SlyTF1 wrote:to know is: What's the difference between a dead child and a dead grown up? I just don't get what's so different. They're all people, so what difference does it make?
This is all conjecture, but I have a feeling it's true. It also might be TLDNR, but if you're involved in the conversation, you might want to.
1. Societal norms. I don't know when in history it started, but society has placed a great importance on children lives, something in our minds to make us respect more the value of a child's life than an adult's. I don't think this needs anything to back it up; this point is pretty much common knowledge. Just like yelling at a bystander for no reason is a no-no, so is allowing a child to be harmed or watching it happen more so than an adult. It's expected that we save a child before an adult (women and children first). And why? Society says so.
2a. Innocence. Not so much as an antonym of guilt (but I'll get to that), but more so about how much life they've lived. Notice that we feel less about deaths in movies the less innocent--or life experienced--we perceive a character. (This is why the older a character, the less we care.) The more they know and are capable of coping or understanding (see point #5), the less we care. We couldn't care less about Damien's death in the Omen. He's a kid, but he knows exactly what's doing since he's Satan's child. Same with the punk kids in Mimic. We think of them as expendable because they get what's going on; they're street punks even though they're probably ten, so we almost cheer when they die.
2b. Culpability. A child has done no wrong (or at least wrong they can understand). Adults have had plenty of opportunity to be douche bags and, as anyone can attest, no one is perfect. When in fiction, in our minds, even if the good far outweighs the bad, something in the backs of our minds says that it's okay for this or that adult to die. (Not so in real life, but we rarely see death firsthand in real life, so don't have a chance to think about it until after the fact.)
3. Opportunity. Children haven't lived full lives and haven't been given the chances that adults have.
4a. Evolution. We have an instinct to protect our young that was probably bred from when we were hunters/gatherers. This extends mostly to our own children, but a lot of people project this onto any child. This isn't true of just parents--there are as many non-parents who care deeply for children as there are parents who couldn't care less about their own young (these are the people we refer to when we say that child-rearing should be licensed)--but the point is there and it's probably a good rule of thumb. I can tell you that, since becoming a parent, I'm much more aware of child deaths. I wasn't fazed by the kid death in Demon Knight but, thinking back, I probably would be if I'd been a parent then.
4b. Crying. Evolution also has made crying a signal to a parent that evolution has made a key communication tool. Notice how parents will say that it's heart-breaking to hear their child cry even if the child is being punished or refused something they shouldn't have? Even if the crying is a result of a good thing, we still feel for the child. Mothers can hear a baby cry over other, louder sounds (some test somewhere has proven that, but I can't find it). They wake up to the sound of a baby cry even if there are louder sounds. Evolution has linked a mother to a baby's cry, and, probably to some degree, everybody is linked. When we hear a child cry in a movie or even see it pictured, we're urged to do something. If you can look at
this picture and not feel pain, you're heartless. (Don't worry, it's not gruesome and a child isn't in peril; it just tugs at your heart strings.) And why should we feel at this picture? Because we know that children just can't cope (see point #5); they feel helpless and we feel an instinct to help.
5. Coping mechanisms. Children can't cope with danger, injury, mutilation, fear, or sadness like an adult. They just don't have the mental or physical faculties to do it. To them, anything outside of a strict norm is the equivalent of an adult living in an MC Escher insane asylum where the inmates have overrun the city. Children just can't know. Any change outside an incredibly minuscule norm has them going out of their minds. And danger is outside of that norm. Any danger. Even a loud sound.
6. Helplessness and thinking. An adult can pick up a gun or a baseball bat to defend him- or herself, but a child just can't. They're not able to think that through and don't have the leverage or strength to use it capably. Children are utterly helpless when left in danger, and that speaks to our hearts as human beings. Even when children have made the decision that led to their own deaths, they're not capable of thinking ahead the way adults can and so can't really be held responsible in that way.
Anyway, all this to say that a child death is more horrific to us than an adult death. Even the image of a fictional dead child evokes the same feelings as a real death. The defense some might give is that it's fictional, so it shouldn't matter. But what do our brains do? If it looks real and sounds real, our brains say it's real or, at the very least, remind us of the real. So, even in fiction, the death of a child hits us hard. Imagine this: if a child stick man died, we wouldn't feel anything, probably because a stick man is so far removed from what looks real that our brains don't tell us we should feel anything. However, an ad like Dead Island's (or a scene like AvP2's nursery scene or any given work) would make us feel as if it's real.
The reason I think an ad like Dead Island's makes us emotional is because we want to save the child but are helpless to do so since it's a video. We can't step in, rewind the ad, and grab her before she's bitten. Furthermore, we see the only people capable of doing that--her parents, who want to with all their hearts--fail to do so even though they're fighting tooth and nail.
SlyTF1 wrote:EXACTLY! That's the reason I play video games or watch a movie. To see or do things I can't do or wouldn't do in real life. It's an experiece.
You play video games to do or see things you
want to do but can't, things you're not gutsy enough to try or are incapable of given your skill or the circumstances. You stated you liked the look of this game not because it lets you fight zombies but because you can see a kid to die.
Why people are telling you to see a professional is because the only reason you had given to liking this game was because a kid died (not even that it was a point of interest but that it was the sole reason why you wanted to play it) and then backed that statement up by saying the reason you play video games is to see or do things you can't in RL.
" smiley, it's pretty hard to infer that "terror" is the emotion you're feeling.
