Taking out baddies in kids game

[Artinum]

Kids are born selfish, greedy, and essentially without morals - and they don't know any better.

I'm simultaneously amused and disappointed by people not realising this. The cultural norm is to assume children are innocents and become "corrupted" as they grow up - totally back to front. They're selfish, greedy, violent and lack any sense of fairness or compassion. These are concepts we program into them.

Personally, I blame religion...

[meds]

I think people are born into this world with a random number generator thrown on their personality which is then modified as they grow up.

I've known children who were extremely nice and thoughtful as well as ones who were extremely stuck up and up themselves, as well as everything in between.

[Jasmine]

I think people are born into this world with a random number generator thrown on their personality which is then modified as they grow up.

As a complex systems researcher, this greatly interests me. I am always keen to learn of possible sources of truly random numbers.

[zppz]

I think people are born into this world with a random number generator thrown on their personality which is then modified as they grow up.

I have often thought so too, only like in the computer world the random number is not entirely random, but affected slightly by a seed (appropriate term eh?) from their genetics.

Anyways about the topic at hand, I would go with either decapitation or a mallet to the groin, most 8 year olds I know would love that.

haha... but seriously - could they just disappear in a puff of smoke, the wizards at least?

[Richard Nunes]

What about something kids can't do, like turning them to cinders or crushing them under giant rocks like Warner Bros. cartoons? Yes, it's violent, but, it's not something kids can act out. Kids play "guns", make noise with their mouths and shout "you're dead" but they're not physically assaulting each other.

I would avoid swords because so many things can be swung at other kids like a sword. You would also avoid pushing monsters into objects because kids can push each other into walls.

I rather like the idea of bubbles or swallowing the opponents (like Kirby).

[speeder]

You should REALLY avoid swords

Indeed, a kid inspired by sword Mad SKillz can be quite dangerous, there are a legendary school fight in my town, where two kids assaulted a third, that third had a skateboard at hand, that quickly got turned into a sword.

Result: Two kids with several broken bones in the head, one of them without half of the teeth (got hit by a wheel in the side of the mouth) and the other had to go to surgery really fast after it got a T shaped hole in the cranium (this one got hit by a downward swing of the skate, and got hit by the... thing where you fit the wheels). These kids were 10.

And I think I already mentioned the metal rulers (btw: these rulers are really cool, I had one, it is 40 cm and ridicously sturdy, since these rulers are really common, and came from a political campaign, I wonder how much the politician spent...)

[Artinum]

(this one got hit by a downward swing of the skate, and got hit by the... thing where you fit the wheels).

The axle? I'm no expert on skateboards, though. I'll gladly go with "doohickey".

Turning a skateboard into a sword is one thing, but you could be more direct. I remember about 16 years ago a console beat-em-up in which one of the fighters was a 12-year-old with a skateboard. One of his moves featured walloping his opponent over the head with it.

[speeder]

That is evil... Although obviously effective.

I was playing a bunch of games this week from all eras, and noticed that swords are common, jumping on head got common after Mario (genre convention lets say), but swords remain common, even games in the future have a excuse to feature a sword (lightsaber?) there are even a mech game (Metal Warriors for SNES) where the default starting mech has a energy sword thing as secondary weapon.

I remember how amused I was when I went to play Terranigma and the guy pulled a lance... I was like: "Wtf? Why a lance? Everyone use a sword, and this guy use a lance! Dude, this guy is AWESOME!"

And then I noticed that the motion used to use a sword also fits several other objects (like to play Tennis, Golf...), and Wii games that use those are also kinda popular, and for obvious reasons the next Zelda is only about this.


So I concluded that swinging motion is the most obvious thing a person will do with any object, and seeing that in a game feels "natural".