The 'kiddy game' conundrum

So, you may not know this but today is International Children’s* Day (cheers Wikipedia!). I’m not sure why children need a day, internationally. It’s not like they get presents or anything like Mothers and Fathers Day. After all, they have a day like that already. It’s called Christmas.

Oh yeah, they're cute NOW. Just you wait till they get into the Pixie Stix stash.

Anyway, because it’s Children’s Day, I was originally going to write a post about child friendly games, but then I got to thinking, child friendly should really mean non violent, right? Ok then, well Mario games are non violent... oh, yeah, he stomps everything. Let’s not even think about Brawl. Alright then, how about Spyro? Oh no, can’t use that, everything that crosses him dies of horrible fire death. Er... Sonic? Nope, he still has to beat up Robotnik every five minutes. Wow, this is harder than I thought.

So, if a game is to be child friendly, does it HAVE to be non violent? Can a good game be made without violence? I say yes, but it is difficult. Nintendo have really excelled at this, with the Cooking Mama and Rhythm Heaven games as two examples that come to mind (although Rhythm Heaven makes me violent towards my DS, it has to be said. Stupid slow reflexes, stupid picky game, grumble grumble). However, for every good game, there’s roughly a bazillion horrible children’s games. Some of the worst offenders are the licence titles, rushed out to meet a release date for the accompanying movie/tv show/tea towel. Ick.

However, there are some excellent ‘kiddy’ games out there that do include violence to some degree. Think about Pokemon, for example. Yeah, the characters only ‘faint’ when they run out of HP, but they’re running out of HP because YOU’RE MAKING YOUR POKEMON REPEATEDLY SMACK IT IN THE CHOPS. Not to mention the fact that the child characters in game are being sent out to fend for themselves with almost no adult supervision. Seems legit.

Is this bad, then? Should children only be given games with all the violence removed, vastly narrowing their pool of available titles? It’s hard to say. After all, as an adult would you watch a show or read a book where there is no violence whatsoever? It’s unlikely, as every good story needs conflict, and to heighten the tension and interest it usually means someone’s getting a smack in the mouth at some point. It’s true of nearly every cartoon and kid’s show out there too, albeit in the form of slapstick.

The problem is in gaming, violence is used to solve problems. People in your way? Shoot ‘em. Wall in the way? Blast it. Breakable boxes? HULK SMASH. Even if your enemies aren’t dying bloody and battered, you still win for killing them. Take Ratchet and Clank for example. Your enemies fall into nuts and bolts when defeated, which can exchanged for, among other things, bigger and better guns for killing things with. How do we reconcile this with a kiddy audience? (Also, how do we reconcile the borderline filthy names those games have? Going Commando? Up Your Arsenal?!)

(Also, why didn’t we get those names here in the UK? WHHHHHHHHHY?!)

I’ve written in circles here, and I’m not sure I have an answer, to be honest. If you have kids, you know it’s your responsibility to monitor and control what your kids play. Also, you know what your kid can and cannot handle. I think maybe it’s relative to your own situation. After all, as a kid my mum let me read ‘adult’ books because she judged that I could handle them. It’s the same with games.

Thoughts, readers?

*I swear I think Children’s should be written Childrens’, but my spellchecker keeps screaming at me for it.