So, why isn't this a thing yet?

[Colorful]

I love these threads.

The reasons why we can't have child like characters are just plain hilarious. There are games where kids are/would be treated far worse than they would in XIV. They still were published, the companies publishing them are still going strong, and there was no media whiplash for it.

srsly. If you don't want child characters, just own up and say you don't want them. Don't try to hide behind some 'THINK OF THE CHILDRENZZ' excuse that is just plain BS in an attempt to come out a hero. lol I doubt anyone would judge you for not liking kids.

What games if you don't mind me asking? TERA gets constantly bashed everywhere for being the centre for children loving paedophile Elin ERPers constantly, on Reddit especially. In Skyrim you can't kill children and there's very few of them, the same goes for the Witcher 3 and most other AAA games, I don't even think there are children in GTA V. You were able to kill children back in Fallout 1 or 2 but that way back when the media wasn't so focused on video games, and even now the artists gets flack for that image he drew of the Vault Boy kicking a pregnant woman's belly for the child killer achievement/perk or something that didn't even make it into the game IIRC. Children in video games are quite clearly a very touchy subject, and there's absolutely no denying that. There is a difference between murdering children and making them playable, but you will run into problems with the swimsuits and subligars unless they were to censor those on child races.

[HodgepodgeMcDodge]

snip.

Metal Gear Solid : Ground Zeros. Paz and Chico are tortured, brutally, for information. The rape is 'highly suggested' to have happened. Chico is shown to have had bolts put through his Achilles Tendons. A hole is punctured into his chest that, in his now-mentally broken state, he uses as a headphone jack. When Snake rescues him, he freaks out to the point that Snake has to strangle him til he passes out, lest he alerts the guards. Paz is later found to be in a far worse state. Once rescued and on a helicopter, Snake discovers she has a bomb in her abdomen. It is 'not so delicately' removed, with Chico assisting in holding her guts in. This is shown. She comes to later, informs Snake there's another bomb where 'Snake would not think to look' (guess), then promptly leaps out of the helicopter and explodes.

In the next game, Phantom Pain, we find out the resulting explosion maimed several key characters and killed Chico. Another 'what if I had...' cut scene happens where the doctor... goes for the second bomb. It's not shown in graphic detail, but you *know* what just happened. Snake later encounters a boy around 12 named Eli who tries to kill him using anything he can get his hands on (knife, bottles, pipes). This results in a non-lethal beat down that is about as violent as anything in XIV would be. Eli later attempts another stabbing on Snake, who gets annoyed and just dislocates his arm. On screen. Pop. He then pops it back in out of pitty. Pop pop. Then there's the whole slew of child soldiers you can mess with. Grant it, being lethal is instant failure. But let's say you wanted to run full speed at one and sock him in the jaw with your robot hand, or send your cattle-prod equipped wolf-dog to zap one... 10-4 Good buddy, have at it.

Dragon's Dogma let you create a child-like character. In this game, you went after all sorts of monsters and witnessed some very gruesome things. But the key thing I want to point out is that you can romance any NPC in the game. ANY. NPC. IN. THE. GAME (except like 2). That includes children (who you can do all sorts of things to, like throwing off a cliff). You are treated to at least two 'pants on hugging' scenes. 3 if you go for the princess.

Those are the 3 top of my head examples.

Hell, even Mortal Kombat has some sort of giant ridding midget kid looking thing now. Grant it, all fatalities are performed on her uh.. mount? but she's still the one gutting and ripping people in two.

The violence in XIV is so very, very tame. That's the main thing I find hilarious about these threads. Things get blown way out of proportion. We get set on fire? No we don't. Look at what happens when we 'do'. Our characters shrug off EVERYTHING thrown at them. We are essentially invincible. Nothing leaves any damage to us, except our hp. And even then, we just get 'knocked out', not killed. And hell... when my lala goes down, it looks more like he's saying 'Meh.. I'm going to take a nap. Right here'. rather than 'omg the pain!' The most gruesome scene in the whole game reminded me of the scene in Toy Story where Buzz lost his arm...

I could see the hesitation if there were blood, gore, guts and dismemberment.. but this is nothing. DBZ has way more violence towards children than XIV ever will.

As for swimsuits and subligars... Those can be easily edited, (the subligar probably should). But I do need to point out that brief-style swimsuits are popular through out the world. The US is one of the few nations that seem to have an actual problem with them.

As for that drawing of the perk.. Yeah. That IS distasteful and he should get flak for it. But nothing like that exists in XIV.

[Dalvy]

Metal Gear Solid : Ground Zeros.

There is a reason why Hideo Kojima said in an interview before GZ was released, that he was very worried about reactions to the controvertial depictions in GZ and TPP involving kids. He was putting his career in the line.

[HodgepodgeMcDodge]

There is a reason why Hideo Kojima said in an interview before GZ was released, that he was very worried about reactions to the controvertial depictions in GZ and TPP involving kids. He was putting his career in the line.

Link please.

Point is, it still got published, did it not? Did you see anything about it in the papers? Did you see mass protests and the hysteria that people claim will happen in XIV if we get child characters? And my point still stands. What happened in those games were far, far more violent, graphic and terrifying than anything we've seen in XIV. And yet, they were published.

What about Kingdom Hearts? Sora starts around 10-11 years old. That game is just as violent, to perhaps just a little less violent due to lack of arms falling off, and it's an extremely well received game. The only thing I saw about it on the news was 'Hey look! Disney characters!'

Also, Pokemon. Under-aged, unsupervised child goes around poaching dangerous animals and participating in legalized animal fights and gambles while dealing with a criminal organization. Only the extreme whack-jobs find fault with that game.

Child Link in OOT and Majora's Mask.

Hanbei Takanaka in SW3/4/OW3. Child CAWs in DW8 Empires (mow down THOUSANDS of enemy soldiers, and get married and have kids to boot).

Suikoden. Child characters join AN ARMY and participate in massive battles. If the child is not essential to the plot, he can be killed in that battle. Killed off for real. Also, Pilikia witnesses the ruthless slaughtering of her parents. The leader of said armies is usually a tween and duels people to the death. Tir can even order people to be executed.

Last of Us and The Walking Dead (TaleTell). 'Nuff said right there.

[RiceisNice]

...

Just to chime in; Paz is 17 during the time of those events (or at the very least, she definitely does not look like an under aged child), and while Chico is still definitely in the under-age side of the attention, everything that's happened to him is either off-screen or implied through recordings. How it's presented is a big factor when it comes to media attention as well as the medium that it's in, and it'd definitely be a big no-no if you could literally blow off their heads with a snipe rifle (which you can do to the adult soldiers mind you). Kojima himself had admitted that this could backfire tremendously and potentially ruin his career if it wasn't pulled off well (specifically if he had dipped into the gore/dismemberment aspect of the children). All of these examples are also in single player games which sets a limit to what the players run with.

But I disgress that the presentation and the medium is the most important part. There are some lines that are acceptable to the public media, such as superdeformedl (lalafells, tatarus or gnomes). You can't really get away with something that objectionably looks like a healthy child and say they're actually 2x years of age.

Yes, I can deny that actually. Almost every MMO I've played doesn't have a childlike race. WoW, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, Vindictus and Path of Exile to list a few. Infact, the ones that do have childlike races are usually the ones that pander to that audience and usually have a cash shop selling them for real world money.

Funny enough, a F2P-cash shop mmo I used to play was pretty much going all-in with the fanservice on female characters.
http://elwiki.net/wiki/images/1/15/LuFull.png
She's technically a ageless demon queen or something, but this is an example of what I mentioned earlier when considering what is a "child" or not. I'm pretty sure they're adding some costumes/swimsuits to sexualize her (and it is a korean mmo no less, so demographics are different as well), but it's also a game where it's not particularly violent to draw that sort of attention which is why they don't get media flak when it came overseas.

[HodgepodgeMcDodge]

But I disgress that the presentation and the medium is the most important part. There are some lines that are acceptable to the public media, such as superdeformedl (lalafells, tatarus or gnomes). You can't really get away with something that objectionably looks like a healthy child and say they're actually 2x years of age.

Except you can



For an 'unacceptable' trope, there sure does seem to be a lot of examples of it.

Also, you can blow the child soldier's brains out. Kinda happens when you don't pay attention and hit the C4 button at the wrong time. Don't worry. You're treated to a game over.

Also, again. XIV is not a super violent game. So.. Presentation, as you put. The kids would be fine here. If you think it is, please don't go play any of the games I mentioned. You wont be able to handle them.

Again, people are blowing the the violence in XIV WAY, WAY out of proportion. You'd think everything was made of plastic, given how much everything 'hurts' us.

[Kurogaea]

Again, people are blowing the the violence in XIV WAY, WAY out of proportion. You'd think everything was made of plastic, given how much everything 'hurts' us.

Makes me wonder if some people can stand to see the scene in Kingdom Hearts 1 where [spoiler!!!]

Sora stabs himself to save the princesses. I still don't know how that works btw.

[HodgepodgeMcDodge]

Makes me wonder if some people can stand to see the scene in Kingdom Hearts 1 where [spoiler!!!]

Sora stabs himself to save the princesses. I still don't know how that works btw.

Sensing danger, Kairi's heart left her body and stowed away in Sora's for protection. In order to release Kairi's heart and return it to her body, Sora had to release his own heart, which he does... and it does.. Which also ends up creating Roxas.

[RiceisNice]

...

Last I checked, getting blown up by a C4 doesn't even lead to ludicrous gibs even on adult soldiers. Like I said, this game treads around the issue well enough to get away with it (along with Paz's explosion death being mostly a blaze of glory rather than bloody splatter since it was, y'know, an internal explosion)

FFXIV is an MMO like I mentioned eariler, different from a single player game that limits the scope of what the player can actually do. It's a hole another mess when you have player implications as well as the image that SE wants their game to take on.

I also nowhere said it's an "unacceptable" trope, and I don't see how your link is even related to it. It becomes an issue when you try to use that trope as an excuse to put said characters in those situations (they're not kids, they're just people in kid's bodies). Quite frankly, none of those games are a problem, but they worked around it.

[Kurogaea]

snip

Tera is a terrible example. Its like comparing lalafells with Elins, which is exactly what it is. Lalafells can live up to, idk, 200 years or so? Elins live just as long if not longer so its pretty much hinted that every player that picks these races are in the adventurer age range. Like Hodgepodge stated, there's plenty of games with children in them, npcs, enemies or as playable characters, examples: Sonic 2- (oh yeah this counts) Tails was 6 in that game. Witch and the Hundred Knight - The protagonist as a 8 year old brat was brutally assaulted by an evil witch and was being strangled, but it was hinted the little girl killed the witch and became one herself, also killing her own mother turning her into a mouse and eating her for trying to stop her from being evil. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance-you play as 2 12-14year olds exploring the world of Ivalice, monsters war, dungeons, betrayal yadayada, I have more but that's just to prove a point.