Environmental and financial crises loom and we feel we have no influence. If society has already reduced us to a childlike state of weakness, isolation and vulnerability, it is perhaps no surprise that modern pop culture and technology tend towards infantilisation, and that many video games function as childish wish fulfilment. By turning us into star footballers or super space marines, they reconstruct adolescent fantasies of proficiency and heroism.
Yet some games have begun to depict a childhood experience more in tune with the current social context. These games make us play as children, and in doing so often accentuate feelings of powerlessness and fear. But they also reflect a generation of parents’ worries for the future and, perhaps, an evolving understanding of how we think about children and their inner lives.
Child protagonists in games are nothing new, but previously they were mostly employed to evoke and recreate the joys of carefree play. Eight-bit computer games such as Skool Daze and Jack the Nipper encouraged childish mischief. Early Sega icons Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy are champions in cartoon dreamworlds. Pokémon trainers are relatable for kids and guide their journeys of wide-eyed discovery. Even Mario is given childlike mannerisms – running open-armed like a fearless toddler, whooping with delight – to convey playful innocence.
Child protagonists have also been ideal for stories of personal growth. Zelda’s Link is the archetype, particularly in Ocarina of Time. Starting out as a young boy on an exciting endeavour, breaking pots and throwing chickens around for fun, he emerges from a seven-year sleep as a young man to find a horrifying scenario where mature resolve is required. Other coming-of-age tales focus on nostalgia, evoking memories of adventures with friends, from the retro-styled EarthBound or Crossing Souls to the otherworldly kingdoms of Ni no Kuni and Child of Light.
Only more recently have such experiences been joined by a range of games about, but not for, children. The trendsetter here is Limbo, which features a dispiritingly monochrome palette and a pre-teen character who suffers all manner of gruesome deaths. Since then, its successor, Inside, as well as games such as Little Nightmares, have placed young children in dystopian worlds that are as freakishly bizarre as they are hostile, preying on childhood fears of monsters and abandonment. In The Last Guardian, a kidnapped boy forges an uneasy relationship with a frightening beast in order to survive. The creature could as easily eat him as help him. In Vane, a bird transforms into a child who is cast out from a crumbling tower by a faceless authority.
What links the kids in most of these games is their relative ordinariness, forcing us to face their perils without special powers. These aren’t adventures so much as gruelling tales of survival and escape. They also differ from equivalent games from past decades: if we compare 2018’s The Last Guardian with its predecessor Ico from 2001, we see how the boy’s role is reversed, from protector to vulnerable target.
It doesn’t seem coincidental that such a portrayal of children has emerged in recent years. It re-enacts a reality in which systems appear fragile and we are made to feel responsible for failures outside our control. In these games, we are often alone in uncaring or hazardous places that lack any sense of rational, reliable order.
Perhaps these games also reflect the fears and worries that developers and players, increasingly parents themselves, have for their children and for the future. Rime, follows a boy’s journey through the stages of grief. In the surreal horror adventure Fran Bow, a girl’s coming-of-age story is about coping with loss – and the psychological traumas caused by the older generation. There’s a sense here, as well as in games such as Limbo, that we’re making ourselves experience our children’s reality, trapped in the chaos that the adults have created.
Some of these experiences are about growing up, or learning to face an intimidating reality. In their way, they do offer some hope: no matter how many times we’re ripped apart by attack dogs in Inside, we find our way. Indeed, the endings of both Inside and Little Nightmares change the dynamics of threat and vulnerability in interesting, disturbing ways. And modern games reflect a more modern understanding of children as resourceful individuals, rather than adults in waiting.
Take the meta-RPG Undertale, which again places a small child in a land of monsters, but asks us to continually choose whether to act with kindness or aggression. The monsters are suspicious of humans, and it’s up to us whether or not we prove their fears justified. In games, even when we are “only” children, we may be able to influence the world.
