Pregnancy in Video Games
We are actually planning to explore pregnancy and childbirth in Primordiax. We haven’t decided on the level of detail, but it will be a way to create new characters in the game that have a real connection to the parents. I doubt the feature will be in at the initial release, but it is definitely something we keep discussing.
As usual… on to my questions for you all:
1) Is there an appropriate place for pregnancy, childbirth, and/or child rearing in MMOs or online games in general.
2) How do you avoid some of the complex moral issues – out of wedlock birth, single parenting, irresponsible behavior while pregnant (borging for loot and xp while 6 months pregnant!), etc. Or maybe you don’t avoid them at all, and let the discussion of those issues be part of your world.
3) What level of complexity is appropriate for a game? What features add something interesting, and what elements would make it no longer feel like a game any longer?
It is definitely worth reading htat entire article. It explores a lot of the ways pregnancy in video games can be done horribly wrong.
[...] After all, it is a topic we all understand yet it rarely gets much attention in the gaming media: Pregnancy in Video Games I recently came across an interesting article about this issue so I decided to blog about it. [...]
King’s Bounty incorporates having a wife and children into gameplay, too. Kids give +inventory slots and the wives different boni for your char.
I do not think kids work in today’s standard mmo setting. The world is static, the chars are static in age and only progressing in level/power/equipment. Chars are created at a mature age when they start out at level 1.
In a more social WORLD style MMO, it could be possible, but for what. Tesh once raised the idea of chars living and dying, so getting children would be a definite and important factor of gameplay.
The Sims are also only doing what they already do, trying to simulate a real world. And getting children is part of the real world. But they take out things like childbirth itself, in order to not drive away and disgust customers or step over moral boundaries of our society.
The problem is, what to do with the child? What do a Paladin and a Necromancer do with their child? Will it be a child forever, what happens to it when it grows up, who controls it?
Funny idea: The first character starts out at mature age, all “alt” chars need to be born. You will have to discuss with the father/mother who gets the child/char…!
Pregnancy in a game is one of those issues that sounds far more controversial than it is. Mostly, it’s just not a very interesting feature because being a kid in a game generally isn’t interesting. This is doubly true in an MMO where your stats and skills are likely to reflect actually being a kid. While stone skipping at a level 7 may be impressive to another 8 year old, it makes for poor gameplay options for an adult. Ok, I admit I would skip rocks for a little bit, but it would get old fast!
The obvious exception here is Bully, but everyone is a kid in it so it achieves a nice equilibrium.
Sentinel
http://www.kings-bounty.com/eng/characters2.php
“In case of divorce remember that your wife will take children, all equipment from her slots and 1/5 of gold.”
Oh my… is the succubus the wife or the kid?
Hahahaha.
I think a lot of the controversy comes from how a game handles pregnancy, rather than the idea of characters becoming pregnant. For example, from that article it is apparent that games can create a lot of horrendously incorrect misconceptions about pregnancy. I think it can be argued that is a social harm.
I agree playing a kid in an MMO doesn’t sound terribly fun. But in a roleplay or IC required game, it might actually present some interesting roleplay opportunities.
For Primordiax, our idea was that the kid would be an object that the parents had to try and keep alive until it reached a certain age. This fits with my general theory that until about 5 years old, the main goal children have is trying to kill themselves. It is the parent’s job to try and thwart that. It is like domestic versus mode.
Part of the problem is that MMOs are supposed to be persistent worlds. If children are included specifically as some part of roleplay factor, they would have to require a certain level of upkeep (parenting) in order to maintain their roleplay value.
So how often do players who want to have in-game children have to be providing upkeep? I think that becomes the biggest barrier for most players in a MMO.
I used to play FFXI, which does not have children, but has two other mini-type games that could be looked at as potential examples — gardening and raising your own chocobo. To raise a successful plant, you have to provide daily upkeep which includes simply observing your plant once a real life day. Later, you have to feed it a crystal (think of it as fertilizer), and after enough days pass, your plant blooms and you can harvest. The results of your harvest depend upon how well you took care of your plant and the type of fertilizer you used, along with the seeds. Not too hard or complicated, but I continually ran into the problem of missing a day or two of upkeep due to real life concerns which resulted in poor plant yields or total plant death.
In raising a chocobo, they addressed some of these ‘real life’ obstacles by technically making a npc raise the baby for you; you simply had to tell the npc what you wanted him or her to do, and could create a schedule of things to do while you were doing other things in the game or offline. The optimal way to raise the chocobo still included you providing upkeep for it every real life day, but if you simply could not, you could still end up with a below average chocobo at the end of it all (a 60 day process). Obviously, most people are not content with something sub par and would have to go through the process again, trying to not miss real-life days just so you could raise a better chocobo.
Both of these activities tend to make you feel like you are obligated to spend time in game, and don’t seem to take into account the real-life difficulties people have accomplishing it.
So back to children — I am sure there are good people who would want the roleplay but simply cannot give the real-life time required to get up to the point where it is not a constant burden. Finding a way to overcome the persistent nature of the MMO while still maintaining the integrity of the nature of having children would be a difficult nut to crack, I believe, if elements of forced time-critical upkeep are essential.
The easiest way to me would to have options available. If you can put in the time, you can try whatever hands-on daily upkeep options are in the game, but if you can’t, have a nanny or fosterling system that sends the kid away until it is grown up.
i’m more scared by the terrible photochop in the picture that accompanies your post than i am with the concept of pregnancy in a game. i mean look at that MAN HAND wrapped around that beautiful glass of beer. if you have freaks of nature in your game, that’s something i want to know about.
Pregnancy/children aren’t something I’d be interested in, as far as games go. They reek of obligation, and I’ve learned over the years that obligation in a game tends to(though not always) hinder fun.
The one thing I’d like to put out there on this topic is that in an rp game, pregnancies are something that should need to be approved ooc by both the father and mother. Otherwise, I suspect there’d be a rash of “revenge pregnancies”, where a spurned woman turns out to be pregnant. What better way to make somebody look like a jerk than to turn them into a deadbeat dad?
Don’t you mean all her slots, 1/2 your slots and 1/2 your gold (+20% monthly of any new gold you acquire)?
Dude, good call on the man hands. Those are freaky!
Hahahahahahaha. Truth.
Hahaha, nice one rob!
I keep getting this image of something like a tamagochi kid (As Milawe suggested, an object or tagalong ‘pet’ that you are obligated to keep alive) Players could fork out money for a nanny to automate the raising, or ’ship him off to military school’ once it levels out of ‘infancy’.
As horrible as that might sound to the RL parents in the audience, when dealing with a medival setting, it’s actually not that unrealistic. Adolescent sons of nobility were frequently fostered out to serve as squires to the elder sons of neighbouring nobles.
So long as the player can put the parenting RP on hold by simply logging out, I don’t think it would be that bad.
Plus, I know a lot of female players who would just LOVE to play the pregnant demon-woman, getting to vent all the haranguing they never got to indulge in during their own pregnancies.
1) Is there an appropriate place for pregnancy, childbirth, and/or child rearing in MMOs or online games in general.
I would think that it depends entirely on how much of a virtual world a given game is. If you have things like a house, farming, pets, and lots of content that only serves to enrich the RP of your game’s identifying acronym then a wife and children seem to fit in quite well (and pregnancy can be there to make you wait for your kid, or absent for more instant gratification). However if the game consists mainly of content that serves to enrich the G aspects of your game’s identifying acronym and therefore players are constantly in the throes of a monster bashing frenzy then it doesn’t seem to have a place. (So yes in mmoRPgs and no in mmorpGs if that makes sense to everyone)
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2) How do you avoid some of the complex moral issues – out of wedlock birth, single parenting, irresponsible behavior while pregnant (borging for loot and xp while 6 months pregnant!), etc. Or maybe you don’t avoid them at all, and let the discussion of those issues be part of your world.
Abstinence is the only 100% effective way to not have a baby. Leaving pregnancy/children out of your game is the only 100% effective way to avoid those complex moral issues.
Having said that, if you DO let players experience the afore-mentioned situations in-game then you have to look at a few things:
A. Will children be playing your game? If so then a very “family friendly” approach will be needed. Otherwise having children out of wedlock shouldn’t be much of an issue.
B. Will active parenting be necessary, and if so, will there be NPCs available for hire/purchase to help/do it for you? Without NPC aid a required amount of time spent parenting could easily become a burden when you just want to hunt.
C.(The most important probably) Who is your character’s spouse? PC or Non-PC? That is the question. And an important question indeed! With two PC parents active parenting could become problematic without a nanny. With an NPC parent you could leave the family at home, and for many I think this would feel far more natural than taking your toddlers through dungeons.
D. How long will pregnancy last? For a female player, regardless of whether her husband (mate?) is a PC or NPC, an actual period of pregnancy could be problematic. Realistically potential morning sickness, greater food consumption, less energy, and clothes(armor) not fitting could all be problems. Exercise is good for a pregnant woman, and as long as it’s not TOO rigorous the baby will be fine. Combat, especially magic/non-melee roles should would be unaffected by the pregnancy status while melee combat might be. Even if you ignore the potential problems, I’m interested in how designers might deal with death. LOTRO is one of the few games where you don’t actually die in combat, you’re just “defeated” and must “retreat” to the nearest circle of stones (the proper name escapes me), while in most other games you magically “respawn.” If the mother dies then so does her baby. Does she magically ressurect miles away with her baby intact or does she lose it?
E.(Just for fun) Will your child prefer to travel with you on your hotbar or in your inventory while he/she awaits your summons? And how long will their leash allow them to wander while you travel?
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3) What level of complexity is appropriate for a game? What features add something interesting, and what elements would make it no longer feel like a game any longer?
I think a good rule to live by is to put as much complexity into a game system as you want focus on it. If you want players to spend lots of time raising kids then make it really complex. I’ve never been turned off by a game system being complex, if anything games tend to be extremely simple in design. Perhaps I am strange though
These are some things I think can be interesting:
Pregnancy
Stages of life (Newborn/Infant/Child/Teen/Young-Adult/PC!?!)
Teaching Skills (Take them fighting and they learn the skills you use, and get better at the skills you use most. Teach them how to farm to create family income)
NPC Education (Send your kid to Wizard School!)
I’m a bit too much of a dreamer and my mind has blown the entire topic into something of a family based MMO where aside from your own adventures you can raise children and send them off to fight for different factions, or have them work the family farm to bring you wealth so you don’t have to kill monsters. A place where family life is a legitimate alternative to killing. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Good entry though Muckbeast (I had to delete “Cambios” after I typed it in), I definitely think this is something deserving of some thought.
I’d like to see families and affiliations from parent/child relationships develop. I think some really cool things could come out of it (i.e. family clans, sense of duty, blood over chosen affiliations.) Some people have gotten around this idea by having adopted families, but I think the blood relation would add a new (and more legit) element.
I like the idea of a new character being introduced to society as a full grown adult (i.e. at least 15-17 years old for a human.) The idea of the “parent” characters controlling the child is… horrifying and I believe would significantly detract from gameplay. Certainly there’d have to be some collaboration between the parent and son/daughter character as to family history and experiences. Maybe a virtual adoption agency? Like… you write the history for your desired daughter/son. People that want a family read the info and decide if they’d like to play a character as your kid.
It’s conceivable that the child would go unknown or be of little interest to the general population until they reach their late teen years and show promise. I don’t like the idea of childbirth in a game. I’ve seen it attempted and it was… stupid. Very very stupid. It’s not the experience of childbirth that’s important to the game (at that point it just feels weird.) The important aspect to the game is the social understandings which develop because of blood relations.
I think another thing should be addressed. Sex. Mainly, what happens when you throw two species in the genetic blender? I would advocate for only marriages between two people of the same species to produce children. OR the child choose either the mother or father’s species. Certainly, the mixing of species physical attributes would be really annoying.
Oh, one other idea. What about giving out children randomly? Like… you can’t ask your best friend in the whole world to be your kid in game. Instead, you request a child and get what you get — probably someone you don’t know. It would create more possibility for conflict. Plus, it’s basically what happens in real life. They hit their teen years and you’re living with this… annoyance that wants all your money and you’re worried they might act out or do something embarrassing. If people want that element and all the good things that come with it, let them also experience the less pleasant aspects. It could open a lot of avenues for roleplay such as disowning a child, family disgrace, close knit families, closer relations between two families through marriage, etc.
I think the idea of families in game is a cool idea. I also think it has a lot of potential to ruin gameplay. On the flipside, the exclusion of family roleplay can limit serious RPers. I guess it’s just going to be a trial and error thing.
I found this statement interesting. Can you expand on that? Why is it horrifying to you?
Agreed.
Absolutely. Also, childbirth is such an intensely personal and intimate event, it almost seems profane to have it in a game.
Hahahahaha.
my sister had a hard time getting pregnant because she has this abnormality in her uterus.`.~
I normally delete all spam, but this last spam comment from Jordan Edwards is too awesome to delete. (Instead, I just removed the hyperlink from his name.)