Fallout 3 - Why You Can’t Kill Children

Posted by Benjamin Hoyt on October 31st, 2008 filed in Game Development, Political, Video Games

I was tremendously amused by Simon Parkin’s Gamasutra article “Fallout 3 – I Kill Children” and the ensuing discussion. In the article, Parkin asserted that the decision by the team at Bethesda to restrict the killing of children “admitted video games’ ineffectiveness in providing meaningful disincentives and negative repercussions for in-game atrocities.” Several others chimed-in with comments complaining that “allowing people to kill adults but not children implies that there is something more wrong about killing children.”

It is worth noting, for those unfamiliar with the game, that Fallout 3 is a Mature-rated game intended for adults that is graphically violent.  Recently released, it has been met with strong early sales and generally excellent reviews.  When characters are killed they are often shown up-close in high detail as limbs are severed and blood flies in slow motion.

Presumably, Mr. Parkin is advocating that players should have been allowed to kill children in the same way.

The gist of his argument is that because the game is set in a harsh, morally-ambiguous future, where such actions might actually happen, the decision to prevent the killing of children in this way represents self-censorship and compromises the game’s artistic integrity because it implies that the developers were unable to design appropriate consequences that would have disincentivized and “punished” this kind of behavior.  Ironically, there would likely have been little, if any, actual consequences for this type of behavior in the bleak future that the game envisions.

The reality is that society absolutely thinks that there is something more wrong about killing children than adults. This is so obvious that it I am surprised that people were even asking the question. Generally speaking, the younger the victim, the more horrific the crime seems; the more outraged the public reaction. The most surprising thing to me is that there are people who were surprised that killing children was restricted in the game, considering the countless other video games in which you can kill adults but not kill children. Even film, a medium that is allowed a much wider degree of artistic freedom than games, rarely tackles the subject of child murder and, when it does, it is universally done in a way that is less “in your face” than some of the people on this comment thread seem to be advocating.  Can anyone point to a commercially successful film that showed graphic, realistic, murder, including gushing blood and dismemberment, of a child? The fact that Mr. Parkin’s article, as well as some of the comments, actually seem to be advocating this for a video game in our current political climate borders on the comical to me.

We can argue all we want about the artistic compromise that this decision may have been for the game, but that conversation is ultimately irrelevant. I was not privy to the actual conversation on this topic, but I’d bet just about anything that Bethesda made this decision for very legitimate business/financial reasons. Had they allowed players to graphically execute innocent children, resulting in their dismemberment and enormous spouts of blood, the game would almost certainly have gotten them an Adults-Only (AO) rating, effectively killing the game’s retail potential. Even if it had not, it would probably have quickly become the biggest games industry PR nightmare since Hot Coffee, with unknown but very likely negative impacts on sales as conservative retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart rushed to pull the game from store shelves in the face of a public outcry.

Video game development, at least the kind that Bethesda is engaged in, is a business. People should be neither surprised nor upset when companies such as Bethesda make decisions that are in the best interest of their business. Sure, they could have allowed the graphic killing of children, but in so doing they would have created a massive risk of seriously hurting their product’s sales. Games of the scope and ambition of Fallout 3 cost a lot of money ($20 million and more) to make. If games can’t recoup their costs (and then some) they don’t get made. Is that what Mr. Parkin and those who agree with him really want, just so that they can applaud the game’s “internal consistency” of allowing players to murder children in horrific and gory ways?

It is the failure to acknowledge the out-of-game consequences of what he suggests that I think most undermines Mr. Parkin’s argument. As he AND his “eloquent” detractors have pointed out, there were certainly ways Bethesda could have made the consequences for this atrocity severe enough to disincentivize most players. I seriously doubt, however, that being able to say “afterwards, you are haunted by the child’s ghost and your character has a hard time sleeping,” would have done much to quell the outcry of millions of disgusted and offended parents. Ultimately, the decision to omit child killing in the game is far less of a concession to Bethesda’s abilities as game designers than it is to society’s sensitiblities.  So, in other words, we have only ourselves to blame (or thank).


7 Responses to “Fallout 3 - Why You Can’t Kill Children”

  1. Kristo Karvinen Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 4:36 am

    Many of your points are true but Bethesha could have done all this in a much better way - remove kids from the game.

    Now, you can leave kids to starve after you kill their parents. Sure, it’s not as graphic as shooting them but if you are so sure of the public outcry, why is there no outcry yet because of that?

    And on the artistic side - in a RPG, the game should NOT force morality of any kind to the player. If a player can create a character, he/she should also map out that characters ethics and morality. The fact that Bethesda has to force semi-christian morality upon the player is a sad fact about modern US of A.

  2. Msakey Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 5:47 am

    Another example of Ben Hoyt’s thoughtful and well-reasoned arguments regarding a sensitive subject. Mr. Parkin may be pie-in-the-skying a wish for equal artistic protection, but in the real world, allowing for the gruesome murder of children in a game like Fallout 3 would have produced some very serious… fallout for the games industry as a whole.

    I recall reading a recent article in which a Bethesda creative director mentioned that the team had several long and serious meetings about this very issue, and finally decided - as you suggest, Ben - that to include violence against children might increase the gritty realism quotient but wouldn’t be worth it in the long run due to the potential negative reaction. Note that Neither of Bethesda’s most recent previous games, Morrowind and Oblivion, have children in them at all - for the same reason.

    I’m frankly amazed that Bioshock got as little negative publicity as it did, given the content. And Parkin’s somewhat disturbing assertion that he should not only be able to kill children, but be able to enjoy the same spectacularly gruesome death animations as Fallout 3 treats us to with adults, strikes me as frankly a little creepy. Even Bioshock politely cut away at the final moment, and went to great lengths to illustrate the fact that Little Sisters may appear to be children, but are actually not human at all.

    In the end, it wouldn’t have been worth it. Including the opportunity to kill children violently in a game like this strikes me as a Rockstar move; something done to the detriment of the game simply to increase the shock value and horrify the nongaming public. Bethesda and other serious developers aren’t interested in tawdry publicity stunts, they’re interested in making quality games. I applaud their decision.

    Great post, Ben.

  3. Sören Höglund Says:
    November 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 am

    I hadn’t even noticed the absence of child killing despite my playing the game for close to forty hours now, because I’m not a bastard. That said, I do agree entirely with Parkin. Letting people kill children is not socially responsible, but letting them nuke a town containing children is? Really? It breaks the game world.

    I do understand the external, commercial pressures for not having it in there, but if you can’t deal with it convincingly, just cut kids out of the game.

    Or maybe they could have toned down the juvenile, gratuitous slow-mo ultro-gore kills. Yes, yes, I know I’m a badass. But a single bullet from my rifle is not capable of decapitating a man.

    That is not how bullets work.

    It is incorrect.

  4. Msakey Says:
    November 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 am

    I understand your points, Kristo, but I’m not sure if I agree that “not killing children” equates only with semi-Christian morality. It’s my understanding that most societies generally oppose murdering children. Bethesda’s decision was business-related, I suspect, and had little to do with the company’s morals.

    As to not including children at all, well, that might have been easier on the developers, but Bethesda got a lot of flak from gamers and press for “chickening out” of the same debate in both Morrowind and Oblivion by not including children. With this method they were able to incorporate several interesting plot options involving children, without putting those children in direct peril at the hands of the player.

    As to your other argument that an RPG should never force morality on a player, I agree… and I don’t think Fallout 3 does force morality on the player. You’re free to help or ignore children as you see fit; you’re just not able to butcher them. There’s a significant difference between “not forcing morality on a player” and “allowing a player to do anything s/he wants, even to the detriment of the game.” Based on your logic, Fallout 3 is a weaker game because you’re not able to molest children, or cook them into pies, or hang them from hooks by their Buster Browns, or shave them bald, or make them wear sandwich boards with silly slogans, or lock them all in a shed, or any of a bazillion other interactive options that are wildly outside the scope and storyline of the game.

    An RPG should never force morality, no, but nor is it required to accommodate every possible interactivity with every possible character and setting.

  5. Sören Höglund Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 7:01 am

    That’s a false analogy though. Bethesda purposely excluding part of the npcs from the systems they implemented is not the same as not including a forced head-shaving system at all.

    You can make a fairly convincing argument for the inconsistency being worth it, for the extra flavour having children around gives the game, much as you can make an argument for having unkillable npcs to add structure to a story. But if you try to justify it on *moral* as opposed to commercial grounds, you open a whole can of worms.

  6. Aaron Lutz Says:
    November 12th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    I think the biggest thing that Parkin was trying to get across (unsuccessfully) is that Bethesda claimed they removed the killing of children based on moral standing; I think even you agree that, morals notwithstanding, they did it because not doing so would damage sales and public image. It’s not that they didn’t include killing of children, it’s that they said they did it because of moral standing - that’s bogus, in my opinion. They had loose enough morals to allow close-up, slow-motion gratuitous gore when you kill anything else, and nuking a whole population, etc. But when it comes to killing children, oh suddenly they have these morals.

    I agree with Soren; a likely effective and obvious solution in my mind would be to take the close-up, slow-mo graphic violence out entirely; it’s like a teenage boy’s wet dream to see blood spraying from a decapitated neck, but in all honesty, it just wouldn’t work that way.

    A more realistic and somber approach to killing, death, and violence, as well as more appropriate in-game consequences for this type of behavior (staying true to the vision of the game) would be a better solution, IMHO, than to superimpose this restriction on the player and claim moral high ground.

  7. jp Says:
    November 25th, 2008 at 2:24 am

    Nuking a whole town (that contains children) but restricting the player from killing a child elsewhere is a non-sequitur.

    Morality aside, it doesn’t make any logical sense.

    Plus, Fallout 1 and 2 has few limits as to what it possible for the player. You can literally kill everyone and everything in fallout 2 and still beat the game. Much of the outcry is from gamers truly wanting a sandbox experience - not one that is tied by out-of-place morality. In the fallout world, there is no judeo-christian morals, which makes it so odd to bind the gamers to it in fallout 3.

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