What is an acceptable kill in a video game?

current leader, "Mass killing of any group of people is fine, it's a game for gods sake!", even babies or children??!!, come on guys that would be sick and wrong

Good point miles, has any game anywhere ever contained kids in which a violent genre is prominent?

There is a flash game called Pandemic 2 I played recently, object is to exterminate the whole world as an evolvable (mutateable? same difference?) pathogen, either a relatively stealthy parasite, a fast evolving virus, or the versatile bacteria. I had great fun with it...the key is Madagascar, y'see...and if you're playing for time, a virus. You get to add all kinds of fun symptoms, like kidney failure, diarhea, and pulmonary edema...

Anyway, you'd have to get into the realms of science fiction, fantasy, or metaphysics to find a game with a bigger, more realistic "kill"...and I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the game and implicit in it would be the killing of small children and infants...to be absolutely clear here, this IS NOT a biological weapon simulator, or trainer, you play as the pathogen itself (or perhaps as God), yes I am looking squarely at you Jack...

In bioshock you get to decide the fate of little girls. Kill horrifically and "harvest" them to become more powerful / let them live, and the game becomes harder.

forgot about bioshock, my conscience got the better of me on that game i let them live. even the second time i played it i coudlnt kill them!

"Kill 'em all let god sort 'em out"

I think anything goes in games, so long as it doesn't get too much into a torture porn sector, like the Manhunt games, while I respect that option as a creative choice. Perhaps a better question would be how are life and death and/or good and evil handled in games, more so than the killing, which in truth is only the detachment of button pressing (in some games but not all)

Bioshock was interesting in its 'kill for more power or save for better greater reward' choice. It would be nice to see more games impliment such options. I have to say, I indulged my Vader side and took a few Little Sisters to the Adam Morgue, but I later changed to saving their bruised models. It was all fruitless in the end, because I ended up with the bad 'but cool' ending.

I did hesitate over taking the lives of those Little Sisters at first (a feeling I've never felt playing a game before, kudos to that), but after a while, I was on a Adam high of power and cared less for the buggers, and more for taking down Big Daddy's (oh, how I loved fighting thee).

An acceptable kill for me is one where I can win and progress further in the game fairly (bosses especially, I note as I glance over at DMC3, still not having passed the first boss Cerberus...too hard and not playing that again, Capcom). This can be anything from a head stomp (Mario Bros style or GTAIV, take your pick), death/KO by Dragon punch, Carmageddon style action or a nice satisfying headshot from distance.

All kills are fair game though, so long as the fun continues, we should worry less about too much moralising bs in games. However, if you want to make the player think about their actions and consequences more, it must be done in clever ways like CoD4 and Bioshock.