Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer for Fallout 3 at Bethesda explains just how the decision came to pass to not allow the murder of children to appear in Fallout 3. The previous games in the series did allow such acts to take place, but besides the heavy hand of the ESRB, why did the development studio pass on including it now?
He continues on to say:
When Bethesda first started developing Fallout 3, we had early conversations about whether you’re going to be able to blow the kids’ heads off . (Let’s be clear, with the ESRB’s rating system, that’s not something that would fly anyway.)
But then we began to think, really what benefit would there be in killing the kids in the game? It just seems gratuitous, unnecessary and cruel. The reverse of that is some of the great stories that have been told that involve kids. Look at George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire books. Kids play an important part in that series, and violence to those kids is an important part of those stories.
You really have to balance out and consider if doing violence to a child in a game is so important to your story that it outweighs any kind of social responsibility you might have.
And here comes the struggle again: At the end of the day, I feel like I’m an adult and I’m conscious of my buying decisions. I’m not making a game for an eight-year-old; I’m making a game for a 38-year-old like me, so I’m okay with the content. It’s really tough for me because I am an adult who likes to play M-rated games, and so are many of the people reading this article, as well as many of those who’ve been following the development of Fallout 3 since day one.
Maybe it’s arrogant to think this way, but damn it, it’s my god-given right to blow guys’ heads off if I want to in my videogames!
But then we began to think, really what benefit would there be in killing the kids in the game? It just seems gratuitous, unnecessary and cruel. The reverse of that is some of the great stories that have been told that involve kids. Look at George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire books. Kids play an important part in that series, and violence to those kids is an important part of those stories.
You really have to balance out and consider if doing violence to a child in a game is so important to your story that it outweighs any kind of social responsibility you might have.
And here comes the struggle again: At the end of the day, I feel like I’m an adult and I’m conscious of my buying decisions. I’m not making a game for an eight-year-old; I’m making a game for a 38-year-old like me, so I’m okay with the content. It’s really tough for me because I am an adult who likes to play M-rated games, and so are many of the people reading this article, as well as many of those who’ve been following the development of Fallout 3 since day one.
Maybe it’s arrogant to think this way, but damn it, it’s my god-given right to blow guys’ heads off if I want to in my videogames!
He continues on to say:
We’re grown-ups, we can make and play something like this. We think it’s funny, we think it’s fun and people have been agreeing with that. We don’t want to cross lines like killing kids (we actually never got as far as even putting kill-able kids in any builds of the game). For us, that was a line we certainly didn’t want to cross, and we think that was the right decision. It wouldn’t have been socially responsible, at least in the case of Fallout 3.
You can read more from Pagliarulo over at Edge Online.