Wow, I never knew the ESRB was run by PETA.

Um...

Tomb Raider has you fighting against bears, bats and wolves.

It wasn't M.

This seems like a lie.

indeed Luke, indeed. I would have loved to run over some fish the jetski levels.

So ridiculous, I heard that was the main reason there were no animals included in GTAIV too.

Are former ASPCA folk working at the ESRB or somethin'?

Well, I guess I could always go play Crusin' USA if I want to viciously destroy helpless animals.

It was fun. I spent one level trying to break the necks of everyone I met, and then dancing on their corpses, or shooting them into unusual figures.

And then I couldn't kill the birds, no matter how many times I shot them. It makes me kind of sad.

@karasu is my homeboy: The animals have to be understood to be evil. They do it in NWN, too, but, as stated, EVIL BADGER!

Apparently human rights protestors are not as scary as PETA, Green Peace and all those tree huggers and animal lovers (read bestiality)

@e30b27: There are actually pigeons that you can shoot in GTA IV. It would have been cool to have some zoo missions though. Maybe you could watch as a tiger escaped to maul some jerks harassing it. Then you could be given the choice of helping the tiger or the juvenile delinquents.

So basically if they don't attack you first then don't be a dick and start killing animals.

There's always that damn toucan taunting me...

Good thing we still have that opening level of RE4, a shot gun, and that cow huh?

@ karasu is my homeboy: i think it was the opposite reasoning for tomb raider. they wanted a teen rating so she couldn't kill a bunch of people, but in 2 you could kill folks left and right until you get stuck on the stupid venice level where the only entertainment then is suicide.

Interesting thought. Also, Starcraft (critters), Halo (birds) and Ninja Gaiden (crows) all allow you to kill animals. Truly the mark of the greatest games of our time, no?

I gotta tell you, I can lay waste to little old ladies, soldiers, russians, innocents in GTA and COD, but nothing feels worse and sicker to me than when I have to kill the dogs in COD4.

I think this all has to do with a percieved level of innocence. An old bag in GTA you can surmise has done bad things in her life, a pigeon has pooped on someone, some dog or cat is probably totally innocent and they don't want little weirdos spending their time torturing virtual animals. Though better than real ones I guess.

Makes sense. The animals aren't doing anything to deserve to die. :P It's like running over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto, to a lesser extent.

In this day and age, everything has to be PC. Killing animals is very un-PC. Buttt we all know that don't we? The same thing for movies too. Sure it happens from time to time, but it is frowned upon.

What if it raised controversy and stopped the game from selling well? That is a chance I wouldn't want to take if I were making the game.

Animals are always innocent. Humans - not so much.

Somehow I do understand this though. Humans have only themselves to blame for killing each others, whereas animals have nothing to do with us shooting around.

For once, thanks ESRB !

This is just wrong. Kurt Cobain taught me that fish don't have any feelings.

@Spartan1308:

Yes, juvenile delinquents harass escaped tigers all the time?

@Jazhuis: I think he was being sarcastic with his fish references in 'something in the way'

LOL @ Nirvana references.

@ Xiedo: I loved clicking the critters to death.

I agree. The killing and suffering of inferior creatures is worse.

o.O

@jsf49: I'm of that school of thought.

@jsf49:

I too am kind of with that thinking. Duno why, but I feel guilty with fake animals, and don't with fake humans. Maybe I've been conditioned, or maybe I only 'kill' those who are portrayed as the bad guys lol.

Hardly surprising. Remember the tunnel scene from Independence Day? Hundreds of cars getting vaporized (that you have to assume that some were full of people) and all people cared about was the freaking dog. Or the original version of the Insomnia vs. the US version (Stellan Skarsgård shoots a live dog vs. Al Pacino shooting a dead one). Probably oodles of others, but those are two off the top of my head. Personally, I don't get it. It's not like it's real.

@Kaizuden:

Yes! The bastard one that sat on the log. Tried so many times to kill it! Grrrr. stupid bird!

So what did you do guys do when the German Shepards came running after you in Call of Duty? "Welp, that's it, I'm done here!"

@silenthill4vid: Exactly. It's for a similar reason that M-rated games don't generally feature children.

The justification of "I don't kill hookers in real life just because I do in Grand Theft Auto" doesn't mean that we'll ever be able to shoot 5-year-olds in the head in a GTA game.

MGS2 innocent seagulls you get scolded for by your psychotic pseudo implant girlfriend.

MGS3 has you murdering a whole range of animals, then consuming them.

Though they all kind of turn into an item box...

Crysis has you killing crabs and chickens and birds IIRC too.

Don't know why Uncharted didn't do it, but I guess it wasn't important anyway.

@e30b27:
People who put a life of an animal before a life of a human scare me. Think about it, a person can have a sister, parents, career, so much stuff, that makes a human life valuable, even a bad guy has a mother and family. I don't shoot or run over pedestrians in GTA4 and I wouldn't wanna harm animals, but I wish they were implemented to add to the experience of being in a living'n'breathing city.

I watched Apocalypse Now with my English class(related to the book Heart of Darkness), and theres a scene where one of the guys shoots everyone on a boat. Then a puppy comes out and the guy points his gun at him. Everyone in the class said "NOO!". I think the director did it on purpose to illustrate how little we can care for human life.
Anyway, I don't blame the game makers, but I doubt that it would've resulted in a huge controversy. Who knows, though?

Kotaku must have quite a backlog to post something from December 6th 2007. This is pretty old news.

Apparently, animals are more of worth than humans in this strange world we live in. Damn animal lovers take some things too far.

@artistpavel: It isn't really 'putting the life of an animal before the life of a human' because the people we are virtually killing aren't really fleshed out humans.

I'll admit, I didn't see 'Legend' because, kill all of humanity, no prob, I just didn't want to see the dog die.

Killing NPCs in games don't really evoke an emotional response. When you first meet an adult person IRL, you maybe shake hands and try to remember his/her name. Meet a puppy or kitty or other animal, and you immediately pour on the affection, like cooing over a baby. It's socially acceptable and encouraged to want to 'save' and pamper things that look young and cute- heck, look at anime characters with eyes inversely proportional to age.

NPC fodder in games don't usually have backstories, mothers or families, and they don't trigger our 'protect' instincts. They aren't really 'human'. They just look like targets with squishy insides for our purposes.

I guess you could rationalize the ESRB position by arguing that killing animals in a game translates easier into killing animals in real life.

Most people (other than psycopaths) can clearly dissociate killing in-game humans from killing real-world humans but perhaps that line isn't as clear when it comes to animals. That might be why some commenters feel guiltier about killing animals in a game than they would about killing humans.

Not sure I buy my own argument here but still an interesting tidbit from the interview and unique insight into our cultural norms.

I hate people who shoot the wildlife in videogames, good on naughty dog.

@I_fit_in: No, they didn't harass the tiger after it had escaped.

@xbandaidx: Thanks for stopping by!

As long as you don't kill pugs. Pugs are the only animal I feel any compassion for.

And corgis.

@BlackDove: Those games were all rated M. Uncharted was rated T. They claim this is why Uncharted didnt do this.

Are there any T rated games where you can kill both humans and animals(animals that dont attack you first)?

Would the media say they are training people to kill animals? >.>

@JustinS: I do believe that I killed a crow, unprovoked, in Call of Duty 3. Not worth going out to get it, just for that, though.

@Spartan1308: Yes, they did. That was part of the focus of the controversy.

If you won't let us kill animals in video games at least let us kill PETA members (the bastards had it coming).

Oh and I've seen a lot of hunting and fishing games that were rated T.

I really hope we get MichealVicks nintendogs soon.

Oh and I don't kno why you guys have a problem with killing virtual animals. Repeat after me

They are pixels. They are not made of flesh bone or matter. They are pixels.

Although anything that pisses off PETA is ok in my book now if only GTA would let us kill dogs.

@Palladium: I was sure there were some but I just couldnt think of one. I guess you can kill animals unprovoked in WoW too. Even cows.

No surprise. Lots and lots of people care more about animals than they do about people.

Look at Michael Vick, for example. He is a person. But he hurt some animals. So now he's in prison. He's losing years and years of his life.

He is a person. He is being harmed, even though he never hurt anyone else.

Because dogs are cute.

Personally, if I had the opportunity to save him -- to give him back all these years of his life -- and all I had to do was hurt some dogs, I would do it. Because he's a person and I value people a lot more than dogs.

Save the animals, eat some humans.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: too right!

COD4 really disturbed me every time had to snap the poor doggy's head :(. But regardless I don't feel any remorse (the thing tried to murder me!).

I do believe in your theory because really there is that natural instinctual good guy vs. bad guy fight in many games that makes killing remorseless. However, many games like Bioshock or even in some situations GTA 4, blur this line heavily and thus add an extreme amount of weight.

I almost always chose to let the little sisters live in Bioshock. Also when I had to kill Mr. Faustin in GTA4 (OMG SPOILERS!!!), I stood their with my gun quivering at him hoping that it would prompt me that I could let him live. Although Faustin was Fed up, he probably made the most sense and was the most scrupulous of the characters in this game (at least that I have met so far) and the line "This American Dream is a Disease" really left me thinking (especially considering I just wrote a 15 page paper on the American dream in English a month ago).

Animals have this natural "good guy" innocence and that their desire to kill is either instinctual or that of unfair treatment making killing them far worse morally. For human's however, we assume naturally assume that these nameless henchmen are their purely of their volition and desire nothing but dastardly deeds unless otherwise developed in the plot.

Its not that we view animals as above" humans in this sense, but that we have a highly romanticized view of the life of an animal and its innocence compared to the innate perceived evil of humans.

Ok this is an unfair and ridiculous article, putting shame on Uncharted for not including killing animals?

The fact is, they did it because they didn't want an M rating, Not because they think it's wrong to do so.

Do you know what kind of things are OK by ESRB and what are not?

Killing people is ok, teen rating, The second there are drugs involved, the rating shoots up to M. So it's ok to kill but not ok to do drugs by ESRB. It has to do with ESRB. Like the man says, overseas might be worse.

So Naughty Dog wanted to focus on Teen rating, and they had to cut out killing animals, big deal. If there is anything wrong here, it's ESRB allowing Killing on a Teen rated game but not allowing killing animals on a Teen rated game.

Because the humans that you kill in the game are portrayed as evil, whereas animals are always innocent.

I don't know why but i would feel more guilty on GTA IV killing a dog than a human.

You could shoot fish, chickens, crows and cows in RE4. Why wasn't that a problem!?

@Zolbrod:

Is RE4 rated Teen?

i have no problems with shooting people, but i even refuse to kill pigeons in GTA4. I also had problems with killing sheeps in Overlord. Call me weird.