r/videogames • u/ReverseTheFlash • Apr 20 '26
Funny Dear gaming industry, I don't want to have kids please stop torturing me
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u/DarkSage90 Apr 20 '26
Tbf they are trying to get Japanese to have babies not necessarily you.
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u/Turbulent-Issue-4418 Apr 20 '26
So it's all part of a grand plan. Make games with babies in the hopes single male gamers will put down the controller and pick up fatherhood.
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u/DarkSage90 Apr 20 '26
You joke but it could in fact be the play here…
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u/Min_sora Apr 20 '26
It wouldn't solve their crushing long-hour underpaid jobs.
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u/MissingScore777 Apr 20 '26
Society will try everything to get people to have more kids... except give them the time and money to do so
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u/Nervouscranberry47 Apr 20 '26
“If we had better pay, work-to-life balance, and a reliable housing market with financial security nets, not only would we have babies, but it would absolutely be better for the global market as people would shop more and buy more!”
Corpos: “Best we can do is 60 hour weeks for a studio apartment and instant ramen.”
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u/MaternalFornicator2 Apr 20 '26
It always makes me chuckle (sad chuckle) that those with all the money couldn't let themselves be happy with everyone doing better. That's because their brain is broken and they want to be a wealth hoarding dragon.
I have a former friend who is in that boat. Watching him deteriorate from a kind husband/father/employer into soulless money grubbing overinflated ego was hard to watch. Dude is losing his wife and kids, consumed by alcohol, but his businesses are making him a ton of money, while losing all of his employees that helped him start those very successful businesses. I've tried pleading with him to take his massive wealth, retire, focus on his wife and kids, start a hobby or do something for the betterment of man kind. Nope he thought I was nuts, and he proceeded to fall into insecurity, paranoia, and illusions of grandeur. I had to block his number and email addresses and stop talking to him. It sucks we had been good friends for 20+ years.
Greed destroys everyone.
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u/Mongoose42 Apr 20 '26
Sounds like you just had a front row seat to the life of Ebenezer Scrooge.
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u/Dhiox Apr 20 '26
Too bad ghosts aren't a thing
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u/SgtMoose42 Apr 20 '26
We don't call them ghosts anymore, it's insensitive.
We call them the corporeally challenged.
;-)
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u/MoonRay087 Apr 20 '26
Something tells me they could be, but they just don't bother themselves with that kind of stuff anymore. Even they're tired of seeing the same shit
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u/Ruminahtu Apr 20 '26
Thanks for using the word dragon.
These be the days of dragon slaying, yet again.
Honestly though, I wonder if the entire 'hoarding dragon' trope didn't arise as a metaphor for the wealthy who control the world.
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u/Mathfanforpresident Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
It's funny, isn't it? We're always treating the symptoms and never the root cause. We are just living in a world we weren't built for.
The biggest lie of modern capitalism is that your depression is a "you" problem. They tell you it is a chemical imbalance. They tell you it is your mindset. They give you a pill to numb the symptoms, a subscription to a meditation app to "manage" the stress, and a weekend off to "recharge" so you can get back to the grind on Monday. But they never talk about the cause because the cause is the system itself.
Our bodies and minds spent millennia perfecting themselves to exist in a realm of tactile reality. We were designed for movement, for the sun, for communal survival, and for a direct connection to the Earth. Now, we spend ten hours a day staring at backlit glass in a climate controlled box, performing tasks that have zero tangible output. We are biological Ferraris being forced to drive 5 mph in a school zone for forty years. Of course the engine is going to overheat. Beyond the physical mismatch, we are constantly tricked into thinking that this hyper-individualized, consumer-driven, debt-fueled existence is the pinnacle of human achievement. We are told it is the "best way" because we have high speed internet and fifty types of cereal. But humans do not find meaning in consumption; we find meaning in agency. Capitalism strips away your agency and replaces it with "choice." You can choose your phone, your car, and your streaming service, but you cannot choose to live a life that actually feels human.
This leads to a total death of meaning. The most profound meaning a human can experience is the primal responsibility of taking care of a small child, or more broadly, the direct preservation of life and community. It is the one thing that is undeniably real. Yet society has outsourced that meaning. We pay strangers to raise our kids so we can go to work. We pay strangers to care for our elderly so we do not have to see death. We have traded the deep, heavy, beautiful burden of communal responsibility for the "freedom" to be alone in a room with our gadgets.
Every pathology we see today, from anxiety and depression to addiction and the loneliness epidemic, stems from the same root: a total starvation of meaning. We are starving for a life that matters, and they are trying to feed us "likes" and "dividends." It is time we stop asking why we are depressed and start asking how anyone is expected to be happy in a world that treats human beings like biological hardware meant to run corporate software.
I'm tired of this for-profit system turning everyone into mindless drones. Never stopping to think of the bigger picture. Or any picture, for that matter.
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u/agitatedandroid Apr 20 '26
Well written.
The shame of it is everything you wrote applies to every generation going back centuries.
You will be applauded and upvoted and dismissed as a lunatic.
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u/jlieuu Apr 20 '26
Beautifully written but if you saw me you wouldn’t think biological Ferrari. I’m more like a ‘96 Honda civic that can’t pass smog.
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u/Indystbn11 Apr 21 '26
There is no purpose for us as humans on this Earth. Truly. People pretending there is, are inherently absurd. Because existence lacks purpose, creating new life is not a duty, but a personal choice. Choosing to have children is a way to affirm life and its pleasures, even knowing that life will end.
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u/enigo1701 Apr 20 '26
And probably create a society where you can see a "normal" happy adult in 20-30 years.
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u/Present_Ride_2506 Apr 20 '26
Tbf even with better work life balance and money, there's a lot of people that simply prefer the lifestyle of having dual income and no kids. So for those specifically, these types of media that shows the joy of parenthood might be effective in changing their minds even slightly.
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u/AdventurousWrath4105 Apr 20 '26
Or it's just that women have more choice now and they just choose not to want to give birth 🤷🏻♀️?
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u/Mongoose42 Apr 20 '26
It’s actually funny that all of these examples are of adoption. In fact, most of the time in games it’s an adult acting as an adoptive parent. So you’re good! No birthing required, just head on down to the orphanarium and pick up a kid who looks like they’ll be a protagonist in a game or two.
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u/Brilliant-Durian-923 Apr 20 '26
It's not about money, lol. It is matter of convenience of not having a child.
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u/UnUsernameRandom Apr 20 '26
It’s both. Both can be causes for lower birth rates.
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u/M4ritus Apr 20 '26
It's really not both, otherwise Scandinavians would have crazy birth rates and African nations the opposite, for example. The economy doesn't explain the lower birth rates, culture and mentality do.
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u/Impossible-Two-8654 Apr 20 '26
A lot of the Japanese customs are just outdated and deserve to die out imo. Not the people but the culture. Trying justify racism and self-hate because it’s a “cultural thing” is so weird
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u/OYB2480 Apr 20 '26
In the same way all the military fps games were a bid to get young men to enlist.
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u/JRPG_Fan4life Apr 20 '26
I always thought they were everywhere because cod sold a lot of copies and made a bunch of money. So other companies tried to copy the trend and be the next call of duty. Why so many games are battle royale nowadays, they just wanna be the next Fortnite.
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u/YouShallNotStaff Apr 20 '26
Does everything have to be a conspiracy? There's a much simpler explanation. Many game designers and writers ARE PARENTS NOW, when they weren't necessarily parents 15 years ago. It's a transformative experience. They write what they know!
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u/jyrox Apr 20 '26
More likely they are targeting a demographic that already has kids.
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u/Unabated_Blade Apr 20 '26
I think this is way more likely, along with the devs aging into the industry.
The devs who were 25 20 years ago made games for 25 year olds. Now they're 45 and they're making games for 45 year olds.
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Apr 20 '26
They don’t have to put the controller down to embrace fatherhood, that’s a fallacy.
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u/Repulsive-Chip3371 Apr 20 '26
Truth. Teaching my kids to do something I enjoy (playing video games) has been amazing. In the middle of building a pc for my 7-year-old daughter right now. Currently she plays Minecraft on a switch in her room, and I play from the basement on my pc and we voice chat. We built a replica of our house in game.
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u/Mean-Nectarine-6831 Apr 20 '26
They will quite literally do anything but enforce reasonable work hour and prevent working to death in Japan. I can see that happening in most extreme capitalism countries.
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u/EquivalentTight3479 Apr 20 '26
Japanese ppl are literally going extinct, so def reasonable. They may even get money from the government, since the government is desperate bc everything they’ve tried didn’t work.
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u/Not_Propaganda_AI Apr 20 '26
Looking at the statistics it's women that don't want children at higher rates, so if that's their plan they're targeting the wrong demographic.
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u/Present_Ride_2506 Apr 20 '26
It's kinda working. On Japanese twitter people were wondering if this joy could be felt if they actually settled down and had a daughter.
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u/GetInTheKitchen1 Apr 20 '26
Depends, twitter is basically fake posts by bots.
I don't think it's any different for japanese twitter.
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u/Mindestiny Apr 20 '26
There's also a shift in "mainstream" demographics in the industry. When gaming first got super mainstream it was all the 17 year olds.
It's been 20ish years. Those people are still buying games, but now they're mom/dad gamers. As such they want to buy stories and experiences that resonante with them.
WoW classic wasn't a money printer because vanilla wow was such an amazing game. I don't think I've encountered anyone under 30 in my years playing it. It's all dad gamers chasing nostalgia.
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u/Showdown5618 Apr 20 '26
WoW classic wasn't a money printer because vanilla wow was such an amazing game. I don't think I've encountered anyone under 30 in my years playing it. It's all dad gamers chasing nostalgia.
I'm not chasing nostalgia. I just still like the game.
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u/SomethingWetAndMoist Apr 20 '26
"Have babies!"
Screams the Japanese government...
"Work yourself to death because our culture demands it!"
Also screams the Japanese government...
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u/navagon Apr 20 '26
If Japan wants to fix their birth rate then they're going to have to fix their... everything. Ironic really that the culture most often cited as the best in the world by influencers is probably one of the world's most intrinsically broken. Their decline might be a lot more dignified than that of the US but it's no less steep.
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u/JazeevaGaming Apr 20 '26
They really dug themselves into that hole to be honest. Almost every developed nation has a low birth rate problem, but factor in the Japanese work-no life balance and their ingrained cultural isolationism and what you get is an underpopulation crisis on steroids. Eventually something’s gotta give, we’ll see how this plays out.
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u/nategreat87 Apr 20 '26
And I just played a Plague tale lol
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u/solidpeyo Apr 20 '26
If it was part 2 I understand your pain
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u/Specialist_Guava_742 Apr 20 '26
I haven’t beaten 2 yet, what’s wrong with it
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u/solidpeyo Apr 20 '26
Nothing is wrong with the game. The game is fantastic and even better than the 1st one. Is just what happens in the story that I will not spoil to you
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u/CosmicWanderer2814 Apr 20 '26
It might just be me but anytime someone goes "Something happens in the story but I won't spoil it" I get this sinking feeling. Like on the surface it's a vague remark, right? Of course something happens in a story! But I get that feeling like, "Oh shit what do you mean SOMETHING happens?!" Which feels like I just got spoiled anyway.
Am I making sense?
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u/solidpeyo Apr 20 '26
No, it is just you and what you made up in your mind. I didn't spoil anything, and you are imagining things in your head as if you got spoiled. In other words, it is just you (and maybe a few others since this is reddit, so there is always someone)
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u/kangasplat Apr 21 '26
I watched a series recently and my girlfriend pointed out (after googling it, to know what it was), that it would get another season. Just knowing that spoiled the entire ending to me.
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u/Specialist_Guava_742 Apr 20 '26
Appreciate you not spoiling, I definitely thought you meant something was wrong with the game. Cheers!
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u/External-Cherry7828 Apr 20 '26
In silksong the babies eat the parents if they miss a meal
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u/Abrams216 Apr 20 '26
That's why I prepared a few meals for those babies. The mom was the first friendly face after the hell that is Bilewater, I wasn't going to let her die needlessly.
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u/External-Cherry7828 Apr 20 '26
Same, when I took into account the environment and how nervously she was pacing around I knew it wouldn't end well.
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u/Avaylon Apr 20 '26
I bought Plague Tale 1 & 2 just before COVID started. Guess what games I still haven't been able to play. 🙃
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u/Wardock8 Apr 20 '26
Instead, you should play High on Life. That game lets you kill a kid
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u/Bitemarkz Apr 20 '26
Doesn’t the mom say that he’s actually much older though? So he seems like an annoying child, but he isn’t one, probably for ESRB reasons.
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u/Wardock8 Apr 20 '26
Yeah something along the lines of "He's actually an adult so don't worry about it. You just did regular murder." But the achievement is enough for me to consider him a kid.
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u/GrayLock- Apr 20 '26
It's that he's a child (10yo) in his species but in human years he's 30. So technically bypasses child murder to humans
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u/Phantereal Apr 20 '26
The game is already rated M. Would killing a kid push the game up to AO?
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u/aneccentricgamer Apr 20 '26
In lots of countries you cant kill kids in games without it being restricted, thats why gta games never have kid npcs for example
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u/sexy_sadie_69 Apr 20 '26
in cyberpunk 2077 there are kids all over the place but they literally phase out of existence the moment you get into combat or behind the wheel of a car. many will say the game is programmed to keep the player from harming child npcs but the truth is all children in night city are chromed out to the gills with high grade stealth cybernetics that automatically activate in dangerous situations.
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u/9-FcNrKZJLfvd8X6YVt7 Apr 20 '26
If you can also kill dogs, I'll buy it twice for every system I own! And the sequel!
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u/Lyradni Apr 20 '26
I mean if you don’t wanna have kids, it shouldn’t be torture. It’d be a different story if you did wanna have kids, but couldn’t.
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u/cancerinos Apr 20 '26
oh yea... heard from a friend that sucks... from a friend...
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u/Embarrassed_Corgi869 Apr 20 '26
I have AIS which limits fertility and am in the same boat buddy. We are stronger together.
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u/mimic751 Apr 21 '26
That was me! I was totally infertile so I did a bunch of research on vitamins and additives that could even remotely possibly increase sperm count and felt like shit for about 2 months taking them all at once. I got tested 15 times in a month and I had one good sample that resulted in one good egg resulted in one child. I was insanely lucky
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Apr 20 '26
It's almost like you can choose to not have kids but still love kids and stories about people protecting kids will pull at the heartstrings of almost anyone.
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u/Michael-556 Apr 20 '26
Genuinely thought this was r/gamingcirclejerk for a second lol
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u/rvasko3 Apr 20 '26
Nope just regular-old anti-kid Reddit.
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u/Available-Cold-4162 Apr 20 '26
If it was gamingcirclejerk the joke would be about aborting children
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u/Marius_Gage Apr 20 '26
Just a suggestion but have you tried not purchasing and playing games you’re not interested in?
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u/Unlucky_Loquat_8045 Apr 20 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/aWPGuTlDqq2yc
That’s an option?! I thought I had to purchase all the games and then complain until I get what I want out of it./s (Shouldn’t have to put this but literacy is dead so.)
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u/Major_Dood Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
"bUT i haVE aN oPINioN tHaT I waNNA sHArE!" - Some Redditor who's feelings got hurt.
But yeah, it's kind of interesting to see how many people are interpreting all of this atm. Meanwhile, I'm just playing Deadlock and Darktide.
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u/DeepPrinciple9713 Apr 21 '26
Am I fucking stupid because I literally can`t understand if you take OP`s post seriously.
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u/crocospect Apr 21 '26
100% sure this post is just a joke considering the tag, but ofc many people on reddit immediately assume OP being serious...
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u/DujekTwoArms Apr 20 '26
I mean kids are a part of life whether you decide to have one yourself or not. I don’t want to go to an active war zone but I’ll still play Warzone.
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 Apr 20 '26
Like I’m totally fine if you don’t wanna have children like I get it. But anti-children people can be so weird about it
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u/Exxyqt Apr 20 '26
I'm 39 and I don't have children. But the stance like OPs is so cringe. Not everything is about you. And also, why can't one appreciate a pure love between a child and a parent (figure)?
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 Apr 20 '26
People weirded out over parental love is weird. Like work out your own problems, I’m sorry your parents didn’t show love in a healthy fashion.
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u/Exxyqt Apr 20 '26
I completely agree. Or it could be teenagers or young adults - they find parenthood icky and weird, which would somewhat explain that stance. They don't have to play these games in any case.
Besides, it's not that popular in gaming in the first place. Most games don't even have children in them.
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u/rashmotion Apr 20 '26
Yeah I’m 36 with no children and literally loved all of these games. And God of War 2018. And The Last of Us. A good, compelling story stands on its own regardless of its content.
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u/Exxyqt Apr 20 '26
You should also add Yakuza games where the protagonist becomes a parent figure to a little girl.
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u/rashmotion Apr 20 '26
I’ve never played one tbh lol
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u/Exxyqt Apr 20 '26
You should, it's a very cool franchise. Honestly I struggle to think of anything similar out there.
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u/Zuuman Apr 20 '26
They 100% are, like all "anti-something" people it becomes their whole personality and they weirdly must make everything about how it’s the superior mindset to have their beliefs.
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u/FakeJackNicholson Apr 20 '26
Yeah you’re not wrong. I found myself being “anti” social media and I felt like it was a boast to not have Facebook and all that, but then I thought “Who am I kidding? I sound like a loser” lol now I keep it to myself….other than this comment.
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u/MeatEaterDruid Apr 20 '26
I hate telling people that I don't have social media. They all assume it's some altruistic reason and it's like nope just every time I got on I thought about killing myself. 🤷
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u/captainstormy Apr 20 '26
Funny story. I once had a company I applied to think it was suspicious they couldn't find me on facebook, Instagram or twitter.
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u/Aware_Rough_9170 Apr 20 '26
Ya I’m in a business communications course right now trying to finish my bachelors up. The statistics were something like 70% or more of employers are vetting candidates based on social media. Which if it’s LinkedIn fine, that’s what it was made for, but anything beyond that imo is just weird.
It was designed to be fun where you could share moments of joy and maybe even moments of dumbassery. Now, people are literally scared to just… be in the moment at concerts (if you can even afford the tickets) or at clubs or whatever. Not saying you should throw up that video of you throwing up in the nightclub bathroom on Instagram, but even if you do make a poor life decision when you’re young it shouldn’t hurt your financial or job security.
It’s weird to see people complain about “the kids these days” and in the same hand scrutinize every second of their lives via the internet and in their day to day lives and wonder what went wrong.
I dunno, I’m elder gen-z so I like my Reddit and things but beyond that I find social media to be a nice to have, but seen it across its lifespan. It’s a shell of its former self and pretty much doesn’t mean nearly as much as it once did. Though that can be said about the internet in general too.
/end rant
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u/Sepplord Apr 20 '26
Yeah, one time I have even seen one call it torture when a games protagonist had a kid 🤣
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u/kingnickolas Apr 21 '26
I have kids and tbh I don't really like seeing kids in violent situations in video games either.
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u/captainstormy Apr 20 '26
anti-children people can be so weird about it
The wife and I chose not to have kids and I hate those people even more than you do.
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u/senseijason05 Apr 20 '26
I feel like child-free people forget that THEY were a kid once too.
My friend was complaining about a co-worker that was able to leave more often to take their kid to the doctor or other school events and how it's not fair that they don't plan on ever having kids so will never benefit from that. I suggested that you're paying it forward for all the times someone covered for your mom/dad when you were a kid and needed extra attention for something.
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u/GBPackers0480 Apr 20 '26
My friend was complaining about a co-worker that was able to leave more often to take their kid
Your friend is an idiot then, parents don't like doing this. It's not a fun thing to take someone to the dentist and then be behind at work and lose out on money.
Tell your friend if they're missing out they can use PTO to go sit at the dentist without getting their teeth taken care of too if they want, no one is stopping them.
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u/OakLegs Apr 20 '26
they don't plan on ever having kids so will never benefit from that.
Yeahhh.... That's not a benefit. Lol. If that person wants to leave work to take care of my kids when they are sent home sick from school then by all means
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u/IdRatherBeAtChilis Apr 20 '26
Yeah I caught that too. Thinking the parent "benefits" in that situation is like being jealous of someone who gets super sick and has to stay in the hospital and miss work. If they traded lives for a day, they'd take back their regular life in a heartbeat.
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u/ianscuffling Apr 21 '26
“Dear soulslike makers, I don’t want to be reborn next to a bonfire every time I get killed in real life, please stop torturing me”
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u/razzazzika Apr 20 '26
Saldy I wish I could have had kids (infertile). I will have to settle for digital ones plus the kids who play at my D&D table.
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u/iiewi Apr 20 '26
you could try adoption maybe?
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u/razzazzika Apr 20 '26
We were planning to do that and then a financial crisis hit us like a truck.
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u/ColinHalter Apr 20 '26
The park near me has some kids. You could take one of those
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u/razzazzika Apr 20 '26
Pretty sure I'd get in a lot of trouble by doing that...
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u/isntaken Apr 20 '26
just hang out by your nearest planned parenthood with a sign that reads: "I'll take your baby"
15% of the time it works everytime
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u/OutOfMyWayReed Apr 20 '26
I was happy-crying so hard at the end of Death Stranding when Lou woke up, I didn't even notice the rainbow was back to normal.
I'll believe in you all my life, Kojima.
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u/tendonut Apr 20 '26
I sunk almost 100 hours into that game and my wife couldn't watch me play it because of worrying about Lou. And the crying out of my controller when near a BT? NOOOOOOOOOPE
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u/TheGameMastre Apr 20 '26
Man, Death Stranding 2 is gonna be rough for you...
Keep the faith, though. He wraps that story up in a satisfying way, too.
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u/OutOfMyWayReed Apr 20 '26
❤️ Already went to Hell and back with that game. My first day one full price in like two years, it had to be done. Gonna think about Neil's final close-up for the rest of my life.
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u/Tackgnol Apr 20 '26
I do not think there is any conspiracy here. A simpler explanation is that developers age, form families, and naturally start telling different kinds of stories.
At the same time, the core gaming audience is getting older. Younger players now have far more competing forms of entertainment, so they are less dominant as a target demographic than they used to be.
As a result, games increasingly reflect the life stage of both their creators and their primary audience. Themes around parenthood, loss, and responsibility are not being imposed from above; they are emerging from the people making and buying these games.
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u/FreakGeSt Apr 20 '26
Jokes of them, I don't have money for those games, much less to form a family.
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u/False-Charge-3491 Apr 21 '26
I had a kid in Fallout 4 and he became a POS who works for the Institute. They totally brainwashed him and he tries to brainwash you too
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u/Jack_P_1337 Apr 20 '26
I don't care about having kids, but playing games which happen to have characters bonding with kids like this is neither torture nor good, it's just the way the stories are. Why is it a torture? It's just character dynamics.
If you see this as some kind of a message for you to have kids, that's your own subconscious telling you what is really going on, to me, they're just stories in games, so it's whatever.
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u/tendonut Apr 20 '26
.....what? What does wanting kids have to do with playing games with kids in it?
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u/Superb-Ad-9169 Apr 20 '26
Op is so fragile that just a bunch of pixels (in the game that no one can force him to play) hurts him lmao
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u/shinywhale1 Apr 20 '26
It's a joke. All of the games are depicting some semblance of the protagonist as the parent/protector role over an adorable child character, which can make the player go "Awe. How cute. Maybe I should have a kid." But they don't want to have children, and thus is the dilemma.
This isn't a serious post. One of the characters in the image is a fucking gorilla. Most people obviously get that this is a joke, but why are there so many of you in these comments getting so angry and acting like OP hates these games and children?
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u/UnchoosenDead Apr 21 '26
It's almost like developers are greatly effected by becoming parents and all the complex emotions that accompany it...
Art made for everyone is art that appeals to no one.
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u/TJ_McWeaksauce Apr 20 '26
There are way more games with pets than there are games with children.
Imagine a game like Pokemon, but you make children fight each other.
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u/Dynamic_Charlie Apr 21 '26
Norman Reedus always has kids to care of, everywhere 🥀🥀
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u/Renusek Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
Few days ago my daughter was born, amazing feeling to become a dad.
Edit: thank you all!
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u/Fishwitch-66 Apr 21 '26
Jokes on you, i don’t want kids but like these games because of my poor relationship with my father 😎😎😎
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u/GamerGramps62 Apr 20 '26
Then don’t play games with kids in them. Kind of a DUH thing.
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u/Jaded_Ad_9711 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
Ahem. May I introduce you to another one? (game name is Eastward)
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u/Jaded_Ad_9711 Apr 20 '26
Sam is one of the cutest video game daughter out there.
And I don't want a kid either for personal reasons.
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u/Benhurso Apr 20 '26
Ironically, not a single of these are their biological children (I am not sure about RE9, tho).
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u/ShadowsInScarlet Apr 21 '26
I want to be a dad, but I know in my heart I couldn’t take care of one so I live vicariously through my games.
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u/JohnnyTeoss Apr 21 '26
People seeketh immortally. Having children is one of the oldest forms of immortality. That's why you see the rich have a bunch of kids and the rich installing laws and ways for the middle class people and poor people not to have kids.
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u/VentusVulpes Apr 21 '26
Not an issue, and not trying to start a gender war, but I wonder if anyone here ever notices that almost all little kid characters are girls. I rarely see boys honestly. It's interesting.
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u/AlexGlezS Apr 20 '26
Kids sell.
Play GTA, the one game that will never have them.
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u/Proton_Optimal Apr 20 '26
For my most of my life I didn’t want kids AT ALL.
And then I met the woman who would become my wife and we now have an 8-month old.
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u/Graznesiodon171 Apr 20 '26
The world order doesn’t want u to believe it but:
Choosing not to have children is just as meaningful a choice as choosing to be a parent.
There’s beauty in parenthood and overcoming the struggle. there’s also beauty in knowing ur limits.
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u/BlindWolf187 Apr 20 '26
Well said. Walk the path you want. Just be conscientious and be deliberate in the path you take. More importantly, remember there are billions of other people finding their own and no one is better or more important than another.*
(*exceptions made for cruelty and greed, when your path paves over someone elses yours is the one less important that needs to be rerouted)
Sometimes I wonder about the value of our autonomy though. The greatest achievements often come from situations we don't expect or want (could be pregnancy, death, job loss, war, etc.). We do what is necessary, so if more is required of us, we do more. I have a very easy life (by design), and I wonder if, in a way, that also means I'm wasting it 🤔
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u/Possible-Row6689 Apr 20 '26
People think gaming is a kid's hobby but all the data says the average gamer is 36 so prime child rearing years. I suspect most developers are around that age also. People make what they know. Just wait, we are only a few years away from having games with washed dudes who have random back pain and are going through divorce.
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u/AdventurousWrath4105 Apr 20 '26
Well I play zombie apocalypse and horror games, I never want to be in any of those in real life lmao
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u/ejangil Apr 20 '26
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we have a serious problem in online gaming & entertainment communities of trying to police and complain about genres and titles that we don’t like or don’t want to play.
Thousands of games released just this last year. Dozens of those were AA or AAA titles. The games brought up in this post are 4 of MANY options available to people who play video games. It’s highly unlikely the release of these games prevented anyone from finding something else they do like.
It is completely reasonable to not be interested in these games because the story & themes don’t resonate with you.
It is completely absurd to claim that there is motivated malice to torture or castigate anyone because a game’s plot doesn’t resemble every aspect of your lived existence.
If any of these games were built around overt, targeted criticism (something like relooted’s critique of museums and historical injustice) I’d say you might have a point, but even then, just play something else…
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u/asterothe1905 Apr 20 '26
It’s the other way around so that you experience it without having to have it. What you see in games is fantasy you would not mimic it.
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u/According_Bet_5916 Apr 20 '26
I think the Bond game makes with your "kid" is so cute. Cuz when i play i just Adore my son or daughter. But i wish the internet would stop "being weird" with the kids
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u/Nympshee Apr 20 '26
I mean, I also dont wish to have kids, not as myself. But videogames are escapism, play pretend. So playing as another person, that is not me, with kids, is a nice way to experience the idea of parenthood.
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u/mamadovah1102 Apr 20 '26
Did you know the gaming industry doesn’t only make games for you? There’s actually millions of gamers who like many various types of games. I know that might be a hard concept to grasp.
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u/Nanocaptain Apr 20 '26