Child Labor (Concept)

Child Labor

Child labor is seen as an exploitative practice in commerce and industry, involving children and adolescents who are pressured into employment. While almost no game would ever endorse the practice, it can occasionally be portrayed as an element of the historical and societal world the game is set in.

Summary
Short summary describing this concept.

Child Labor last edited by MelodicVirus on 12/02/22 07:50AM View full history

Overview

Games that touch on very real and significant social issues tread uneasy ground, and one of the largest audiences for games is players in their adolescent years. Therefore elements of child labor in games normally manifest in very straightforward and uncontroversial ways.

One example may be to have an "ex- orphan" happily acting as a traveling vendor and quest giver, as seen in DeathSpank. In Xenogears a small child in Bledavik, who can barely see over the sales counter, is helping out his family by running a weapon shop while his father is "away in the army". This is taken to a new level of core plot device in Recettear, where a young daughter must help pull the family business out of debt. In Stacking, headlines of child labor set the scene for a game taking place amidst the crushing poverty of the industrial revolution, and rescuing his family becomes the main goal of young protagonist Charlie Blackmore.