Hi.
While I could write a lot about this subject, I've decided to keep it short and simple.
Does playing the roles of characters with dubious morals in video games, mostly role-playing games, say something about our own moral conduct? Most would answer with a definitive 'No', especially considering that this is a video gaming website, with probably not a few people tired of video games taking the blame for various tragedies that occur in real life. In most role-playing games, you have the freedom of making quite a few unethical decisions, where killing innocents becomes the norm.
I'll try to say this without sounding like a psychopath. Why is it that, regardless of how many innocents you are allowed to slaughter in a game, you can often never lay a hand on kids during the whole playthrough? It's not like I'm requesting that arbitrary action should be taken to design kids made out of pixels JUST so I can shoot them. But when developers design NPC's that are unimportant to the main plot or any side-plot of the game, and decide to include a few children, why is it that I can't take my big axe, or gun, and hack them down or blast them just like any other little unimportant bugger. Is killing kids *that* much more worse than killing a handful of NPC's? I guess there might be some games where you could do that, but I wouldn't be surprised if those games sucked - and that during the whole development of those games, the mark was put on shock value.
A fitting example would be Fallout 3, though there are others. Without spoiling it, I'm gonna say that you can handle pretty much any side-quests or 'interferences' with the power of violence in that game, but when it comes to a certain confrontation with a bunch of kids, I am forced to reach a diplomatic solution.
Now why is that?
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