with relatively complicated and hardcore gameplay systems but trying to make it thematically and visually appealing to as wide a casual audience as possible. The end result, is that the game was a little more bland and generic in some respects than it should have been and the game world didn't do much to convey a sense of danger.

One example of this would be the mandate that enemies not use language or build anything that would make them seem like they had more than animal intelligence. It was felt by one of the higher-ups that people might feel wrong killing enemies that displayed any obvious intelligence. I guess somehow it is wrong to fight intelligent enemies but okay to slaughter dumb animals? We also weren't originally allowed to have humans die, ever, in the game and no human corpses.

One area where this handicapped us was in the creation of environmental assets that visually demonstrated the enemy's war against humanity. We originally wanted to create enemy siege-works outside Athens but were told that would make the enemies seem too intelligent. It was a struggle just to monster camp assets. All of the ruins were also removed from Greece at one point because someone was afraid that players might not understand why, if the game took place in ancient times, that there would still be ruins... I had to fight for both of these things. Without them, Greece would have just been a featureless expanse of wilderness with occasional human towns that never really appeared to be in any serious danger.

At the same time, we were told that enemies should seem like noble adversaries, not evil or demonic creatures. It was highly controversial when the designs for the Limos and Arachnids were first presented. I had to personally fight to get those approved because they were considered too grotesque and scary looking even though they were based on actually mythology. Undead and the Spirit Mastery were also a struggle to get in the game. I was told that Spirit Mastery was too "Necromancery and evil". We managed to push a few more things like that through over the course of development but it was always frowned upon.

Basically, my belief is that Titan Quest never had as much style and character as it could have because we were afraid to do anything even remotely controversial. When I first designed the skill masteries, they were all based on Olympian gods, with skills modeled after the powers or attributes associated with different gods in mythology. This was rejected because it was potentially too religious and people might not want to feel like they were worshiping mythological gods to receive their powers.

We ended up with a game set in Greek mythology that barely contained any actual mythology other than the inspiration for some of the monsters and dialog on peripheral story-teller NPCs stuck off to the side in the towns. The first quest I put in the game, when we were prototyping it for THQ was modeled after one of the 12 labors of Heracles. The Erymanthian Board was terrorizing a town and the hunters they sent after it hadn't returned. You had to ascend mount Erymanthos, discover the wreckage of the hunter's camp, and then continue on to the snow-capped summit to battle the monstrous board. Of course, I was told we couldn't have snow on the summit because people might not realize it snowed in Greece and then later the whole quest vanished and was replaced by generic crap like retrieving a dowry ring so some chick can get married while monsters are overrunning the world.
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So it is unfortunately not just a problem of today. It's just getting much more leeway than in the past because of how easy it is to complain on the internet.

As for the topic. I don't really care about children (if present at all) being killable, but it has to make sense. When I drop a nuke in the middle of Legion camp in Fallout New Vegas, everyone gets dismembered into bloody pieces and then I see children running completely unharmed from the middle of the huge mushroom cloud is when I will immediately start looking for a mod to fix that.
Post edited January 14, 2021 by idbeholdME