Danny Choo is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. Danny resides in Tokyo, and blogs about life in Japan and Japanese subculture. He also works part time for the empire.
Looks like Amazon is in toraburu for selling Japanese rape simulation games. Excerpt from Belfast Telegraph article:
Looks like Amazon is in toraburu for selling Japanese rape simulation games. Excerpt from Belfast Telegraph article:
The shocking 'rape simulator', Rapelay, is set in Japan and carries a sickening game description on the Amazon website. An MP said last night that he plans to raise the issue in Parliament.Read the article in entirety, with screengrabs of gameplay: "Amazon selling rape simulation game" (Belfast Telegraph via Games Park). Some gaming "action" from the game in question below.Reviews by gaming websites have expressed horror at the basis for the game.
One website review describes "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as she is attacked in graphic detail.
Players begin the game by stalking a mother on a subway station before violently raping her. They then move on to attack her two daughters described as virgin schoolgirls.
Players are also allowed to enter 'freeform mode' where they can rape any woman and get other male game characters to join the attacks.
Poll: Folks who play these games are...
- Dangerous
- Harmless
Whiskey Tango... nope, can't go there, not on this one.
Over.
"Mr Vaz said: “It is intolerable that anyone would purchase a game that simulates the criminal offence of rape."
What about the crime of carjacking, or murder, or soliciting?
I don't really want to play devil's advocate here but that statement kind of stood out as absurd. Why is this virtual crime any worse than another?
Sorry the comments didn't work on this at first -- a malformed HTML tag borked the submit form.
I believe they also sell murder simulation games now, too.
/This shit is still fucked up though.
Seriously, this is taaaame compared to other Japanese stuff I've seen.
And in regards to the poll, how about I vote for "bored".
Someone call Jack Thompson!
I think this is one of those rare instances where public shaming would be in order.
Truly an abhorrent concept for a game. But, Danny, how do you reconcile the fact that your own website celebrates "moe" -- imagery and products centering on super-cute, very young-looking women? Don't you think that those kinds of portrayals contribute to the objectification of women (and thus lead to products like this one?) Curious to hear your thoughts, as I've seen positive comments about "ero-ge" (erotic games) that don't go quite as far as this one on on your website before.
Two thoughts cross my mind:
1.) This sounds like Jack Thompson complaining about "murder simulators" (e.g. Grand Theft Auto).
2.) The Onion Movie where, instead of playing Clue about a whodonit murder mystery, a group of friends play a whodonit rape mystery. One woman is of course disturbed by the concept, while other friends discuss why a "lesser" crime should be more unacceptable to have as a plot device for the game.
what do you think would happen if this gamer maker released a game wherein women drugged and castrated random men for points?
Did anyone else think the video was just a teeny bit hilarious? I mean, look at those bazoombas go! And Japanese rapists seem to be very deferential. Even when they teleport though the toilet door.
Aldric: My first post on this issue was eaten by a tag. I was saying pretty much what you're saying, and went on to speculate on a reason:
1. People who enjoy playing rape simulations are less likely to be vocal about their hobby than people who enjoy playing GTA-style games.
2. The sexual nature of the game somehow makes it worse in the eyes of a certain segment of the population. The segment that thinks hurting a virtual character for sexual titillation is bad, but hurting a virtual character to satisfy other urges (e.g. greed, bloodlust) is fine.
3. This is the thin end of the wedge, aimed at forcing the establishment of a censorship authority. Very few are going to be willing to stand up and defend the publisher's right to sell this game, and Amazon caved immediately - while still continuing to sell GTA IV.
Once censorship is in place, it is easy to extend it to more popular areas.
Answer to poll:
False dichotomy.
Sigh. Someone get a truckload of guro and dump it on these anti-video-game crusaders doorsteps.
Maybe they'd finally leave well enough alone.
while i feel the game is morally repugnant i'm of two minds about this.
I can't reconcile my day to day behavior with things i have fun doing in say, grand theft auto.
I don't think killing people in grand theft auto makes me a bad person, and based on sales and conversation people, in my generation at least, agree with me.
The other thing to consider is that this is the act of a single individual. there is no consent to consider, but we find it perverse.
On the other hand most modern sex advice columnists will say theres nothing inherently unhealthy about a consenting couple indulging in rape role play.
So basically i have a strong emotional reaction to a game like this existing, but i can't reconcile it to other stances i have. I'm wondering what factors i'm missing or if this is just a case of irrational reaction.
If i have to take the stand that this came is just as valid as a game where you can kill people i guess i'll have to fall back on the stance that the game is sexist, since you can't rape men.
#2 - This is different because rape in general and in this game is a crime over a disenfranchised group. It is a crime that effects the victim/survivor, not a material object, like carjacking. Additionally, it has lingering effects of the violation. Rape is a crime of power.
Seriously, we need more video games where the players get to rape little boys. That would be okay, wouldn't it? Nobody would object to that, would they? It's all just fun, right?
How about: some people who play these games are harmless fetishists, others may be dangerous.
The same can be said about some watchers of loli hentai and players of first-person shooters.
Depictions (simulations, drawings, etc.) of illegal or obscene acts should be protected under free speech.
Rape statistics:
Australia - censorship of books, films, games and comics: 0.777999 rapes per 1,000 people.
USA - censorship varies between states, free speech codified in constitution: 0.301318 rapes per 1,000 people.
Japan - rape sims are, apparently, for sale: 0.017737 rapes per 1,000 people.
Source:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
@#15 Antinous:
Yes, and the game box art could look like this:
http://www.newmanumass.org/content/spiritual/Matrix_Priest.jpg
(Just don't forget the safeword for the partner(s) you're with!)
"It is a crime that effects the victim/survivor, not a material object, like carjacking. Additionally, it has lingering effects of the violation."
yeah, because a carjacking only stresses out a car?
WTF? ignoring the fact that this ignores murder in video games as well.
Fantasies for fanatical masturbators.
Not much shocks me, you know, I like to think I've seen some pretty bad -or at least... different- parts of society via the internet, but sheesh, this shocks me. I'll make no call for censoring it, but will note that the violence in games like GTA allows you to spread it around, i.e. you can kill a black guy, a white guy, an old lady, a hispanic person, and it's rather non-discriminating in your reward.
This is violence against women and only women and that's the whole point of the "game" apparently. I wouldn't let GTA off the hook, and like I said, I'm not calling for censorship, I'm just saying, "WOW."
well said spazzm.
@ Antinous (#16)
Won't somebody think of the children?
I guess you would need to study what impact such a game would have, though I was under the impression that availability of this sort of material (such as loli manga pr0n) in Japan was linked to (not necessarily responsible for) a reduction in the types of crimes portrayed. But then it'll never be easy to defend the role of a game of that nature...
With regard to the "we must stop this" histrionics -- {yawn}. Kind of a tired argument, IMO.
Hey, did anyone watch the video? It's so surreal. Kind of like a telenovela. On acid. With an NEA grant from the 1980s. There's no rape, per se, in that clip, but the whole thing is very dreamy/emo/creepy. A dystopian soap.
I imagine this would be treated much more humorously if it were a prison rape themed game. That's the stuff of late-night comedy.
Also interesting in this version that you can get guys to "join the attacks," but evidently you can't rape them too.
-idiots
Rape statistics
....are generally unreliable and completely defined by culture. Rights and dignity for women in Japan are abysmally low for a developed nation.
aside from this being *slightly* ridiculous/comedic (previously cited: ginormous breasts, teleportation, disappearing clothing...)
The number of women who have 'rape' fantasies is statistically high. Filling this kink niche with a video game is not surprising. Perhaps it is it's presence on the amazon that is more offending.
adric,
Won't somebody think of the children?
Actually, it's good idea if someone does. Enjoy your rape game.
on top of that you have to consider television, movies, and literature, and what steps we should take to purge rape from these mediums.
New Poll: Are the people that spend time programing and designing these sick or Dangerous?
That said, If the game were consensual they might be on to something.
#29 i see where you are coming from, but it is notable that all the games that jack thompson would call "murder simulations" out there, omit children as victims.
at least the ones i've played.
personally i've had a friend get through an attempted rape, and i'm sure some of you have had to deal with the real thing happening to you or a friend.
There's far better outlets for our moral indignation than this. Like... for actual rape, and the countries that foster conditions that make it easy, and easy to get away with.
As i said before, sex advice columnists like dan savage seem to have no problem with rape role play, and neither do I. So even though I think the idea of the game is awful, i'll save my disdain for more deserving outlets when it comes to this particular crime.
Custer's Revenge, anyone?
Rights and dignity for women in Japan are abysmally low for a developed nation.
That aside:
What does the difference between the US and Australia mean? That rights and dignity for women in the USA are abysmally low for a developed nation? Or that Australia is a former penal colony full of rapists?
Or something else?
@Xeni
I thought it was more of a kind of utopian vision. But a utopia for rapists. Polite rapists, who just kind of obstruct the thoroughfare of their victims. Then enjoy watermelon with them. In their kitchens.
All on a nice sunny day with blossoming trees.
It's not my game Antinous.
Harmless
dipshit poster can't read Artificial Girl 3 is the game that the video is from.
桐生家の1日（その２）。A day of The Kiryu Family (Part 2). Artificial Girl 3 Hannari(retail) with full voice MOD from Rapelay by myself.Clothings are from MOD community in Japan.
GTA is no better than this stuff. It's creepy, but if you have issues with this game you have issues with GTA.
And I have issues with GTA.
This is for Spazm:
I'm from Australia and I have been to America several times. Apart from Video Games, I think most Australians think its a bit hilarious when Americans think their media is not censored. Your music and television shows are all heavily censored.
There is censorship in America but every country is different with censorship. In America swearing, anything that is offensive towards Christianity, graphic sex scenes, nudity and drug use seem to the most censored while violence is usually not censored. Here, violence seems to be more likely to be censored rather then swearing or some nudity.
Another media that is heavily censored in America are music videos. Watch the American version and compare it to the international version that is played overseas.
Games are a totally different issue, obviously as they are censored a lot here.
I just think its funny when Americans think they are not censored because that is obviously not the case.
Hey! Fair suck of the sav, mate!
#36: So do I.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/japan_pledges_to_halt_production
Seriously...stop.
I just wished to mention that the video in the post is not Rapelay.
The video is of the game Artificial Girl 3 http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Artificial_Girl_3, a game made by the same company. In the game the player is able to make multiple different girls and have simulated relationships with each. The player in the video obviously put the Rapelay characters into his game.
It is a mistake to believe that all sex simulators are rape games.
Is there a 2girls1cup easter egg?
I distrust people who play GTA, to be frank. I think there's something wrong with them. I would cut off all contact with someone who played this game more than once.
I bet none of the guys who play this game would play one where the PLAYER has to avoid being raped by gangs of men.
Choose a male or female character, either one.
#18 Spazzm - correlation =/= causation. Here in Australia we have censorship laws, & if something does get banned, there's generally a hue & cry from the population.
If we're going to make stupid generalisations, I'd put forward that America is a far more violent place than Australia, and see if that was more of a factor for the US having a higher rape incidence.
Additionally, for the news outlets reporting that "it was sold on Amazon" - according to GamePolitics, it was being sold secondhand in the Amazon equivalent of eBay. Making a point of saying "zomg it is being sold by Amazon!" is intellectually dishonest, as it's not part of their actual stock.
#35 of course its not YOUR game adric, but antinous implying that it is is advantageous to him as its a cheap argumentative tactic to drop your moral standing in the discussion.
but to be fair you did roll with the "won't somebody please think of the children" so you had it coming.
I think this is different than GTA. After someone plays GTA I doubt most of them walk around town fantasizing about murdering people. Someone who plays this game probably will fantasize about rape. I think this game might be dangerous.
Some people enjoy sick things. This is just one of many instantiations of that. And sadly comparatively tame -- consider snuff films or guro.
One reason why this is different than games like GTA -- rape is much more common in our culture than random violence. Ask any ten women and they will tell you. It's frighteningly common.
That being said, I still don't think it should be censored, and I think it can be of value by A) serving as a study of the players and the makers of the game, and B) serving as an outlet for sexual energy that could otherwise escape in a violent way.
Now, if someone could only make a therapy video game that helps you recover from playing the rape game...
#16: You mean like these? (NSFW!)
http://www.getchu.com/php/search.phtml?category[0]=C3_C011
Though I think in most of those the player is actually the young boy, I'm sure some of them contain rape of young boys. Frankly the game in the story is rather tame compared to much of the Japanese hentai game industry.
A crappy auto-translation of some game categories indexed on the site above: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.getchu.com%2Franking%2Fkeyword.html
Oh, and there are games there targeted at women and homosexual men. They are a much smaller market of course.
@ spazmm
"Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence." Given the game and this I think that might be an issue here. I'd call that question moot.
Viz the poll, I'm guessing mostly harmless. Possibly to the point where I wouldn't judge someone solely on the basis of playing it. You'd need to run a broad-spectrum longitudinal study that somehow got people to answer that question accurately.
Argument would be that it will feed the fantasies of (few) people who are on the road to dangerousness in a way that, say, GTA wouldn't.
And that, as above, the kind of place known for games like this is the kind of place I don't want to live.
FYI: New Zealand's Censorship laws - giving occasional daft results but not, as far as I know, progressively expanding.
I liked it when the girl was sitting on the toilet peeing - and they included the sound of urination! When the rapist magically beamed himself into the bathroom, I nearly fell off my own toilet!
fair call Cpt. I'm still not sure if Antinous was being sarcastic in his comment or if he was trying to roll with a retort that pretty much boils down to the irrational level of think of the children.
@45,
They made that therapy game. It is called Katamari Damacy. It's actually the universal therapy game.
I'm curious about Amazon's ability to control what things are sold on its site or what kind of review/screening process, if any, that Amazon has for each and every item listed. From the title of this article, a person might assume that Amazon.com is selling this item directly, from its warehouse, and that a person could have it tomorrow simply by choosing Prime shipping. It's not the case.
If you click the link (like I did earlier today before Amazon took it down), you find out that it's not Amazon selling the item but one of those merchants that sell through the marketplace. So why isn't the title more like 'RapeGameGuy Found Selling Rape Simulation Game on Amazon.com?
To me it makes a significant difference...
I've seen a few comments that say "What about a game where X crime would be perpetrated on Y? What would you say about that?" As if these games don't already exist. They do. Get over it.
@ 41 - Actually, I know of one called Togainu no Chi (Blood of the Reprimanded Hound). You play a guy in a dystopian future in a choose-your-own-adventure style game that usually ends with being raped
Yaoi - Japanese pornographic works of men with men, aimed at women - has some pretty brutal stuff, too. (Though terminology and definitions vary from fan to fan.)
the people who play this game c) need to get laid.
I believe the video is actually from another game, Artificial Girl 3, by the same company who made Rapelay (which I didn't try and cannot comment on), a newer game which does not involve rape to my knowledge.
Video presented is not from the game "Rapelay" in question from Amazon but another game from same company called Artificial Girl 3 f.y.i.
I find it hilarious, along with most of the actual perverts.
Rapelay is bad for a hentai game, 3D is pig disgusting.
Seriously, I fail to see the harm in allowing a harmless fantasy for someone that likes to lose themselves into this sort of games. There's nobody getting hurt and the pervert gets an outlet for his fantasies. To think that it 'trains' rapists or encourages them is to ignore the real problem of women everywhere being sexually abused by close family members. Same as with lolicon media, it triggers a gut response in the common person to protect the children from a perceived threat, when there are bigger problems nearby, but aren't as visible. A bad security trade-off.
I think you should just calm down, and leave us perverts to our waifus. Besides, most of us are so far gone that the flaws and floppiness of the real 3D flesh aren't appealing anymore. Honestly, I wouldn't do anything to a real woman.
Thought it would be good to get a view from the other side.
@everdown
eBay prohibits selling Nazi memorabilia, so there's no reason amazon can't police what's sold through its site.
And while amazon may not technically be "selling" it, it certainly stands to make money off of the sales. Would "Amazon Profits From Rape Simulation Game" be better?
Schizzm already pointed out what my first thought was on this...
I wrote a paper in college about the availability of pornography and the level of it's deviancy and the inverse correlation it has with associated violence against women. I'm not saying it's 100% reasonable to assume that because there's an inverse correlation in incidence that there is a 100% causation, but I do believe the thought has merit.
Given that Japan has extremely sexually deviant pornography, especially cartoons and comic books, (because real porn is for the most part censored), and has a very low incidence of violence against women, this game doesn't surprise me with it's existence.
The very fact that Americans are so up in arms about it... well, it proves the point in a way yet again.
Having said all that, this game is repugnant and disgusting, and violence against women is never acceptable. Please don't take my argument as condoning this game, it's more of a commentary on societal views.
;)
Shrug. You can commit mass murder in Grand Theft Auto and lots of other games.
Given that mass murder is obviously worse than rape, I don't understand the argument that simulated rape is worse than simulated mass murder.
It may disgust you, but then "Piss Christ" wasn't everyone's cup of tea either. If someone has such urges, better they rape pixels than people.
@#56 POSTED BY TALLDAVE
Ridiculous comparison. "Piss Christ" was never mass marketed to kids. GTA and these hentai/rape-fantasy games are marketed to kids.
Big difference.
I stopped caring about video games back in the early 1980s when "realistic" violence supplanted gameplay and fun.
If we're going to make stupid generalisations, I'd put forward that America is a far more violent place than Australia, and see if that was more of a factor for the US having a higher rape incidence.
Please. I don't expect you to RTF, or even the blog post, but can you at least look at three lines of text before you accuse me of making stupid generalisations?
USA has a LOWER incidence of rape than Australia.
There are more than twice as many rapes pr. capita in Australia.
If it is true that the US is more violent, wouldn't that make the rape statistics even more puzzling?
If this teaches rapist to be more polite, then perhaps it will give victims more opportunity to eye-gouge (or bite).
Shouldn't we encourage ineffective rape techniques to would be rapist while simultaneously teaching brutally effective self-defense techniques to potential rape victims?
el io
Personally I don't understand why people play any video games at all, ever.
But I would not ban them, nor do I have any comment about them, or any views about those that do play them.
As long as people don't hurt each other, it's cool by me. Even if I don't understand why they're doing whatever it is they're doing.
Because it is none of my business.
"GTA and these hentai/rape-fantasy games are marketed to kids. "
oh man the crazy commercials they had for these rape games in the 80's on saturday morning. remember the nerf rape kit commercial that had seth green?
on rape statistics:
stats on human behavior that is not stigmatizing are difficult to obtain accurately
stats quoted are 'per year', if you've had close emotional relationships with women (where they would tell you such a thing) it seems to come closer to 1/2 or 1/3. personal experience may vary.
it is much more than social stigma that prevents reporting of rape. if the chance of successful prosecution is low enough, it will never get reported.
none of the above points was meant to apply to 'date rape', but when you do, the stats become even more meaningless.
rape statistics are worthless.
the game? would have sold a lot less copies if everyone didn't care so much. the gameplay seems very weak. GTA wouldn't be a household name unless it had good gameplay.
[on those that distrust GTA players: how do you feel about the many people I've met that like that game to kill cops?]
GTA and RapeLay are marketed to kids? That's news to me.
Where are the ads during kids tv?
Where are the toys in the breakfast cereal?
Where are the "Nico Bellic says Reading Is Cool" posters in the schools?
Please read comments
* #27 posted by Antinous / Moderator
* #46 posted by LYNDON
+ various others.
I wouldn't trust a country that's age of consent is 13 with rape statistics.
http://tinyurl.com/abaqe5 : Shame who made it, sell it, play it, or permit it in their home. Rate it X. But it should not be *illegal*. Governments cannot be trusted with the power to forbid speech, however repugnant, with very few exceptions. This is not such an exception. The game is revolting. I'm not sure yet why I find it more revolting than GTA, which I enjoy. But for me, it is. I let my son play GTA. I would not permit him to play this.
"..violence against women is never acceptable".
Bleh, I'm calling out this tired old meme. Frankly I can think of infinite occasions to be violent to a particular woman - like if she's killing me, or attacking me in general.
Violence against anyone is unacceptable.
Violence against someone less able to defend themselves is unacceptable.
Violence in defence, against someone attacking your person is acceptable.
Lots of men could kick my ass.
Lots of women could kick my ass.
There may be a percentage of men and women, whose ass I could kick.
I will not stand nobley by as a woman beats me, because of some ironically-misogynistic idiom preventing me taking their violence seriously.
How about: no ass kicking ever, unless defending yourself.
And at the very least, no one should attack anyone below their own ass-kicking abilities, regardless of gender. Seems reasonable, and not half as patronising as "wimmin r teh softeez".
/Not controversial at all (except perhaps in the context of the thread, which would be a mistaken reading of my intentions).
@#60 POSTED BY CPT. TIM:
You know who Joe Camel is?
Do you know that warning on cigarettes that says they can't be sold minors?
Do you know the lawsuits against "big tobacco" lawsuits where the courts ruled that saying one thing on warnings and doing another in marketing is a bad thing?
There you go!
#57 Jack,
GTA 4 has a "Mature" rating (17+).
No they're not. Japan has a game rating system, and it has a special category reserved for games not to be sold to minors. The US also has such a category, it's just that our retailers mostly refuse to stock games in that category.
Incidentally, two Japanese prefectures banned the sale of GTA3 to minors. I'd be willing to bet they'd do the same to a rape game.
GTA 4 has a "Mature" rating (17+).
"Mature content" and "Adult content" have certainly taken on ironic meaning in the last couple of decades.
Jack, please provide specific evidence or citation of GTA 4 being specifically marketed toward children.
@#73 POSTED BY ARKIZZLE , FEBRUARY 12, 2009 9:20 PM
And that legally protects Rockstar games. It doesn't mean they do not target kids.
Two different things.
@#71 POSTED BY ARKIZZLE , FEBRUARY 12, 2009 9:18 PM
Violence against women is routinely underreported. Not because cops look the other way, but some women are just raised to "take it and deal with it."
It's not a "meme" it's a fact.
Violence against women is a historic fact.
You don't have problems of packs of roaming women raping men in war zones. There's a reason for that.
Piss Christ wasn't marketed to anybody. It was a single artwork. Nor was it violent. Nor participatory. There is perhaps some small difference between looking at Picasso's Guernica and playing a game where the goal is to firebomb horses.
Now I've done it. Pet Vivisection IV, the perfect stocking stuffer.
@#76 POSTED BY LOGICALDASH , FEBRUARY 12, 2009 9:24 PM
And those rating systems mean 100% of nothing. I love people who point to rating systems as if they are these brick walls that stop all problems.
I went to see "Animal House" when I was 10. In high school, me and friends joined as many video clubs we could to figure out which one would look the other way when we rented R-rated and even X-rated films. Ditto with bars.
Rules aren't facts; they are societal ideals. And I'm sure there are more than a few kids out there who know exactly what store to go to so they can buy things they are too young to get.
That's life and that's reality.
Next you're going to tell me that condoms shouldn't be given to teens because they are too young to legally have sex. ZOMG, have I got news for you.
Jack, did you decide to completely misread my comment?
In the same warzones are men dying too? All equally shitty.
Violence isn't acceptable FULL STOP. NO need to genderise it.
Everdown,
In reference to Amazon's control over their marketplace sellers, they actually do have a say! I used to work for one of them and books were frequently removed from the site for not complying (yes, just about anything can be listed...) with their policies. For example, a particular book describing how to grow pot, caused a problem with amazon.com's policies and was removed.
They have a vague list of restricted products here. I wouldn't be surprised if the game was pulled very soon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200277040
As for the nature of the game, I honestly can't even comment.
Also Jack, I'm not sure where you grew up, but for the large part men are raised to take their lumps "and deal with it" too.
Its completely unnacceptable in any context. Again there is no need to split it among genders.
"I went to see "Animal House" when I was 10.
The fact that you broke the rules and saw the picture is not the same as "marketed to children". Different game altogether.
If you're looking for a correlation between rape games and rape statistics, you're missing the point a bit. Rape in video games probably doesn't encourage people to actually commit rape. What it does do is reinforce ideas about women as cum dumpsters for men to use as they please. It probably won't cause men to rape women, but it probably will strengthen already prevalent misogynistic attitudes that keep women oppressed in terms of governmental representation, equal pay, etc (as well as loads of less tangible forms of oppression).
For adric and others who ask why rape is more taboo than a carjacking - do yourselves a favor, get raped - then you'll know what is actually coming out of your mouth. Speaking as a victim I'm fully disgusted anyone would even think of trying to put something like a carjacking on level with rape. You couldn't imagine how shattered your life is after that experience.
Don't play "devil's advocate" when you have ZERO knowledge or experience of what you are actually suggesting. Soliciting is on par with rape? Carjacking is as much a violation as rape? Murder, well - you know, there have been lots of times I wish I had been simply because I wouldn't have to remember it anymore.
For this "certain segment of the population" spazzm - I think I have a right to demand not only that this game is banned, but that every bit of it is is destroyed. Rape isn't a game and it's not an issue of free speech.
Maybe the video is censored. But as a gay dude watching it all I'm seeing is a dude trying to hug crying girls and then magically having no clothes on. Then the girls cry more and run away. It seems more like an awkward high school simulator really.
I guess there's like a hardcore part of the game where you stick it in and make girls cry more. It's definitely weird but inspiring real rape? Hmmm. Let me know when those dots reliably connect.
@#78 POSTED BY ARKIZZLE:
If you check my comment history you can dig up what I said in the past about GTA being marketed to kids. Here's the rundown.
1) It's a video game: Sorry to say, the whole "video games are not just for kids" nonsense is just that. Walk into any GameStop and I doubt you're going to find it filled with adults.
2) The posters, packaging and artwork are designed with bright colors and simple pictures that are designed to appeal to kids. Things marketed to adults don't have that kind of design... Even comic books that are marketed to adults are not that cartoony.
3) Rockstar games go out of their ways to place promotional materials at amusement parks and teen concerts. Pass by most any skate shop that caters to kids and you can find a Rockstar logo.
For more info on how kids get their hands on games that Rockstar says they shouldn't get, check out this Wired piece here.
And on that note, I saw a group of 11/12 year old skate kids harassing a guy who was selling glass pipes in Union Square. The kids were shoutings: "That stuff is for pot!" and the guy was saying "No, it's strictly for tobacco use and enjoyment..."
Everyone was laughing including the beat cop who heard this all go down nearby.
The world is weird like that.
I should clarify that I think that violent urges are completely normal and playing violent games is a perfect legitimate way to blow off stress. Having said that, there's a big difference between a fair-fight game and a sadistic game where you abuse a victim. I don't believe that playing a violent video game is going to make anybody crazy, but it might be a symptom if they already are.
Also, seriously, would you date a chick who likes to play video games where she tortures and castrates men?
@#82 POSTED BY ARKIZZLE:
If you have no clue how rape is worse than simply getting beat up, there's not much anyone else can say. Other than I feel very sorry for you.
Jack, did you read the rest of my comment? I provided an example of a case where game ratings resulted in legal action in Japan. I didn't look for RapeLay specifically, but saying that the ratings mean "100% of nothing" is demonstrably false.
@18
On your link, Australia ranks third in the world (behind South Africa and Seychelles) in most rapes per person??!!
I think differences in reporting of rape cases also plays a pretty major role in these stats.
However, Australia is getting pretty weird these days, with it now apparently being illegal to watch a cartoon depicting children having sex.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/08/2441023.htm [news story]
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F08%2F1515211&from=rss [slashdot thread]
As with this case, I am a bit uncomfortable with the content, but there's no way I'm going to accuse someone of committing thoughtcrime.
@#90 POSTED BY ANTINOUS / MODERATOR:
And on that note, can the women in GTA fight back on an equal footing as men? Not really. Nuff said, EXCELSIOR!
@#92 POSTED BY LOGICALDASH:
I read your comment, but all that means is some kids got to learn how to ride the trains or buses to get what they want, where they want.
Rating systems are ridiculous. And protect nobody.
@#73 Arkizzle:
'Violence against women' doesn't mean "no hitting girls" - it refers to specific crimes which are disproportionately against women, such as domestic abuse and rape. (Yes, there are cases where women abuse their boyfriends/husbands, gay relationships can be abusive, and men can be raped too; but overall these victimize women). Importantly, these crimes are often excused because they are against women ("she had it coming") in a way that other crimes aren't.
I think what disturbs me, at least, about this game is that there doesn't seem to be any purpose to it besides getting off on rape. Most people who play GTA aren't really interested in going on killing sprees. In contrast, I don't think anyone who doesn't fantasize about rape would play this game.
*Gulp*
Kittens?
@Jack:
Bringing up the "Joe Camel" marketing blitz betrays that you have no familiarity with how these erotic Japanese games are actually marketed and sold. These games are not permitted on all mainstream consoles, they do not get widespread television ad coverage, their marketing takes place in age-restricted magazines, they have very small production runs, stores always take great care to keep the stock separate from non-erotic games, etc.
Indeed, the fact that the rape game in the article is not some recent release but actually years old is evidence of how well the Japanese game industry keeps erotic games out of the mainstream marketing consciousness. I can only assume that your mistaken assumptions about the marketing is due to the inaccurate stereotype that "all games are for kids".
@Xeni, @Robulus:
BTW, the video clip is from a completely different, non-rape erotic game (made by the same company), which is why it seems so weird, underwhelming and "polite". The confusion stems from a bit of Youtube tagging cross-pollination; someone modded the non-rape game to incorporate the female characters from the rape game. The actual rape game isn't even free-roaming, despite the Telegraph article's hysterical screaming about some sort of imagined Grand Rape Auto monstrosity.
@95, according to that argument kids can get their hands on anything at all with enough bus-riding and mail-order shopping, so we have no defense against evil media. Doomed.
I agree that ratings systems will not keep games like this out of the hands of sufficiently determined kids, but then, nothing short of outright censorship will.
I am disturbed by the fact that I am no longer disturbed by the stuff that comes out of Japan.
I should clarify:
Also, seriously, would you date a chick who likes to play video games where she tortures and castrates men if she were eight inches taller than you and outweighed you by 75 lbs? That would make the scenario a little more realistic.
@102, yeah I would be pretty uncomfortable in that situation.
Are you arguing that these games should not be sold, or what?
Are you arguing that these games should not be sold, or what?
No. A ban would be useless anyway. If even one copy exists, everyone who wants it will get it. But if you know someone who plays it, you should feel free to secretly videotape him and submit it to CollegeHumor. The Darwin Effect should take over from there.
"If you have no clue how rape is worse than simply getting beat up, there's not much anyone else can say. Other than I feel very sorry for you."
Jack. Please show me where I stated any such thing? Frankly you have blatently misconstrued my comments, to your own end, and I'm pretty offended you have taken it there.
The statement I quipped over was "violence against women is never acceptable".
How is rape the only reading of "violence against women"? I was talking in the broad terms suggested by the words, not the small subset focused in your mind. Not only are men not the only people who commit violence against women (as skewed as the numbers might be), but there is an equally wide range of violences available to women as men.
Anyway, you aren't having the same conversatioin as me, so I shall bow out of our exchange, as there is nothing further to be gained.
Unless the violence in GTA gives you sexual stimulation, please stop equating it with rape fantasy.
COINOperatedBoy
A fair point, and rationally made.
Dangerous or harmless? How about both? I would expect there to be real offenders in with people with that kink.
Personally, this pushes all my disgusted buttons. I wouldn't want the person who owns a copy anywhere near me or mine. However, watching something or playing a game isn't anywhere near acting on it. People don't go on killing sprees after playing FPS, that suggestion is a ridiculous as suggesting playing tetris encourages you to stack blocks.
The point we seem to be overlooking is not the legality of such things. Nor is it the mere fact that they exist. The grim and scary fact of there being a market for them is what needs sober assessment. We seem to have lost sight of a concept I define as "just because you can does not mean you should." The act of rape itself, or producing such as the Abomination we are considering how to deal with.
Rape is not an issue of law but the deeper concept of right or wrong. Same with the so-called "game." It's NOT the issue of legal prohibition Va "free speech at all to me. It is a stark simple case of something having been done with a depraved indifference to what damages it WILL cause by it's mere existence. It should not have been created. Game over-Full Stop!
This "entertainment" as some would call it is hardly harmless. It dehumanizes and renders rape as mere game play. Or is it worse? Censorship is not the answer either. As all that does is increase the cachet of forbidden items as more desirable.
I am often depressed beyond measure by stories like this. And the comments treating the subject lightly. The ultimate answer to be sought is how to make rape as a concept become an unthinkable relic of barbarian times. Except the barbarians are all around us. Let's try to keep them from being us. By not allowing such things into our lives. Yes- the company has a dubious "right" under freedom of speech to make such things. And we have a right to choose not to buy such things. But no one has a right to rape. And things that erode the concept of rape being unacceptable should not be accepted as harmless.
@71 Itsumishi - "I wouldn't trust a country that's age of consent is 13 with rape statistics."
Living in Japan and having had to defend/disavow this previously...
While it's technically true that the obsolete national law states 13... prefectural [state] law in every prefecture throughout Japan has long since superceded it and puts it at 18 everywhere. So the point is kind of nonsense.
Again @ 71 [and Antinous @27]
What's more, for everybody who goes "you can't believe the statistics" or that "rape statistics are unreliable"... well, then, I'd like to ask what exactly you think policies or perceptions should be based on? Your own personal opinions and interpretations?
In sociological terms, statistics are the closest thing you'll have to evidence. You'll never have an objective way to determine the actual occurrence of rape.
So all you're saying when folks approach you with contradictory information, or statistics that run contrary to whatever worldview or opinion you have, is that you're fundamentally committed to whatever you already think. And that it's not really worth trying to have a conversation with you.
@Brodiec:
That's because the video footage isn't even from a rape game (Rapelay), it's instead from a completely different game made by the same company (Artificial Girl 3), a free-roaming consensual sex game. In AG3, the player can only have sex with the girls if they like him. Otherwise they'll reject his advances in various ways, such as by running away whenever he flashes them. Whoever made the video simply modded the female characters from Rapelay into AG3.
@comment #102
Actually, that kind of game reminds me of how some women play The Sims...
@104, okay, so. A hypothetical person I know has perverse sexual impulses and wanks to creepy porn games. So far we have not established anything else about this person, so I'm going to apply my default assumptions, that they are about my age, which puts them in college, and they are, if not necessarily bright, at least marginally competent in their studies.
Assuming that your comment represents your actual opinion of this hypothetical person, and isn't just a mean-spirited joke, you feel that the world would be no worse off if this person put his head in the oven. However, I think this person is still potentially a productive member of society, capable of graduating from college and holding a career in some uninteresting area of society, squirreling away some hundreds of dollars a month to import games on the basis of which has the most advanced breast physics, and then play them in his basement.
We still get the same amount of work from him; he could manage a bookstore or something, I don't know. You'd certainly be justified in not going into his basement, or even into is house if your squick-detector is that sensitive, but is it really right and just to shun a person based on their perverse sexual lust?
Of course, if our guy actually attempts to rape someone then we'll use him to test experimental medications or whatever. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that having a kink does not require you to act on it, any more than being sexually aroused requires you to have sex with someone. Masturbation exists. It's what games like this are made for.
Now, I will grant that a person who buys rape porn may actually rape someone, but then, so might a person who doesn't have a kink for rape, or who does, but doesn't buy the porn for it. You can't really tell how he's going to act based on what he buys. Perhaps if he brings his porn up in a conversation about movies, you should stay away. Perhaps if he acts creepy around your female friends, you should stay away. But the mere fact of owning this game? I think that's a really tenuous basis for social isolation.
Anyway, we have plenty of actual rapists to worry about. This is something of a distraction.
Cpt. Tim, I'm wondering whether this is something akin to (though not the same as) the "uncanny valley" phenomenon -- you know, the one where we're fine with robots that are abstractly human-like, but repulsed by robots that are almost real but not real enough?
In GTA, you're interacting with a lot of stock characters. That's like a box of chessmen: you may regret having one taken out of the game, but you don't experience its departure as real suffering and death.
In this rape game, the player interacts longer and more intensively with a smaller cast of characters. Their suffering lasts longer and is much more detailed. For some people, that may be enough to cross over a line where they perceive the characters as being real enough to feel pain.
Remember Mark reporting how his wife and daughters got upset when he distressed their Pleo, and how his wife couldn't watch a video of a Pleo being smacked around and "killed" by a couple of guys at Dvice? I think it's the same kind of thing. Pleos have emotionally recognizable reactions. You can make one "happy" by snuggling it and scratching it under the chin. If you hold it upside-down by its tail, it struggles and makes unhappy noises. We feel uncomfortable when it cries. It's crossed over our line.
(I know a related trick for making readers care more when a character is injured or killed. You can't just make the character's injuries more graphic or their suffering more prolonged, since you risk having the readers emotionally withdraw from the story. Instead, you show your prospective victim living his or her life, and competently performing work he or she cares about. When you hurt or kill them, the readers will take it a lot harder.)
"For adric and others who ask why rape is more taboo than a carjacking."
i don't see anyone suggesting that the subject isn't more taboo. in fact i admit to a more immediate gut reaction to rape. when i play devils advocate i'm submitting views that i have trouble reconciling to my own opinions. thats how you work things out.
"Rape isn't a game"
in fact as we can see here, it's been made into one. as has murder, which also has very real effects on peoples lives, so we're discussion how these representations in video game land relate to the real thing.
104# antinous said: "you should feel free to secretly videotape him and submit it to CollegeHumor."
what about a consulting couple who likes rape role play? should you tape them and expose it to the public? as someone who thinks this game is disgusting i really want to hear someone else respond to this point because its the one i personally am having the most issue working out the logic of myself.
is shaming someone for their private kinks really you're idea of a solution?
And that it's not really worth trying to have a conversation with you.
Then don't knock yourself out.
Here's a study on Rape perception differences between Japanese and American college students: on the mediating influence of gender role traditionality.
It can be seen that the comparison for the stranger scenario was not significant, whereas the comparisons for both the dating and marital scenarios were significant; the Japanese participants in each case minimized the incident more than their American counterparts did.
I don't trust rape statistics from a country in which date and marital rape are culturally minimized.
Arkizzle,
I think the problem here is that there are multiple readings of "violence against women". You appear to be reading it as a "no one should ever hit a woman under any circumstances" type of thing, whereas I and apparently some others (such as Jack) are thinking more along the lines of systematic/cultural violence which specifically targets women.
If a woman is attacking you, I have no problem with you fighting back - and I'm saying this as a woman myself. On the other hand, violence directed toward women qua women is a completely different creature, as I am sure you will agree. Makes no difference to me whether that violence is rape, female genital mutilation, torture, deprivation of basic rights, physical/mental/emotional abuse, forced marriage, honor killings, or anything that devalues women relative to men and denies our equal worth as human beings - these things are simply not acceptable.
what about a consulting couple who likes rape role play? should you tape them and expose it to the public?
I think that mutual kink is fine, although it has been known to go horribly wrong. But all preferences are indicators of some aspect of our inner selves. If I have any urge to violence, as victim or perpetrator, I want to at least know why. If I could only get off in rape scenes, it would be time to see the therapist.
#113 Teresa: For me i think the disconnect is with GTA, i blow off steam. And even though i'd never act on it, i think everyone has been in a situation that has made them very angry/ see red. People can at least on an animal level understand the desire to inflict violence.
I can't think of a time where i saw a girl and said, "Man i'd like to rape her."
and i think that's where my gut reaction to the game comes from. to move it back to violence, i don't think i'd ever hurt, say, a kitten in GTA because i've never encountered a situation where i'd want to do such a thing.
If this was a BDSM simulator i think people would be much more understanding, as i bet there's a lot more people out there with BDSM fetishes than rape fetishes.
I would gladly date a girl who played a castration fantasy videogame: other girls have to sublimate their castration urges so much less harmlessly.
You forgot "pathetic" in the poll. Though it's often been my experience that losers who play these games in Japan don't actually have the balls to go rape someone. Instead they'll collect your trash or try to sneak gropes on crowded trains. Or follow you home.
The rating system in Japan is actually pretty good, though under utilized. Buying GTA was actually the only time I have EVER been carded in Japan. But I also think Japanese are more susceptible towards accepting what media tells them and allows them to do as okay. GTA is actually a poor example as it gets lumped in with "foreigners who always do crime anyway" so I don't think it's as much of an encouragement (or perceived to be as shocking -- foreigners here are constantly accused of being criminals) than a game where a generic anyman (Japanese) schoolkid goes on a rape spree.
Despite finding it a pathetic game, I DO find some of the gameplay highlighted funny. I'm sure there's some of it later in the simulation, but most rape play stuff out of Japan contains docile women who cry and scream but don't try to escape their tormentors. This game has a woman who screams and runs away at the sight of your penis. Isn't that an encouraging message? If you show a girl your penis it's so terrible she's going to scream and run away? But really,the player in the example seemed so out of touch and distant from the reality of the women it was like watching a zombie play in the land of the living.
Oren Beck, #109: Hear, hear. You have articulated exactly my own reaction to things like this. What does it say about us as a species or a culture that we even have a taste for FPS games or rape games or anything of similar nature, let alone that we indulge and even encourage those tastes rather than attempting to rise above them?
#122 give me a day with your book movie or music collection and i'll find a million sins to pin on you.
a question: if one would allow someone (who might otherwise be prone to ACT on his desire to rape/molest/kill) to play a game like this, would that make him more or less likely to rape/molest/kill?
This game has been available via torrent, in it's full uncensored and disturbing glory. It's in certain forums right between the game where you have to manage a brothel of pre-teen girls, and one where you take care of tiny women kept in cardboard rooms. Or so I've heard.
This is just another publicity outrage, it'll be banned or it won't, and those who still want it will steal it rather than buy it. And thanks to this idiocy, that number is now much larger than it would have been. Every Human with functioning gonads on Earth has fantasized about the emotional power sex in some form or another would give them. social standards mean that nearly all of them keep the worst ones at bay. All this is another tool for those who struggle between what they know what's right, and what their animal mind wants. Many people have fantasies about killing, a few do, some manage to get help, and a lot suffer in silence out of fear. The same goes for pedophilia, those who think about rape, and the things in /d/ that are possible to one extent or another (and those who were homosexual in 'better' 'christian' times), Only thanks to people like them, instead of being given help to cure or suppress, they go self destructive, or find a way to cope by themselves.
@124: I would guess it would have no appreciable effect. It's much more important how much of an opportunity this person has to rape, how strong or well-controlled their urge is, and how well they are capable of understanding the shitstorm that would befall them if they ever raped anyone. Oh, and how moral they are, whatever that means.
@109
So true. It's not like Japan is some backwater dictatorship where all official statistics are automatically suspect. Japan is a first-world democracy, and should receive the same benefit of the doubt that we would afford any other first-world democracy.
But let's ignore that for a second and play along with idea that the Japanese rape statistics are grossly underreported. Let's assume the underreporting is by a horrifyingly high factor of 10. The resulting rate is still pretty damn low in comparison to other western nations such as the United States or Great Britain, and that's assuming that the western statistics are trustworthy in the first place.
Even when placing them under high suspicion, I don't think there's any reasonable way to argue that the Japanese have significantly more problems with rape than any other first-world democratic nation.
I think it's time to watch 'Vagina Dentata' again.
I don't get it, this looks like pretty much all of my dates.
or
Hey, I'm stuck on the fifth level. How do I get Aiko to piss on my chest? Anyone have cheat codes for this?
Sorry guys, honestly, this isnt really a big deal.
Games are what people make for whatever reason, worse things exist, better things exist, deal with it.
I love how westerners always feel the overpowering need to offer their armchair psychological/anthropological critiques on Asian sexual habits. By all means then, please explain to us inferior Japanese how you Americans and Europeans have developed your flourishing Utopian rape/violence free societies.
us?
And this is worst than the thousand of games where you have to kill others people because... ?
The most ridiculous part of this post isn't the rape game -- it's the idea that you can determine whether someone is a dangerous predator based on their sexual fantasies.
And *THAT* is the difference between the American and Japanese approach to the topic. In America the question is not whether someone is a genuine psychopath or a predator with serious psychological issues, it's whether or not they are a 'deviant,' whether they have a fantasy life or have done drugs before or anything of that ilk.
The fact is, it doesn't boil down to the idea that someone who plays this game loves rape and would probably rape or that someone who plays this game is getting out their 'animal' urges (as if the whole ego/id dichotomy was still a legitimate psychological model: what year is this?) and is therefore less harmful.
For some people, something like this could be legitimately in the realm of fantasy and could be perfectly healthy, for some people they could be using it to express more dangerous predilections. There is no way of knowing.
Frankly, I'm a lot more worried about the kind of portrayals of women in public, where the female body is identified with sex, where women are constantly portrayed as inferior, etc., than the kinds of portrayals of women in people's fantasy lives.
First off this might be shocking to everybody but guess what! Amazon sells porn! To adults! With Credit Cards! Whodathunkit? Okay now a mass reply to everybody I disagree with.
@ 15 Gexx
Because suffocating someone with a plastic bag is not an act of power that has lingering consequences?
@ 23 mr_josh
Dude I hate to tell you this but if this shocks you, you aint seen nothing yet. Try vore on for size then get back to me
@ 43 Xopher
You haven't played Halo have you? A day doesn't go by in the game where you don't get sodomized by prepubescent boys...
@ 64 Jack
Haha wow... Really? The back in my day argument? Custers Revenge. Bam
Want to know a little secret? Every entertainment medium has been used to transmit sex violence and whatever else you don't agree with. Also the marketed to kids argument? My friends and I knew about Piss Christ before we knew about GTA... And I was a kid at the time
@71 Itsumishi
Oh noes those dirty foreigners don't share our values about childhood maturity values. Obviously they are in the wrong.
@73 arkizzle
Amen
@81 Jack
Dude its not our fault your parents didn't raise you well enough that you felt you had to sneak a porno when you were 10. By having the ratings system in place parents can make an informed decision about what their children will view/play. If those parents who then trust their children to respect authority are little rat bastards that go sneak into animal house when they're 10... I blame the kid at that point.
Also stop with the self loathing we've all seen a little porn when we were underage.
@90 Antinous / Moderator
Date her? I'd try to beat her high score. Or even better Co-Operative Castration multiplayer game. I hold the guy down she mans the knife. Winner gets to play find the broomstick
@87 Zombie
I love how all the anti people keep harping on the carjacking part. Repeat after me. In GTA you can carjack somebody... (stay with me I know long sentences are hard to read) ...Then run him/her the fuck over with your new stolen car.
Sorry to tell you this but not only is rape in a game but its in the best selling book in the world!
@95 Jack (Again!)
obviously since animal house scarred you for life.
@122 Summer
Truly we are the noblest of creatures. While we're at it why don't we get rid of all our other base animal instincts. I'm sure we don't need to feel a need to be sad either right? Tell you what. I'll go grab the big bottle of prozac then we can shave each other bald. We shouldn't care how everybody else looks either right? Come on people lets rise above those instincts!
Haha wow that was fun.
Well, as an Asian woman, I agree with the nay-saying Westerners. This game and the mentality it ties in to are all kinds of fucked up.
@ #116 Antinous
"Then don't knock yourself out."
I won't. Typing is relatively low stress. But to reiterate, when you simply dismiss anything you don't like as coming from a flawed source is kind of ad hominem. It's just saying 'since the Japanese culture is screwed up, their statistics don't matter.'
To wit - "I don't trust rape statistics from a country in which date and marital rape are culturally minimized."
And that would end up being both countries then that you don't 'trust', given "...we found that in both cultures studied victims of marital and date rape are relatively likely to be blamed, and their ordeal is relatively likely to be minimized."
So if the US and Japan are off the list, what's your baseline for accepting statistics? What country meets your criteria on whether or not statistics have merit?
Your study linked to also showed that Japanese women minimize and assign blame more than men - "we found that Japanese women assigned more blame to victims of marital rape and minimized the incident more than did Japanese men." - so accordingly, I've decided I don't trust statistics involving women.
Cant see any rape on the vid - lame. You can get harder stuff in Video stores, just not interactive.
I truly find the concept for the game disturbing.
HOWEVER
I must agree that the concept isn't any more abhorrent than all the other ones we play. We slay and torture pretty much anything on a computer screen. This is just a continuation of the double standards towards sex and violence (or any combination thereof).
Maybe that's it!
Sex=OK (except in USA)
Violence=OK
Sex+Violence=Really Bad
Rape simulators, on MY Amazon?
It's more likely than you think.
I think I've realised why I feel a difference between viewing murder and rape in movies/games/fiction.
In the real world, when someone is killed, it's obvious they are dead. Most often there's a body, or otherwise they are unexpectedly and suspiciously missing. That means almost all murders will be investigated, and the murderer is likely to be arrested and convicted.
When someone is raped in the real world, it is not at all necessarily obvious they have been raped. It is very difficult for women who have been raped to 'admit it'. Even those words say why - it is generally accepted that a woman is partly to blame if she is raped. There is also the promise of tremendous social stigma. As much as I'd hate to admit it, I'd think twice about going out with a girl if I knew she'd been raped. Even if a rapist is arrested, the chances of them being convicted are reduced (eg. oh, he's her husband so that wasn't rape, etc).
So, when I see fictional murder, I don't worry, because everyone 'knows' murderers in the real world get caught. When I see fictional rape, I am strangely concerned, because I know (intuitively) that most rapists do not get caught.
It seems to me that the crux of the issue is: does playing such a game make it more likely or less likely that someone would want to act out this behaviour?
If it makes it less likely, then that would be a good thing, I'd be in favour of anything which made it less likely that a real woman was raped.
If it makes it more likely, that that would be a marker to indicate we shouldn't allow such things, whether by general disapproval or lega recourse.
If - as is probably the case - it would make sme less likely to rape and give others the idea... then it is a matter of personal morality.
I don't believe the level of sexual crime officilly reported in Japan reflects the true situation, as there were several well-reported cases where women raped in Japan could not get the police to take action in their cases. Thus I do not think the statistics compare well with Australia and the US.
On the whole, I think women should be allowed to decide what's OK in this area, as they are overwhelmingly the victims, and men overwhelmingly the perpetrators. Difficult for normal, loving, non-violent men to accept, but true
There are lots of books, movies, songs and games where the main character is a murderer, thief, rapist, etc etc. This is no different from other forms of fiction. In Dexter was a great hit in TV, a serial killer, you see. I´m not playing that game, but I´m don't feeling offended for it, only people can offend me.
#109:
Totally concur. Unfortunately we're living in a cultural cesspool in about every modality of the human experience and not much can be done except vomit.
how about a game where you play a neighbourhood kid who secretly catches, tortures and kills pet cats and dogs? You could rack up a score for volume and inventiveness as well as not getting caught. There could be extra points for "practicing" on playmates.
Two points on this. First, the game was reviewed on somethingawful.com some years back - http://www.somethingawful.com/d/hentai-game-reviews/rapelay.php
Second, @Antinous, the study you cited goes on to state that the difference in rape minimisation was caused primarily by Japanese women who disproportionately minimised marital rape. This is a nuanced result. Having said that, some recent, trustworthy research on comparative incidence of rape in different cultures would be very useful for debates such as this.
@140
Rape is underreported in Australia and the USA too, as anyone who works with abuse victims will tell you. Frankly, I don't think the Japanese rape statistics are significantly inaccurate in comparison to the aforementioned countries. Doubly so since despite decades of scrutiny, suspicious foreign observers still feel the need to imply that "well, we know that the Japanese are misogynistic perverts, so there must be SOMETHING more wrong with their statistics than ours." It's little more than touchy-feely racism; few seem to ever question the rape statistics of other European nations with similarly low rates.
And a fair, just society relies on impartial arbitrators to decide what is OK, not victims. As difficult as it is to accept, vengeance is NOT a sane foundation for government and social policy.
#143
It probably already exists on Newgrounds or any other large flash game site.
I'm not sure comparison of a rape simulation video game with couple rape roleplay is a fair one. In the former, the thrill is hinged on a lack of consent, whereas in rape roleplay, while the actions all simulate rape, even Dan Savage (that maverick!) himself has repeated is not really "rape" as it's entirely consensual and only healthy on this basis of mutual control.
Who are these "most modern sex advice columnists"? Most of the columnists I can read besides Savage are almost laughably conservative.
Also, while I'm still ambiguous about my feelings on a game like this, let's please stop calling rape "sex" as opposed to "violence." It's violence expressed in a sexual way. It's not sex.
Just dreaming here. Does anyone think that if a game were invented which - unlike GTA which is a game about more complicated ends and choices than just killing alone - allowed you to play a Neo Nazi and drive through Brooklyn mowing down as many people from ethnic minorities as possible, would placate racist or supremicist urges they foster, or would they learn the difference between right and wrong some other way? Sure, not everyone would want to by it as a matter of taste, but it wouldn't create any new Nazis...?
OK,
Not trying to defend the game or it's content, but I do know for a fact the company that makes it, Illusion, does NOT sell it's hentai games outside of Japan.
So how did Amazon even aquire the stock to sell this?
That YouTube clip is NOT from the Rapelay game. It's from another of Illusion's games called Artificial Girl 3 (aka Jinko Shojo 3)
This is probably another side-effect or resulting impact from the "Lost Decade" in Japan that President Obama tried to so eloquently relay to the american people recently during a press conference.
Sociologically, this may be our fate if we don't heed the distress signals being sent to us by our friends (yes, friends and competitors) the Japanese. This, from a very nationalistic standpoint, is relevant in examining this post. On a more disturbing note, the interpersonal lines between humans have been made even murkier by the release of such a commercial product. More blogs should allow this kind of reflection.
@ melodist "Now, if someone could only make a therapy video game that helps you recover from playing the rape game..."
Interesting notion, or a game that could help you recover somehow from actual rape.
Due to the amazing human ability of cognitive dissonance and thus the vast separation between many people's beliefs and their actions (reference pedophile Catholic priests here) it is unfortunately impossible to determine who will commit rape based on factors such as liking a video game. We have proven without a doubt that there is not a one to one correlation between playing GTA and murdering people. but of course, the worry isn't about a 1 to 1 ratio, it's about ANY increase as a result of the game. but it can be so difficult to determine what would make the game a contributing factor in such an incident.
The censor's notion is that removing the game will ensure that there is, without a doubt, no increase in the undesired behavior as a result of the game - and there's a certain logic to that. It will stop any increase or decrease that might occur as a result of the game by rendering the influence null (assuming a successful censorship occurs and not one of those ones that usually occur where people just try really hard to get the forbidden thing as a result of the ban and it ends up getting more widely spread).
Unfortunately, thanks to cognitive dissonance, humans don't respond with absolute logic. Censors often think that somehow stopping discussion of an undesirable act will prevent it from taking place. but lack of sexual education in schools doesn't stop sex from happening - multiple polls say it just makes sexual contact more likely to be unsafe and/or result in pregnancy.
If only it were so easy to successfully ignore or repress the undesirable bits in society (the question as to what is undesirable is of course a debatable issue in and of itself but I'm very happy that at least legally in the US we've decided rape and murder are both felony offenses). but particularly where sex is concerned (thought this works for GTA as well) the very taboo nature is what makes it desirable for some, so repressing it only makes those individuals desire it more.
Whether allowing it to be out in the open desensitizes those who eschew taboos into considering such acts OK is another consideration.
and we are back to where we started which is that, thanks to cognitive dissonance, we can't establish a one to one ratio for what anyone will do as a result of a single stimulus in a world full of uncontrollable stimuli that we can't account for in our experiment.
Fox.
thank you Gloria thank you Arkizzle! rape is not sex, rape is violence and all violence is unacceptable.
I agree that some who plays this _probably_ fantasizes about Rape more than a GTA played fantasizes about killing or gang-activity.
I suppose GTA IV at least tries to under-pin the moral dillemma of it all, or suggest it is morally corrosive.
This game, from the YouTube videos seems too badly made to be anything serious, but I suppose I'd rather someone did this on their PC than in the streets.
Actually, discussing and exploring rape, from any angle, is a freedom of speech and expression issue. No matter how much you abhor the subject matter, its point of view, or it's medium, you cannot stifle another's expression. We dont like like the Nazi agenda, or the Klan agenda, etc... but we must protect the rights of those groups the same as we protect the rights of any other group.
Also, Rape is violence. I find it idiotic that somehow rape is in any way worse than taking life. A rape victim, damaged or not, still exists, still has opportunities to experience the many fold possibilities... Death is final.
As far as this contributing to violence against women... Anything can push someone over the edge, but the percentage of people whom will be pushed over the edge by something like this is close to nil. We know that Catcher In The Rye is a favorite book of afew mass murders and assassins, but the majority of people who have read it have not committed such crimes.
If you want to ban something for its influencing people to violate others the first thing you should ban is The Bible. The book that encouraged its audience in clear (and sometimes not so clear) terms to torture, burn alive, execute, enslave, murder, stone, and commit all sorts of crimes against homosexuals, outsiders, nonbelievers, etc... Its a book that bashes women throughout and tells them to be obedient and submissive to men. Rape a woman? Pay the father 30 pieces of silver and marry her; the woman gets not say. And this is the word of "The top man in change", you know, the guy who says; Do what I say or you will suffer an eternity of pain in the afterlife.
The simulator/game itself seems pretty weak. It really needs the blood, gore, guts and veins in ppls teeth in order for it to move me to disgust or arousal.
Some time ago I thought of taking childhood pictures of myself, and some of my friends with permission, and creating a child game who's goal was to lure children away, rape, and murder them. Walk around, pick up tools, do odd jobs to get candy, take jobs as clowns or ice cream truck drivers. The idea of an adult me violating the child me amused me in concept, and it amused me to think of how many people's head would explode at just the description. Two things stopped me; slack, and the knowledge that there are plenty of mentally unstable people out there who would be ready to meet my expression with violence and other real world drama. Rooting out my identity, calling employers, destroying my finances, etc...
I am MORE afraid of idiots who dont understand freedom of speech and expression than I am of someone who is entertained by violent media. These people tend to be violent jerks ready to enforce their point of view with lies, fists, guns, or even worse, legislation.
Ugly Canuck:
"Personally I don't understand why people play any video games at all, ever."
I don't either. It seems to be a pastime for the bored and witless. But isn't it odd that we are both at home, so to speak, on a site crawling with gamers?
I am pretty sure that game you are showing a demonstration of is not the Rapelay game you are reporting about but rather a different game, Artificial Girl 2 with a modification designed to make one of the main characters look like a rape victim in the Rapelay game.
Anyway, if you are interested, two links removed from that video is the actual game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoGWSrlSvQg
You think this is bad? I've heard of games where you kill people, like some short of assassin. You can do it slowly or do it in less than a second, it's quite sick that these games are even made and we should castrate anyone who's played these games, who's with me? Also an immediate ban on any violent game would be necessary. I think that game's called 'Assassin's creed', disgusting.
To add to the discussion: GTA IV lets one play as a woman in multiplayer, which adds a twist to arguments above about its gendered violence. The nuances of, say, a teenaged boy playing as a woman with an M4 rifle I'll leave to you all....
Also, it's interesting to note how the violence in other games becomes sexualized, often when this sexualization is outside the normative parameters of the game-as-designed: the "teabagging" of corpses in Halo and other shooters, for example. Somehow, video games conjure this behavior from their players.
Most disturbing to me as a gamer is the behavior of male players, not toward the simulated women in a game, but toward women gamers while gaming. In my experience, the mere hint of a woman's presence online calls out from the male players a storm of aggressive behavior with sexual overtones, often going into outright harassment. It's a sickening recapitulation in virtual space of the numerous indecencies and threats women are subjected to in the real world everyday.
I'd also like to note that there are multiple instances of rape everyday in America, at least, that go quite under the radar. Somehow, prison rape has been relegated to the status of Judd-Apatow-style jokes and raunchy humor, while rape and sexual assault against women is finally getting the notice it deserves as a systemic crime (if not evil) in our society: this strikes me as an unfortunate double standard, despite the heartening progress on the one front. But talking about videogame rape as an American, while I know that hundreds of disenfranchised incarcerated people (the majority of which I don't doubt are poor and minorities) are being subjected to real rape and real sexual violence RIGHT NOW, leaves me a bit cold: is this really an important issue, what free people do with their free time and an aggregation of pixels?
Any thoughts?
Wow. Really? A company makes a rape video game and the reaction is "This news displeases me so Grand Theft Auto is bad" or "All video games are bad". Explain to me how that makes any kind of sense. You want to be outraged at a rape video game, fine. But to use the exampple of a rape video game as a bully pulpit to rage against a game that you personally dislike (or all video games for that matter) defies logic. It's like using the fact that Japanese rape porn films exist as a reason to attack an American slasher movie because hey, they both have violence in them and all violence is exactly the same. And you hate slasher films anyways so why not just start attacking everything you hate?
Canuck and Buddy, you should try it!
Gaming can provide some of the most visceral, immersive entertainment available.
I love driving games. With a wheel, pedals and a good screen, you can knock up a pretty passable simulation for the actual real world environment. The subtleties of the cars are conveyed much more accurately than you might expect. You get a real sense of speed.
I also really enjoy flight sims and (cue scary music) First Person Shooters. You get to be a soldier / secret agent / scientist caught in a portal to hell, only you can quit any time.
Its great fun. I've drawn the line myself a couple of times, I didn't feel comfortable with GTA3, and I was uneasy with the children in Bioshock, so I quit those games and got rid of them.
I don't think video games are significantly different to movies. If either are done well, you identify with the characters and become immersed in the experience. I don't buy the "participatory" argument either. When you watch James Bond killing bad guys, you "participate" with Bond just as you would playing the role in a game.
The content of video games should be regulated according to the same standards as other media, particularly movies, available in our culture.
This game is what we economists call a "substitute good."
We ought to encourage these, not discourage them.
Cpt. Tim @119: I think you're right. You'd win that bet, too.
While there are many valid arguments for games that portray criminal lifestyles, I don't think there is anything more disturbing than the crime of rape. A post at the top of this page suggests that rape simulation is no worse than car-jacking simulation, which I find a gross misstatement. Also, I have not played this game, but I have played other adult-oriented anime games and they are usually rich in story and thematic elements, which I have a strong hunch that this game lacks.
I believe that some people that play and enjoy this game are well-adjusted members of society. I also believe that many more have some social dysfunction that draws them to a game like this. While those who can responsibly play a game like this are fine, those who are nursing a violent aggression could become encouraged by a game like this, since there aren't any negative consequences and the rape actually rewards the player.
Rape is a serious problem in the United States and in every country I can think of. I don't know a single woman whose life hasn't been affected by sexual violence, and I know several men who have suffered to some degree. Sexual violence should be actively discouraged, and that is why I stand by Amazon's decision to withdraw this game. I wouldn't want to abolish the game's existence, but I wouldn't want it to be easily accessable through amazon, which in my opinion is a reputable company for contributing to the arts.
Rape just isn't a joke, or a peculiarity. It's a real problem in all classes of society, and it's an artistic and social irresponsibility to promote it. I would like to hear from the game's director on his intentions for this title.
But.... but....
http://www.amazon.com/Schleich-70201-Unicorn/dp/B000EDTW84/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1234538335&sr=8-1
dangerous. The normalization a horrible crime is disgusting. Unless this game was attached to some type of taser for retraining sex offenders, it rewards behavior that is destructive to humans and society.
This product makes me feel gross, and this is the sort of ammunition used by groups who want to claim that the video game industry is all evil.
ugh. *shudders*
Personally, I have two thoughts about this:
1) I would rather the people who *want* to do this play this game than go out into the real world and do it.
2) If this type of game is publically available, I'm confused as to why Christians complain about Pokemon and Harry Potter.
As a person who has lived in Japan for many years now and is fully functional within the Japanese cultural environment, I'd like to add a few things to this conversation:
1) Although I don't want to single BoingBoing out specifically for this, there seems to be a fascination for "all things deviant" from Japan that elides the reality of what actually exists on the ground. While I'm sure this video game actually exists it's absolutely not popular and most Japanese people on the street would have no idea of its existence at all. In this sense it's not like Grand Theft Auto at all — there are no advertisements for this game that have been put up in regularly accessible public places, and it's not widely acknowledged or talked about. To put this game in the category of generally available popular culture would be like saying that the fact that you can find Barely Legal on some newsstands proves that Americans all want to have sex with underage cheerleaders with big boobs. I'm not saying that this desire doesn't exist, I'm merely pointing out that sites like BoingBoing don't post headlines that say things like "American magazines hawk pre-pubescent beauties with giant boobs under the guise of being 'barely legal' and America laps it up!" This is truly a minority segment of Japanese gaming culture that is being represented here.
2) Japan is one of the most reprehensible countries in the world when it comes to women's social, cultural, and especially workplace equality. I think it ranks somewhere down in the 40s in relation to other developed nations. All the posters who wrote about how this game enhances/encourages gender inequality are totally on point — that's the most devious effect of a game like this, and indeed of most games available in the U.S. as well. While this game is certainly more extreme, every single game that contains a central male character and represents women as scantily clad bimbos is demeaning to women. In terms of the actual numbers, Japan is far worse off than the states, but to somehow point to Japan as a bastion of misogynist discourse while the U.S. goes on producing shows like "The Swan" is certainly the pot calling the kettle black.
3) I can't count the numerous times that I've walked back from bars/trains after midnight through parks/streets that are completely unpatrolled and I've passed single women walking home and thought to myself "Wow. I've never seen so many women walking alone at night in places like this in the States. Fantastic." In my entire life, which is creeping up onto 40 years now, I've never seen so many women walking around so many neighborhoods in so many cities completely on their own without the automatic fear of being violated. When I lived in the States pretty much every single woman that I ever went out with was nervous about walking around alone at night and that's something that I've simply never encountered in Japan. Of course sometimes women are accompanied to trains when they go home at night, but I've never been in a situation in which a single woman has left a larger group to return home and has insisted/asked for someone else to walk with her to her destination. Personally, I'm inclined to believe that the statistics about rape in Japan are relatively accurate and the kinds of sexuality depicted in some (minority) forms of Japanese pornography are not at all definitive depictions of Japanese sexual practices.
4) Finally, I'd like to point out that the video that is included on the BoingBoing website doesn't seem to show extremely violent rape at all. Instead there are characters that sometimes say "stop please," and sometimes appear to approach the male player icon to engage in some kind of sexual submission. While I personally find this all a bit juvenile and creepy, I'd like to point out that every single Japanese woman I know would slap anyone who approached them like this across the face and walk away with an indignant expression on their face. This game is not at all an expression of the actual relations between men and women in Japanese society (though it does reflect some aspects of those relations) and anyone who views the characters in these games as in any way representative of genuine Japanaese femininity is sorely mistaken. These games are more like a kind of "Playboy Bunny" game where you have completely imaginary playthings who run at you and waggle various parts of their bodies in order to fulfill the desires of the game builders/players. There seems to be some idea on the part of many BoingBoing readers that Japanese women are somehow rendered helpless by the game they are viewing, a point of view that is as harmful as it is ridiculous. Where Japanese women are held back is in the region of equal wages, a powerful and open role within Japanese social and family structures, and ultimately by the idea that marriage is the final repository of all hopes and dreams (Japanese men are also held back by this idea).
Shout-outs to CPT. TIM (#31) for pointing out that moral indignation is better directed at actual rape and LOGICALDASH (#112) for differentiating between thoughtcrime and actual crime. I'm heartily disturbed to find so many people weighing virtual crimes against real censorship.
As regards statistics, valid or never-so: correlation does not imply causation. A person who plays crime-related games and then commits a crime does not mean all crimes are committed by people who play crime games or that all crime-game players will commit crimes. Wikipedia has a great, less morally weighted example of correlation/causation in the second paragraph of their entry : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
Crime-related games may be repugnant and disrespectful. This is the raison d'etre for some as they attempt, with varying degrees of success, to entertain. Games are not a guiding moral principal for our civilization.
GLORIA (#146) "I'm not sure comparison of a rape simulation video game with couple rape roleplay is a fair one. In the former, the thrill is hinged on a lack of consent, whereas in rape roleplay [...] it's entirely consensual."
Odd. I think I would've focused more on the faulty comparison between the interactions of two consenting adults and the interactions of one consenting adult and an inanimate object (the game). Not to be callous but I'm not so concerned with the consent or lack thereof of sexual aids. Hentai games are not my bag but (not to be a prude) neither are dildos or the omg-that's-squicky fleshlights.
Games as fiction are part of our modern mythology, a fabricated mythos within which fantasies and horrors can be explored within a controlled environment. Simulations are, by their core definition, not real. Whatever the game, there are not real people in the flickering box, just lines of code supported by a voluntary suspension of disbelief.
im a girl lover... a grown ass man with a hard on for sexualized depictions of girls to young to ever touch.. so what.. fantasy is fantasy.. reality is reality.. its not the healthiest form of sexuality.. i wish i was attracted to stone carvings of the venus of willendorf.. but im not. it was never a choice. it was just the way it is.. these game are a vicarious enjoyment of a fantasy age play, dom/sub .. the japanese have done it cleaner and more direct to the truth than the american neo-victorian hand wringing politically correct morality slinging repressed holier than thou folk can comprehend.. so hate me.. for enjoying this perverse little game.. if i had a pie chart for my sexuality this would be a sliver of a broad spectrum. but since the internet illuminates only this limited spectrum of my sexuality i will be defined by it.. like a butterknife for brain surgery, judging action by a sliver of information on fantasy is for the real life monsters to engage..
Too many people in this discussion focusing on the act rather than the effect.
The violence in GTA and most first person shooters is extremely unrealistic. The victim is nothing but a target to knock down. No matter how gory, there's never any suffering. They're either alive - and usually shooting back at you - or dead. It's just Space Invaders with better graphics.
I'm sure someone will invent a game where wounded people act like wounded people. Where you can gut shoot a person and watch them crawl across the floor, holding their intestines in. I'm sure someone will make a game where that is the point, where you get a higher score for inflicting more suffering. But they haven't done it yet. Or if they have, I'm not aware of it.
And I won't play it if they do. And I'll be seriously suspicious of anyone who does. It's not the simulation of any given act that worries me, it's the reveling in the pain of others. That's a warning sign I'm not going to ignore.
As harmless as ping pong.
@162: it sounds like you haven't played GTA4 then, as that's got exactly what you describe: bots driving cars get thrown through windshields screaming; pedestrians clutch their gutshots and hobble away; dead pedestrians (that register as dead on the target health meter in your targeting reticle) will writhe, moan, and sometimes even stagger to their feet, bleeding. I haven't seen any popping-out intestines, but perhaps this will be part of the soon-to-arrive DLC, The Lost and Damned Gamers Reveling in the Pain of Others, haha.
The question of whether the gamer revels in all this, or is being asked to by the developers, is ambiguous: the violence could be experienced in many ways by a given gamer. This has been my experience: some funny violence, some sickening, a lot of "boom-you're-dead" desensitized violence, etc. I've also seen an uber-anti-video-game violence friend whom I'd cajoled to play absolutely shriek with delight when she barely tapped a pedestrian bot with a car she was driving, and then laugh all the more loudly as she crushed the bot to a bloody pulp: whatever one can say about the broader effects and implications of this, the violence in GTA4 can be quite pleasurable.
Having "played" this game:
I've read the first hundred and twenty five or so comments on this thread, but I think we have missed an important distinction here - this is not a game. This is a simulator. Modern games all contain subtexts, goals. This is no such thing, it simply simulates (among other scenarios) the stalking and eventual rape of a 14 year old girl in a public restroom. This is no more of a game than Microsoft Flight Simulator. This is what makes it so abhorrent.
On the subject of questionable content in media, be it games or movies, we should consider context: in what people call "mass murder simulators" the context is often one of saving humanity, fighting oppression, fighting for the common good, or very commonly, fighting Nazis. No one would consider these things questionable.
As for Grand Theft Auto, to demonize that series would be to demonize Scarface, Blow, The Godfather, or even any printed material or music which glamorizes crime and violence (and yes, Grand Theft Auto does contextualize its violence in a movie-like manner. Rolling Stone certainly thinks so). It's impractical and illogical to do so.
We accept the presence of rape in movies (such as the equally acclaimed Gaspar Noe's "Irreversible" and Tony Kaye's "American History X") and literature because of the context, the purpose the act plays in the overarching tale being told.
"Rapelay" is no such thing.
#160 -- I would like to piggyback on a few of your points.
1) The media in the west focuses on almost exclusively on weird subcultures when talking about Japan. They focus on stories like:
-- Crane Machines that have bagged, soiled panties -- Never seen one.
-- Tentacle anime porn -- which westerners buy in greater numbers than the Japanese.
-- Rape porno -- I have seen American-produced rape porno.
-- Maid bars -- The one near my place closed.
-- Tubgirl -- A Japanese image frequently linked to me by my American friends.
-- Exotic Harajuku Fashion -- I have seen more goths in the midwestern US than I see these these odd fashion styled outside of Harajuku, but the US media talks about these "trendy youths" like they are a common site in Japan.
-- NEETs -- Adults who don't work, don't go to school, and aren't in some form of other training. In the US, we call them Trekkers (I kid).
-- Weird Japanese variety shows -- I have seen clips on the TV Guide channel of a Japanese variety show with guests Howard Stern interviewed when he was on Entertainment Television.
There is plenty to be ashamed about the west, one of these things should include our fascination with the odd cultural aspects of Japan.
4) The video in the YouTube clip is not the game described in the article. That clip is a different game with a character skin that looks like a victim in the Rapelay game. Keep digging and you will find the actual clip.
Ok folks- this thread is descending rapidly into the dread "Ad Hominem" zone. The realm where some folks act remarkably like the prosecutors in a rape case often do. Any straw which can be clutched to exonerate the person who performed an unthinkable act by convicting the innocent for being a victim. It's literally a rape with words in essence. Let me try to explain for the record.
Several comments by more than one person seem to be a character aspersion upon other commentators. For their daring to declare this "game" and indeed the whole "rape culture" as totally unacceptable.
Oh? it's a bit one sided of me to find it so?
Draw your own conclusions of those who not only find such as this "game" and it's associated "rape culture" acceptable. And think hard about what sort of life safety risk might lie in these cretins. Someone who considers attacking "on a personal level" the opponents of "rape culture" as fair game is hardly someone I'd want my grandchildren anywhere near. And if you consider my statement as the "Ad Hominem" I condemn so deeply? I gently suggest some re-reading of the thread entire....
Patriarchy is a sex toy. The safe word is "feather."
The only thing that I find more offensive about this than any other violent game is that it targets a specific type of person as a victim and so is more like a hate crime simulater than generally violent games like GTA.
@139
Thank your for bringing that up. People on here defending GTA as if they're lack of murder sprees is evidence that a game like this would not encourage rape are disgusting. You know those badges that appear when you start killing civilians in GTA? That's a lot like what would happen in real life. If someone takes an AK out and kills 50 people, it makes the news. With rape? No badges, no news unless of sufficiently high profile, and rarely even justice.
And I'm sure there are plenty of real homicidal gang bangers out there who love them some GTA.
The game is actually a great litmus test for people. If I see them fire it up, throw in the weapons cheat, and start blasting people I discount that person. And I've never seen any of those people do anything to redeem my opinion later (in fact they usually just prove my judgment correct in other, more tangible ways).
One guy loaded up GTA 3 and proceeded to beat up all the women he saw. No dudes, just women. And I'm not supposed to read anything into that?
Oh, and there's also the right wing radio station in GTA 4 that is constantly shouting about a homosexual agenda, but no left wing station rambling on about violence against women or the atrocities of capitalism...
Rockstar is teh douchebag.
It is telling that the maker of this game did not release a version which reverses the gender roles. Clearly, this "simulation" isn't a game -- it's a training tool, if not for physical acts then for attitudes. The entire point is to train males to commit brutal acts of violence against women.
"just a game like GTA?" Uh, no. Few, if any, of the people who ever play GTA are going to actually become fast-driving quick-shooting criminals. "just a game like [pick name of first-person shooter?". Uh, no. Few, if any, of the people who play those games are going to find themselves defending the planet from invading alien hordes.
But everyone who plays this game will find themselves face-to-face with women almost every day of their lives. How do you think this will go over: "Oh, hi, sorry I'm late for the meeting, but I just spent the last hour playing a rape fantasy game...my, you look lovely this morning"?
@161: Quite a fair point (which I agree with). I typed that early in the morning and I was looking to sum things up quickly.
My argument is that in the video game, the simulation focuses on a woman who cannot consent -- a circumstance that is not imposed upon her because she is an electronic sim (and in that sense, unable to give meaningful consent since she is not sentient). The circumstance is imposed upon her because of co-ercive actions initiated by the gamer.
The whole point of the sim is to be able to do whatever one wants (regardless of simulated protest ... which even if it's not from a "real" woman, plays a significant role for the player, no?), which is not the case with rape roleplay. That was my point.
@169, those radio stations are meant to be ironic. So for "radical homosexual agenda" read "conservatives are stupid." Watch the Republican Space Rangers TV show for another example.
I dunno, I thought the whole story arc of GTA4 was about the "atrocities of capitalism." The way Niko's incrementally made into an instrument of violence and death partly through the subversion, partly through the logical fulfillment, of market capitalism, the "American Dream," etc. It's an odd disconnect, because on one level there's an overdetermined story that narrates these themes in scripted cutscenes, and on another level the mayhem and violence the player gets to create and enjoy, all of which happens without consequences and without the moral dimensions of the storyline proper. An odd hybrid, GTA....
The hyperbole about "training tools" and "simulations" sounds like the insane ramblings of the worst of the thought police.
You know, "rape fantasy" is an extraordinarily common sexual kink, no? I'm sure a casual browse on something like Fleshbot will get you more hits than you can shake a dongle at.
This game indulges that sexual kink. That is it's audience. That is it's reason for existing. That is the people who pay good hard yen for this.
It's an easy target, beacuse it's clearly hyperbolically wrong on so many very demented levels. But, hell, so was Custer's Last Stand, and so is GTA. I'm not particularly fond of either game, but I am happy that they can exist.
We live in a world where people indulge their diabolical fantasies through the media they consume. Rather than get your adult diapers in a twist, deal with that fact in a mature and adult manner: if it doesn't hurt someone else, don't stick your nose (or other protrubrance) into it.
"how about a game where you play a neighbourhood kid who secretly catches, tortures and kills pet cats and dogs? You could rack up a score for volume and inventiveness as well as not getting caught. There could be extra points for "practicing" on playmates."
That would be the peter wiggin portion of the 'Enders Game' video game.
@172
Yeah? And all the kids yelling fag and queer at each other when playing online, that is meant to be ironic as well? To those players the radio station probably sounds very well reasoned and reassuring. I am not confident enough in my generation to expect the majority of the GTA crowd to grasp the "irony" of anti-gay hate speech.
As for the plot, that dichotomy does sound interesting. I'd certainly read an analysis of it on that level.
@161
Thank you for that distinction between 'game' and 'simulator', it truly shows how disturbing this is. None of those MS Flight Sim folks ever dreams of flying their own plane while they are playing, do they?
@xopher
In GTA 1 you get raped by a homosexual mexican gang boss called "el burro."
"Now it's time for you to find out why they call me the donkey!"
I distrust People who collect "erotic literature" and "erotic art". A creepy way to pose as an intellectual (I nearly wrote homosexual) and have your whole jerk-off collection on display in your study or living.
@pyster & trout, nicely put.
@rsk "I'm sorry I'm late for the meeting but I just spend an hour rubbing cream on my piles... let's shake hands."
Wow, this thread is a lot more reasonable and balanced than I expected. Bravo fellow commentors.
Well, speaking as someone who has played "these games," (Yes, really) I certainly don't consider myself "Dangerous."
I'm actually a pretty ordinary twenty-something: going to college, gaming, doing geek stuff. No police record, no trouble. If anything, I'm boring. And because, unfortunately, it's necessary, let me spell it out before I go any further: I don't like, approve of, or condone real rape or abuse. It's a horrible, destructive act, one of the worst one human can do to another.
That said, I do like my sex and fantasy a little kinky, and one can have fantasies without literally acting them out. I have no less respect for women as a result of mine. A few people have sarcastically suggested games in the other direction, where women demean men. My answer is two-fold: one, there already are some, though most aren't quite as severe and two, I welcome their development. No reason the play-abuse has to be sexist, and clearly there's a market for it: one of the common complaints in d/s circles is that there are waaay too many submissive/masochistic guys.
All the old arguments are out in force here, but so are their rebuttals, so some 100+ comments in, I think I'll shift from argument to simply backing up what some people have already said. With the knowledge that some of it is now redundant, here's my response:
a. "Rape" fantasies are an incredibly common sexual fantasy, for both men and (especially) women. Numerous studies have borne this out. Most have also borne out that the vast majority of those with such fantasies are ordinary, functioning, non-violent people with no clinical psychological problems. Having the fantasy doesn't mean you want to get raped, and it doesn't mean you want to rape. It means the fantasy, carried out in the safe, controlled confines of your mind, turns you on. Saying that this is an "abnormal" or "sick" fantasy is like saying that masturbation is abnormal or sick: a view rooted in superstition rather than fact. Disturbing maybe, but not at all unusual or dangerous.
b. Media in general is not mind control, or even brainwashing. This fact doesn't magically change because the media becomes interactive. If someone commits a crime, they don't do it because they were trained to by a video game.
c. To further drive home point b, I present this study, which, after looking at the data, concludes that despite the high availability of pornography of all types in Japan, and the unusual/violent nature of many of them, Japan's sex crime rates remain some of the lowest in the world. Yes, no study is perfect. Yes, there may be under-reporting of sex crimes in Japan due to various cultural problems. But that doesn't change the overall significance of the study. If the claims of the anti-fantasy crowd were right, Japan should be swimming in a sea of sex crime the likes of which the world has never seen. It isn't. Point made.
d. The obvious one: free speech. The point of a-c was to convince that no one should be worried about games/media like this in the first place, but even if there was reason for worry, even if it was utterly vile, it doesn't make any difference. Someone can make the most incredibly offensive, disgusting game you can imagine, and it should still be legal to sell, buy and own in the US. That's the way free speech works: No idea barred.
GTA has been mentioned numerous times, and for good reason. Everyone sane recognizes that the game isn't a problem, shouldn't be banned from shelves, and doesn't indicate that its fans are sociopaths. Yet many of the same people are tempted to react in exactly the opposite way here. You can't have it both ways. Either video games are mind control, or they aren't. It doesn't change when the objectionable content becomes something YOU object to.
@173
People need to stop treating any criticism of this sim as an appeal to censorship.
Unless someone explicitly stated that they think the game should be censored, do not assume so.
Most of what you are reading is a reaction to very justified anger about violence against women, which is only further inflamed by responses that treat that violence (or a sim designed to house that violence) as no big deal.
Some are dangerous, and other are probably just curious about the weird-ass game. WTF.
"I distrust People who collect "erotic literature" and "erotic art". A creepy way to pose as an intellectual (I nearly wrote homosexual) and have your whole jerk-off collection on display in your study or living."
and i distrust people who talk like puritans (and nearly homophobes.)
Here's a big difference between this game and GTA: In GTA, you get killed. A lot. There are definite negative results to your violent actions.
I kind of doubt you face a retributive rape in this game.
Abstract:
You score the best point I have seen all thread for that "Litmus Paper" meme.
With a really grim dystopian fantasy story seed of replicating "The Last Stafighter" concept in an antiheroic version. GTA and such as the abomination we have been flaying get used to pre-select really evil folks for places where such personality traits are desirable. Luckily for me- I still have a damnably hard time conceiving of ANY reality where such traits are thinkable,let alone desirable.
@ 177
"Most of what you are reading is a reaction to very justified anger about violence against women, which is only further inflamed by responses that treat that violence (or a sim designed to house that violence) as no big deal."
Is there any real violence against real women present in this little interactive porno?
No?
Then what is the big deal?
Most of the comments sound like their authors just discovered pornography, and that it offers more than just the genre they are interested in.
There are many people who have rape fantasies, and who aren't and never will be rapists.
This game or simulation is targeted at these people who aren't necessarily sexists. I wouldn't compare it to GTA, it'd be like comparing the godfather to a random porn movie.
I don't understand how it's even an issue.
@#155,
No thanks, Robulus, I don't need a whole lot of "visceral, immersive entertainment."
"I love driving games. You get a real sense of speed."
I drove 250 miles in near-impenetrable ground fog to Chicago last year, doing 70, while suicidal assholes passed me. I got a real sense of speed out of it, enough to last a while, thank you.
I also really enjoy ... First Person Shooters. You get to be a soldier ... only you can quit any time.
Exactly. I was a soldier. And it never quits. Want some flashbacks? I got a couple you can have.
Movies aren't games. I doubt that any art is. They can be puzzles, true, but that's secondary to the various arts involved. (The greatest puzzle of most movies is, "Why did they make this piece of shit?") Truly identifying with a movie character is called empathy, although sympathy, which is less personal but more imaginative, is often called for. Video games, in contrast, seem to traffic in vicariousness; and to be vicarious always is always to be base ... and emotionally stunted.
I have played a few video games, with my grandkids. They were boring and silly — the games, not the kids, who are angels come to earth — and it is a challenging experience, especially with grandpa's compromised hand-eye coordination. But I kicked their asses at chess and gin rummy.
@#160,
Excellent points, Trout, and well taken! Especially #1. We are often surprised at foreigners' perceptions of American life garnered from our entertainment media. I'm sure the Japanese are equally amused and dismayed by our notions of them, when we take their worst and think it typical. Shame on us.
So, mass murder and genocide in games is okay, but rape isn't?
Would you prefer that rapists were killing their victims rather than just raping them? Serious question.
Redmond 133: You haven't played Halo have you? A day doesn't go by in the game where you don't get sodomized by prepubescent boys...
I am irresistably inclined to doubt your truthfulness on this matter. However, as you say I haven't played the game.
@182
The big deal is that even REAL violence against REAL women is often brushed off as "no big deal" in much the same way as you are doing now.
Rape fantasy has been around since the dawn of time. I'm guessing it's not going away any time soon.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2563409/TASCHEN-Neret-Erotica-Universalis
Also, check out the recent NYT Mag article on female desire: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?pagewanted=7&_r=1&ref=magazine and you'll find a troubling discussion of female rape fantasies.
As re: Japanese "perversion" I really have to laugh. There's plenty of kinkiness to go around, pan-global. Same with violence. I find it more disturbing, actually, that manga and anime characters still have western facial features (read: gigantic, impossibly huge and glistening eyes that are perceived as some kind of ideal).
Didn't Burgess already write this book? A loooong time ago?
@ #40
Ha! They seriously should. Oh, god that stuff is terrible. Seriously, though. Really offensive porn exists everywhere. Yes, in this case it's a game, but is it really surprising? There are video games on almost every conceivable subject in Japan. Ultimately, this is not surprising, it is not the first one, and it certainly is not the only one. Yes, I have problems with it, but then while playing both KotORs I ended up almost completely or completely light side even when I intended not to be because I just couldn't bring myself to be that evil. Defending free speech means defending speech you find disturbing or icky too.
@16o
Well said.
My Cents:
1.) I think for inherently good-natured people---who have also never been close to it---rape (like Nazi Germany) will always be faintly ridiculous.
2.) This game is going to go over well with /b/tards
@186
"The big deal is that even REAL violence against REAL women is often brushed off as "no big deal" in much the same way as you are doing now.
Ah, I see.
But...no one is doing that here, right?
So...there's not big deal with this game, right?
So, as far as this little porno game goes, "no big deal" is an appropriate reaction.
Right?
I mean, if you want to use it as a launching off point for saying "rape is bad," you won't get any argument from me, or, I'd wager, most of BoingBoing. Better to take that fight to the crowd that needs to hear it, I'd think. Good luck with your new career as a women's rights advocate in Japan, I hope you accomplish good things over there!
Kababok 176: In GTA 1 you get raped by a homosexual mexican gang boss called "el burro."
1. In real life, most of the men who rape other men are not homosexual. Rape is a crime of violence, not sex.
2. If there is evidence beyond his raping of the player that he's homosexual, are there other homosexual characters in the game? How are they portrayed? I'll bet you 14 quatloos that he's the only one. If the only homosexual character in something is an amoral rapist gang leader, that's a homophobic game and most likely a homophobic franchise.
As if I needed more evidence that GTA is a reprehensible franchise and that I should distrust people who play it, you then write "...intellectual (I nearly wrote homosexual)" in order to prove my point.
But then, what do I expect from someone who lists "Jack the Ripper" as one of his "saints"? You can't claim not to be misogynist, now can you?
Also, what Cpt. Tim said at 179.
More societal decay on parade
Redmond Cooper:
I don't care if GTA has carjacking in it or not. As a rape victim, I have a big problem with anything that would make rape anything that what it is.
Until you speak from the experience of being assaulted and raped Redmond Cooper - your argument means nothing.
@189
Thanks for being so flip, its really really cool of you.
When viewed in light of a global patriarchal world culture that foster systemic violence against women, people defending a simulator specifically designed for the enjoyment of violence against women as "no big deal" are at the same time reinforcing the view that violence against women is "no big deal." As in, its not a big enough problem IRL to justify anger at a simulator (which, in case you are wondering, is "the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process.").
"But...no one is doing that here, right?
My point is that you ARE doing that here by virtue of trying to portray outrage at this sim as some sort of unjustified anomaly.
@185- He was speaking metaphocially during online play. It was supposed to be funny. When a I, a grown man, plays online against 9 year olds I get my ass handed to me within seconds. Which is why I got the joke and you took it literally. But what should I expect from a person who says they would cut off all contact with a person for the video games they play? "What's that? You like Donkey Kong? I'm sorry. I can't see you again. See, I have high standards for my friends and people that play Donkey Kong just aren't goood enough for the awesomeness that is a friendship with me."
"A day doesn't go by in the game where you don't get sodomized by prepubescent boys..."
What? How does that work? Has anybody ever been sodomized by a dinky piss-hard-on? I was a prepubescent boy and I couldn't have sodomized a marshmallow. But if you say so...
At least it wouldn't hurt.
Antinous @118: If I have any urge to violence, as victim or perpetrator, I want to at least know why.
This is not something I generally share about myself: I often fantasize about rape -- as the victim. I used to be really concerned about my fantasies. After years of introspection, I finally figured out what appeals to me about them.
I have experienced actual situations where I was completely powerless. I was not a victim of violence, but I was tricked and manipulated into doing things I didn't want to do. Fantasy gives me the opportunity to replay the situation on my terms, knowing I have the power to stop it.
To me, the line between fantasy and reality is clear, so it seems logical that someone who fantasizes about rape as the perpetrator would not necessarily be likely to act on their fantasies.
@xopher
Bullshit! If you like to stick your penis into another man's asshole, you are gay! No matter what you say.
And how does being distrustful of someone posing as a homosexual make you a homophobe?
@xopher
Bullshit! If you like to stick your penis into another man's asshole, you are gay! No matter what you say.
And how does being distrustful of someone posing as a homosexual make you a homophobe?
@190: The argument that rape is a crime of violence, not sex, is relatively new. While well meaning, it distorts the reality that rape is a crime of both violence (or the threat of it) and coerced sex. This argument is in the process of being, if not discredited, certainly reevaluated.
http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/articles/rapefeat.html
I think rape is actually a crime of sociopathology, but that doesn't sound as catchy.
A venn diagram:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y249/mercurialn/Untitled-1-7.jpg
Another aspect of this that people may have missed is that it makes women very wary of men. It is not a matter of just saying that, okay this is a game, it is a matter of saying, shit there are enough men out there who not only like this stuff but don't make much public noise to say they think it's sad etc. Untill it's banned that is... Women are getting strong cultural signifyers that men are not interested in having sex WITH them, but rather that men think sex is something that they do to a woman. Is it any wonder than women don't come in 'for that coffee' or are too frightened to accept a date, drink, chat or whatever. Seriously, guys who make all this violent sexual material that is currently saturating the planet have pretty much ruined good sex and sexual relationships for a whole lot of people. It's up to men to turn around and say 'hey women most guys are not turned on by this dreadful shit and we want equal sexual relationships to'....
@193
"When viewed in light of a global patriarchal world culture that foster systemic violence against women, people defending a simulator specifically designed for the enjoyment of violence against women as "no big deal" are at the same time reinforcing the view that violence against women is "no big deal." As in, its not a big enough problem IRL to justify anger at a simulator (which, in case you are wondering, is "the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process.").
You've got it a bit backwards.
Rape is a problem IRL. Shutting down this "simulation" does nothing whatsoever to prevent rape IRL. To have a problem with this little bit of interactive porn is effectively to be distracted from the real problem of actual rape. This thing does not cause rape.
There's nothing wrong with this game. There is something wron with rape. The two are not linked any more than GTA and gun crime are linked. The suggestion otherwise slides into Jack Thompson "murder training program" thoughtcrime territory. The problem is the act itself, not the prurient fantasies about the act. So stop burning porn witches at the stake and go do something about ACTUAL rape.
"My point is that you ARE doing that here by virtue of trying to portray outrage at this sim as some sort of unjustified anomaly.
I think that anyone being outraged by what some otaku does in the privacy of his own hentai dungeon is completely unjustified. Meanwhile, outrage at rape is not only justified, it is a positive thing.
When you stop conflating porn featuring rape with actual rape, the kinky of the world will be free to do whatever they want at home and your energies can be better spent fighting the world's actual problems (which are very real).
I don't think furry porn leads to bestiality, I don't think lesbian porn leads to lesbians, and I don't think rape-fantasy porn leads to rape. Just like I don't think GTA leads to gun violence. Fight the flesh, not the phantasm.
Change the medium and the whole argument goes out the window: "Amazon Sells Books Depicting Rape!"
I've always thought it hilarious that people are upset that kids might get a hold of an appalling movie or video game or comic book. Meanwhile, any kid can walk down to the bookstore and pick up a copy of "120 Days of Sodom" by Marquis de Sade. There's a piece of media with a level of filth far beyond the worst Japanese Hentai.
Maybe we should ban dangerous books too. Oh, wait a minute. Books are works of art made by artists that need free artistic expression. Movie and comic books and videogames are just crap that requires no protection whatsoever from squeamish ninnies.
As the other posters have pointed out, it is far more benevolent to stop actual rape.
re: GLORIA (#171) : Thanks for your clarification.
re: AB5TRACT (#175) : "Thank you for that distinction between 'game' and 'simulator', it truly shows how disturbing this is. None of those MS Flight Sim folks ever dreams of flying their own plane while they are playing, do they?"
I was using the two terms interchangeably, actually. That probably doesn't change what you're getting at, which seems to be that it's bad to dream about doing something. That's, uh, pretty much what speculative fiction types refer to pejoratively as 'thoughtcrime,' an unreasonable attempt to police the thoughts - rather than the actions - of others.
Look, rape is bad. I get it, I'm with you 100% on that and (just read post #193) there is something decidedly weird and wrong with a simulator designed for the enjoyment of violence against women, but thoughts are not and cannot be equated with actions. If an adult chooses to purchase this game - an act which is not rape - and then thinks about this game - still not the act of rape - then, well, he (I'll go out on a limb on the gender)... is a creepy fu**er.
As long as we're only talking about thoughts, not actions, he is not a rapist. He has more in common with people who, bored waiting in a line at a bank, imagine what it must be like to be a robber. Or a cop.
I've got a lot of sympathy for your dissatisfaction with the global patriarchy. While I respect your view and it is certainly your perogative to pursue whatever you see fit this seems like an odd place to invest effort.
Having a chance to try this game, I feel the need to call foul on those crying "simulation" and "training tool". The acts in the game are highly stylized porn movie cliches, with none of the crushing deadly violence that happens to real victims. The game bears as much resemblance to the horror of a real rape as a cheesy kung-fu movie does to a real street fight. Don't insult real rape victims by claiming that this ridiculous electronic puppet show is a "simulation" of their real suffering; there's no comparison.
The game is incredibly unrealistic, and amounts to little more than an elaborate masturbation tool for domination fetishists. It's even safer than kinky BDSM roleplay between consenting adults, because there's no worries about forgetting the safeword or other safety precautions.