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How come in most video games there are no children?
As a gamer I noticed that most video games don't have children in them. Are game developers not allowed to include them for certain reasons? Is there a reason why? There are games like the Grand Theft Auto franchise and the Assassin's Creed franchise where they have cities and towns completely populated with people, but all of them are adults and no sight of any children, not even a baby. Like in the Grand Theft Auto games, the player is able to free roam and kill people if they ever felt like it. So, what's wrong with killing a child in a video game? Does it disturb people greatly? If so, then what's the difference of the level of disturbance between a child being killed in a video game and an adult being killed in a most horrific manner in a video game? Wouldn't it add a bit more realism to the game and relate it more to real life? I know it sounds immoral but is there like a legit reason behind all this? I'm planning to become a game designer and before I start sketching out ideas and a plot for a game, I'd like to know this small detail where most games, usually the Mature rated ones, don't have children in them?
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It's not a law, and it's not even one of the criteria used by the ESRB (the people who give games ratings like Mature, or Child, and such). The ratings don't differentiate between violence against children, adults or the elderly. Violence against people is just violence against people as far as the rules are concerned.
You can kill children in all the Fall Out games, Deus Ex, Jagged Alliance, Bioshock, Prey... Just to name a few. Being able to kill children does NOT automatically increase a games rating from M to AO. All the games I mentioned above are rated M. You could kill children in Oblivion too, and it was originally only rated Teen (and it's rating was raised to M not because of child killing, but because people made a mod that could make the female NPCs topless). All those games are also the kinds of games that are trying to created realistic, immersive worlds and the lack of children would be obvious.
I would bet K3587 is exactly right about the reason you don’t see it often though. Games are supposed to be enjoyable and sellable. People are in it to make money, fundamentally. Whether or not killing children is especially uncomfortable for gamers I’m not sure, but any developer worth their salt is going to realize you won’t make money if your game makes enough people unhappy or uncomfortable. I’ve never played anything that required the killing of children to complete a quest or objective. Honestly, I’d feel a little put out by it if a game left that as my only option.
You should definately pick up a few more open, immersive world games if you are curious about game developers attempts at realism... I really don't think realism is what they were aiming for with GTA, no matter how much they pretend it is.
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The ability to kill children in the game takes it from Mature to Adults Only, a rating game companies avoid because it kills sales. Not to mention, the amount of negative press it would receive, and the attacks from everyone involved in politics, means you couldn't buy the game anywhere because no one would put it on their shelf. This means you could only order it direct from the manufacturer. They also wouldn't be able to advertise. This means lost money overall, because very few people would go to all that trouble, and few would have even heard about it in any medium other than Fox News.
In short, it would make a game tank in profitability, and marketability.
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