Amazon Sells Rape Simulation Game

arkizzle

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.

Antinous / Moderator

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?

Zombie

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.

tangerined

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.

arkizzle

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.

zio_donnie

@ Xopher

thanks for correcting me. let’s see if remembering exactly what you said betters my comment:

“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.”

so you judge people by the games they play namely GTA. (possibly by the films, music or books you dislike too?) you think that there is something wrong with them. moreover you fantasize about games that they would or would not play on a pure hypothetical basis of your own.

no substantial difference with my original comment. you seem to think that people are the direct product of what they watch, read or play. for your information Hitler was an avid reader and had a 12.000 book library. what does this say about reading? are people who read potential Hitlers?

my opinion remains. your point of view is more disturbing than a kinky sex toy or a violent video game. and that is because you imply a thought crime even if you will not openly admit it. you admit treating people who like stuff you hate as potential criminals so there is no need denying your bigotry.

see being gay does not mean that you are automatically a civil liberties hero. i wouldn’t stop speaking to you only because you “stick it to a sissy” you prefer butch guys with muscle and you are not above “receiving” either even if these practises are not my cup of tea. i don’t care what you do in your bedroom as long as you are a decent person. yet you would be prejudiced against and possibly stop talking to me because i play a video game. you get the irony?

you are no better than the religious zealots. and grats for inventing the “straight community”. i didn’t think heterosexuals were a minority before reading your comments.

grow up mate.

arkizzle

“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.

Lauren O

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).

Zombie

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.

brodiec

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.

GregLondon

buddy@291: Me too. How can I access this site?

the main page is here:
http://www.warhw.com

I’ve been posting stuff about real war-related propaganda lately, rather than fiction. The fiction scoring system full explanation is here:

http://www.warhw.com/war-handwavium-scoring-system/

THe short version, the score card without explanations, is here:

http://www.warhw.com/declaration-of-warhw-short-form/

and the three works of fiction that I’ve actually scored are here:

http://www.warhw.com/war-handwavium-in-fiction/

Hm, “300″, “Watchmen”, and “V for Vendetta”. I thought I’d done a couple more, but I guess not.

I should go rent some DVD’s.

Jack

@#78 POSTED BY ARKIZZLE:

Jack, please provide specific evidence or citation of GTA 4 being specifically marketed toward children.

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.

ab5tract

@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.

truthwillout

to all the ‘nothing wrong with it’ posters

i have daughters. do you?

Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager

Cpt. Tim @119: I think you’re right. You’d win that bet, too.

Jack

@#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.

desiredusername

I am happy to announce I have read the entire comment thread thus far thing without getting caught by my co-workers! Therefore, even though I am now qualified to comment, am exhausted by all of the arguments that I did not get to participate in as I read on and on and on.

1. I identify as straight but have increasing bisexual tendencies.

2. I was drugged and raped by at least two men when I was 18.

3. I don’t link rape representation to patriarchial violence since I and everyone I know hates real rapists with a passion.

4. I might try that game out of experiencing for myself what it was “about” instead of getting caught up in the controversy, but I doubt I would think it was fun. I do enjoy GTA rampages (ask someone to explain them to you) but not as much as my girlfriend does.

5. I think the argument that games are “sucking” people away from human interaction is false. I would invert that and state that video games are capable of serving introverts very well. Books did that just as well when you were young (and not all readers are “productive readers” just to head that argument off too).

6. I don’t think it is a good idea to disinfranchise homosexual male rape survivors by stating that it doesn’t happen to them. Gay and lesbian rape and domestic violence issues are being swept under the rug as you type. The community does resists talking about it for fear of harming the gay rights cause.

7. There is very little academic information about male on male rape but from what I have read it is usually the case where the perp and the victim are of the same sexual orientation.

8. The man that drugged me claimed to have been forced into prostitution in Vietnam so he may very well have been as straight as me.

9. Queer is a good term and I identify with it as do a number of my friends. It is the deconstructed space between gay and straight (since neither will have us). Deconstructionism is a good thing; you should embrace it.

10. I would never play that game in front of a rape survivor. If I did get caught playing it in front of a rape survivor I would be sure to spend a lot of time with this person afterwards to make sure they would understand the difference between the game and how I felt about them.

11. I are really happy to see this debate take place. I think that people should talk about rape more often in order to destigmatize it. Any survivor should not have to feel as though they are “reduced” in quality as a human being. Eventually any rational discussion, if it long enough, will conclude that it is an obvious fact that a rape survivor is not in fact any less a person.

12. I am attracted to rape survivors. Unless they still suffer from PTSD, they often know themselves very well sexually.

13. Dealing with someone that has PTSD is not as scary as you think. It is perhaps saddening though.

14. People that perform rape fantasies are often required to be skilled enough to help their female partner “come back together” after. If you do it to a lover, don’t roll over and snooze immedieately after.

15. If you were recently raped, or suspect you were raped, you should seek counselling immediately. It will dramtically reduce your chances of developing PTSD.

LogicalDash

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.

dr80085

@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.

jerkzilla

@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.”

Xopher

Well, one minor point: When I said “if they play this game more than once,” I meant the rape game, not GTA.

After seeing the discussion of GTA in this thread, I think my statement that I would distrust people who play it was probably foolish.

And believe me, I’m well aware that gay people are not automatically defenders of civil liberties! I’ve met some that are were absolute fascists (and I don’t user the term lightly).

Your comment: MUCH improved by reading my actual comment.

Anonymous

So I know I’m late in the game for this but Arkizzle has a point and zombie is right on emotional appeal but wrong on ethical appeal.

I too have been raped Zombie which is why i’m commenting anonamously. I also happen to be a male and have been in jail as well, though i wasn’t raped while i was locked up. I’ve played GTA and I’ve also assulted a person in a fight with kitchen knife leading to my going to jail. Stabbing someone for real, and stabbing them in a game are just not the same thing.

When I assaulted the person I was fighting, they were trying to push my head into a pot of boiling soup. Even though I reacted out of self defense, i still felt really horrible as the person was a coworker of mine i just didn’t get along with. Violence is always wrong. Whether it’s against women or men, and whether or not it’s sexual or physical.

It always used to bother me in prison when everyone thought they should kill or rape child molesters, but inexplicably gave respect to men who dragged black people behind their truck out of racial hatred. If you kill someones child/spouse/parent/sibling or rape them, it’s equally awful, though when I’ve pressed people on the issue most would rather have their loved one raped then killed, because at least the person still exist after they’re raped.

On the issue of GTA3 I got rid of this game after a few friends of mine were murdered at a party when a guy opened fire on the house during a fight. I just couldn’t handle playing the game anymore after that, nore can i always handle watching the rape scenes in movies like “I spit on your grave”, “Ichi the Killer” or “American History X”. But that doesn’t mean these things shouldn’t exist.

My rights as a victim don’t trump freedom of speech, and it’s precisely our right to free speech that allows us to talk openly about resolving what are symptoms of social illness and inequality. While it’s ok for men and women to be different on matters of trivial difference. No one in our society deserves to be treated unequally in terms of personal safety and basic physical security. Even inmates have the right not to get raped. One of the earlier commentators had a good point about everyone thinking the game was fine if prisoners were being raped. What if the game featured inmate raped by guards and was based in Gitmo? Would it be ok then?

Violence of any kind, is and must remain always wrong, regardless of the gender, age, race, or sexual orientation of the victim. And everyone has the right to defend themselves. I may not have been happy about going to jail for what i did, but I do agree with the laws they used to prosecute me and the sentence i got was fair for my crime. but violence is and always will be a crime of action. You can’t ban games just because you don’t like the content. The fact that their are rape games like this in Japan is a symptom of social and sexual repression on everyone in Japan with an admittedly larger portion of that repression pushed on women. It’s all wrong and it all needs to stop. Censure ship will just drive it under ground creating even greater repression and even more bizarre acts of resistance and explosive psychological expression.

Like it or not this game is just a symptom of a great and dramatic reaction to the notoriously stressful pace of Japanese life. one the places an over emphasis on competition and alienates individual emotion. Do I think you should play it? Fuck no. Do I think it should exist? It doesn’t matter what i think, just like corporate corruption or child rape among catholic clergy, it’s an inevitable result of sexual repression among Japanese culture, and sexist culture stereo types. It’s supply and demand baby. it exist because there is a demand for it. if you want it to go away, look at the source of the demand.

And yes the packaging and marketing style is in a form that’s appealing to kids and adolescents, which is definitely fucked up, but why do kids want this stuff? What would make them want it? Why does this kind of marketing work in the first place? those are the questions you should be asking.

Jack

@#90 POSTED BY ANTINOUS / MODERATOR:

Having said that, there’s a big difference between a fair-fight game and a sadistic game where you abuse a victim.

And on that note, can the women in GTA fight back on an equal footing as men? Not really. Nuff said, EXCELSIOR!

Xopher

But “grow up mate” isn’t part of the improvement. It’s rude. You might want to avoid that sort of thing in the future.

I did actually find some of your arguments reasonably convincing, once you addressed my actual statements. But the tag line doesn’t make me more inclined to listen to you. Just some possibly-useful feedback.

Jack

@#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.

zio_donnie

@296

i know that no one explicitly asked for a legal ban, but i think that is more than obvious that it was implied in many comments. it’s tragicomic actually since there is no “rape simulator” video game category, this is all about a one of japanese curiosity. and i don’t think that there is actually a mass market for sexual abuse games as there is not a mass market for other extreme stuff. if there were we would be full of 2 girls one cup games.

yet many people grabbed the opportunity to bash video games in general. GTA for some reason is a fave target, though there are more violent ones around. and strangely enough the “think of the children croud” ever so informed on that satanic game establishment never named “america’s army” a game paid and developed by the US goverment for recruiting purposes and actually a fotorealistic killing simulator. (fun fact: iranians developed a similar game where the bad ones are the americans)

i guess killing for the goverment is better than random rampage.

buddy66

“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.

COINOperatedBoy

@#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.

robulus

*Gulp*

Kittens?

Akezys

@Xopher – Well, depending on the definition of ‘sodomy’, oral sex can be included. So, yeah, depending on one’s definition it may change.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law)

And yeah, necrophilia would be the over-arching term considering the situation. But how do we explain the respawning? :P

GregLondon

I thought I should point out that there has been about zero discussion of banning rape simulators. That is, the visceral reactions have not included calls to take legal recourse, unless I missed a few posts that did.

I generally take unqualified moral judgements (“that is wrong”) to be universal statements rather than personal statements.

I’ve asked people who’ve spoken out against this if they were expressing a personal taste (I’m not interested in playing that) or a moral judgement of others (they should not play that). I’ve gotten no direct answers that I’ve seen.

As far as I can tell, the main negative reaction is mainly a “squick” reaction more than anything. Being squicked by stuff is fine. I guess the thing I’m asking is can any of the people who are “squicked” get past the “squick” part, or at least suspend it in some way, and get that “squick” is personal?

If someone is “squicked” by this game, and think its wrong for anyone to want to play it, what do they think, for example, of the people who posted about roleplaying rape fantasies with their girlfriend? Both are types of makebelieve.

And the thing about getting “squicked” is it isn’t something that happens at a theoretical level, it’s visceral, a gut reaction. Maybe trying to move beyond the visceral reaction is too hard to do on a thread like this. I’m not saying someone shouldn’t have the visceral reaction if that’s what they’re having, it’s more like I’m tryign to understand their reaction better, but all I’m getting from squicked people is that they’re squicked. No squicked person can seem to elaborate much on where they are beyond being squicked.

Anonymous

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.

kevindorsey

Hahaha. Those crazy and sick japanese games always make me laugh.

Anonymous

@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.

kababok

@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

Well, yeah, but there was plenty of outrage about the America’s Army game.

And several people have said that while they think this game is vile and anyone who plays it is sick, they oppose legally banning it.

Anonymous

I wrote about the subject of virtual morality for Adbusters.org a few months ago. In it I suggested that RockStar dodged a difficult moral question by only allowing you to have sex with willing partners (prostitutes) in their games (although, they do allow you to have sex with the prostitute, and then murder her, which didn’t create moral outrage).

The problem of virtual sex with children has already come up in Second Life where adults where engaging in virtual sex acts with child avitars. Not too surprisingly, some actual child porn was also circulating and moderators stepped in and banned it.

Amazon’s move to ban this game shows that there is some moral outrage about virtual rape(which I share), but I find impossible to argue this outrage outside of a a riligious understanding of morality, or studies that link virtual sin to real-world crime (ie. your virtual misbehavour bleeds into my actual world).

I’d be interested in a non-theistic explanation of why virtual rape is ugyl.

Full Article on Vitual Morality: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/80/virtual_morality.html

LogicalDash

@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.

kababok

@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?

Evil Jim

I am disturbed by the fact that I am no longer disturbed by the stuff that comes out of Japan.

Xopher

Yeah, there are multiple definitions. That’s why I said “usually refers to” and “in my experience.” I mean that the operational definition—that is, what behavior makes people say ‘sodomy’—is generally anal sex. Abner Louima was “sodomized” with a stick; they would not have said that if it had been shoved into his mouth.

As for the respawning…they’re Cylons! They’re all Cylons! Kill ‘em! AAAAAAAAgggghhhhh!

zio_donnie

@Xopher

fair enough though you too could spare your paternalistic tone about improving. i was not rude on purpose i just didn’t like the “improve comment” line. anyway i’ll take back my grow up comment if you promise to actually try to understand things before bashing them.

video games are just that. games. we can discuss as long as you want the reasons i (and many others) find carjacking and killing virtual people is fun as long as you understand that we are not real or potential queer bashing-wife beater-mass murderers.

zuzu

Also, seriously, would you date a chick who likes to play video games where she tortures and castrates men?

So you think fooling around while watching Teeth was actually a bad idea?

Antinous / Moderator

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.

matthb

@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.

ArthurofCharn

I think that First Ammendment rights should not be infringed for pornography like this. But the right to a monopoly on copying should not be granted in this case. Why does congress grant copyright protection to ANY porography, anyway? Rapelay’s creators might have the right to make their game, but why should they have a government-sponsored monopoly on copying it?

Anonymous

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.

LogicalDash

@102, yeah I would be pretty uncomfortable in that situation.

Are you arguing that these games should not be sold, or what?

kababok

@xopher

And you’re a dumbass.

“most of the men who rape other men are not homosexual”

That is the most homophobic statement here. I bet you like to stick it to a sissy once in a while. As long as you don’t “recieve” you tell yourself you’re not gay.

Anonymous

A venn diagram:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y249/mercurialn/Untitled-1-7.jpg

Sean Blueart

@225, NUT*******
(my choice not to call you bastard)

If someone overeats cheeseburgers and Coke and has a heart attack, or smokes and gets lung cancer, don’t you and I ultimately pay for that? Is it possible that you may have a concern for the specific well-being of others?

Sure, everyone is free to destroy themselves in a thousand different ways, but when Curt Cobain makes a choice to blow his head off in private, doesn’t that impact those who looked up to him and held some promise in their hearts because of his artistic mastery?

Antinous / Moderator

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.

desiredusername

@283

So that’s the crux, that it is a simulation of a hate crime.

I don’t think I’m qualified to argue one way or another on the assertion that rape is a hate crime against women. I know that it is something a whole hell of a lot people believe. It doesn’t offer distinctions for men or lesbians so it is either incomplete or incompletely stated, though.

I am currently reading Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble”, a prominent post-feminist book from 1990, and she claims that the concept of universal patriarchy has broken down and is largely discredited within post-feminism (she just states this as a context for her arguments). I haven’t been reading a lot of feminist literature because up until sometime around Butler it was exclusionary from men. Of course that is reasonable since the political need for an exclusionary feminism exists, but for me it offered only a small amount of discourse up until recently. Anyway so I am not versed in feminist literature but I am taking the claim of Butler that universal patriarchy has been deconstructed, so what does this say about rape as a hate crime? I have no idea one way or another if the new boundaries of patriarchy extend as far as making a claim that there is another cause for rape than universal oppression. I just don’t know.

On the other hand maybe heterosexual rape of women is in fact a hate crime against the feminist subject. I know sometimes heterosexual rape is also a genocidal act but that extra axis of domination doesn’t necessarily challenge the suggestion that the acts of rape depicted in the video game are lying on the axis of hatred towards women (or the feminine gender as it were since the center keeps shifting). Maybe you, those that assert this, are correct then. Maybe you are correct that it should be socially condemned, though perhaps not legally.

The only claim I can make with certainty is that depending where on the balance rape is in relation to hate crimes determines the cultural value of this video game. Identifying where that is beyond my ability to determine.

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. 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.

GregLondon

Allowing teh government to revoke the copyright on works it doesn’t like would open the entire system to massive political gaming of the rules.

And freedom of speech and freedom of press includes freedom to make money from speech and press.

Akezys

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

earthmann

Unless the violence in GTA gives you sexual stimulation, please stop equating it with rape fantasy.

matthb

@218 “Have they learned nothing from the Wii?! They should make a rape simulator the WHOLE FAMILY can enjoy!”

Don’t ask why but I just googled “wii sex”.

I am now sad.

arkizzle

COINOperatedBoy

A fair point, and rationally made.

ridl

Xopher –

I’ve stayed silent on this thread (all I could contribute would be “squick”), but I want to say I’m glad you’ve taken a more nuanced view of GTA players from this thread. I lost respect for you when I first read your “think there’s something wrong with them” comment, and I have gained threefold more knowing you have listened and are willing and able moderate your views. Cheers to the elastic mind.

Anonymous

Harmless fetishist here and not ashamed to say that I own this game.

…and no, I didn’t buy it off Amazon.

I’m not a misogynist, I’m in a happy relationship, I don’t live in my mother’s basement, I wouldn’t rape someone in real life, etc.

Ask me to justify my fetishes? I can’t do that. But I’m a sensible person, and I wouldn’t want my dangerous kinks to happen in real life. I don’t think I’d be able to hurt another person like that, even if I had a gun to my head.

mtellers

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*

Anonymous

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.

Anonymous

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’….

Oren Beck

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.

Daedalus

@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.

Rob

@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.

Antinous / Moderator

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.

Anonymous

@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…

Anonymous

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.

Anonymous

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.

LogicalDash

@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.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager

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.)

Cpt. Tim

“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.

minTphresh

seanblewart, if that is your take on cobain, then u learned nothing from his “suicide”.

Elijah

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.

Cpt. Tim

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?

Antinous / Moderator

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.

zargas

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.

desiredusername

Whoa..I was responding to 315 not 283. How’d I make this error?

Anyway whenever I get into a vital conversation like this I sure wish it was easier to read it mapped out.

Summer

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.

Cpt. Tim

#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.

theLadyfingers

I would gladly date a girl who played a castration fantasy videogame: other girls have to sublimate their castration urges so much less harmlessly.

trout monroe

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 â€”Â 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 â€”Â 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).

ab5tract

@199

Once again you are implying that I favor censorship. Not once did I say this, or even think it.

In my mind campaigning against “oh well rape sims are fine” is just a piece of the puzzle to changing societal attitudes WRT violence against women. You clearly disagree. That is fine, but don’t go and call me a thought police just because I find defending violent rape simulators deplorable.

Emily (daturazoku)

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.

desiredusername

Kudos to you GregLondon for tying the convo back together into one its prominent threads.

Summer

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?

Cpt. Tim

#122 give me a day with your book movie or music collection and i’ll find a million sins to pin on you.

minTphresh

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?

Sean Blueart

@ 231 MINTPHRESH

My personal experience was one of sadness and disappointment. I knew by the work he shared that the opportunity for more and deeper work existed. Nick Cave was in the depths of despair,harming himself left and right, and chose to resurrect. He could have killed himself.

That said, I feel curious and would enjoy hearing what you learned.

Anonymous

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.

Xopher

LOL Kababok! You really should read people’s comment history before attempting to insult them. You’ve just made a colossal fool of yourself, you dpysh.

I haven’t told myself I’m not gay since 1973 at the latest, and I’m not sure I did then. I had stopped even trying to pretend not to be by 1977. You’re technically right that I like to “stick it to a sissy” now and then, though I prefer butch guys with muscle, and I’m definitely not above “receiving” either! (Btw, that goes “I before E, except after C, or when sounded as A, as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’.”)

However, I have never raped anyone and I never will. While gay men do rape each other on occasion, it’s far less common per capita than among the straight community. The most common scenario for male-on-male rape is in prison, where the weaker men are forced to become pseudo-women for the pleasure of the stronger. The rapists in that scenario are not regarded as gay by anyone involved; they’re just selfish monsters who think they “have to” have sex, and are “making do” with “prison bitches” until they get back out to where the “real bitches” are.

They self-identify as straight. It happens a lot. Some guys just don’t care what hole they stick it into as long as it’s wet. And they aren’t even bisexual, because they would always prefer a woman (gods help her) over a man, if given a choice.

LogicalDash

@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.

Xopher

And I’m not a dumbass. I’m a smartass, and proud of it! :-)

Anonymous

@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.

Manooshi

I think it’s time to watch ‘Vagina Dentata’ again.

Nelson.C

Kababok @228: I so want to comment on the assumption that you’re making in trying to write an insulting post, but it’s not really my place.

Someone pass the popcorn.

Xopher

Zio, I was pretty pissed off that you made an exaggerated comment about “the dude that screens his friends by looking at what they play or read or listen to.” That’s why I got snotty about how you should read back first.

Ridl, I do learn. OTOH the initial statement was pretty stupid to begin with.

blue_green_yellow

Rape feels like you’re being punched in the stomach, and the fist has reached far into your insides. And it feels like this for 20 minutes, 40, two hours. And you feel like you’re going to die, even after it’s over, you feel like you’re going to die for many years after it happened. It hurts horribly, it’s so – I want to forget it so much.

ab5tract

@200

Thanks for clarifying. Do my posts really read like someone that wants to outlaw the thoughts of others? If so, I am sad because that is the opposite of how I feel.

My point about the MS Flight Simulator was not that people shouldn’t be allowed to have their own thoughts and dreams, or that those are equivalent to actions, but rather that people claiming that this is “just a game” are oversimplifying the case.

LogrusZed

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?

Sean Blueart

This is not a game of rape, this is a game of playing with what is meaningful and what is meaningless. Watching a Hitchcock or Scorsese film can be a deep and meaningful experience because real artists (like the aforementioned filmmakers) understand that the image is a culture, it IS a product of us and is therefore meaningful. The artist understands this core reality on some level.

I see a parallel with last years’ video of a couple of guys torturing a Pleo (toy robotic dinosaur). I also see a parallel with the female torso audio system of a few weeks ago. Most blog responders cry “no harm”, or feel discomfort and oppose the idea without ever putting their finger on where the harm may be.

I say, even though there’s no readily apparent external victim in these acts, there is self harm in embracing a spirit of violation of “the other”. When it comes to self harm, it doesn’t matter that the other is an image. Exploitation and violation originate from within, a simulated experience is still a valid experience. Is that not a no-brainer?

human

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.

Daedalus

@202
“Once again you are implying that I favor censorship. Not once did I say this, or even think it.
In my mind campaigning against “oh well rape sims are fine” is just a piece of the puzzle to changing societal attitudes WRT violence against women. You clearly disagree. That is fine, but don’t go and call me a thought police just because I find defending violent rape simulators deplorable.”

I’m not the only poster who saw those elements to your argument, so I’m not sure it’s all in my head. ;)

Given that it’s not true that this game contributes at all to violence against women, what is wrong with defending its right to exist and be easily available for those who want to buy it?

Xopher

*waves at Nelson up in the box seats*

GregLondon

to truthwillout, are you saying there is something wrong with it, where wrong means (1) you aren’t going to play it or (2) you would support making it illegal for others to play it?

Several states have anti-sodomy laws. Would you support a law saying its illegal for two people to play out a rape roleplaying game in their bedroom? Domination? Submission?

There is such a thing as “make believe” and then there is “reality”. If you outlaw “makebelive” version on the grounds that the “reality” version is wrong, then half the video games, a whole lot of movies, a bunch of books, and many other forms of fiction that show us immoral things happening in makebelieve worlds, would be gone.

I have a pet peeve about fiction that misrepresents war and violence. I even started a website that tries to measure how inaccurate a movie or story shows war or vigilantism or whatever. But what you won’t hear me saying is that these kinds of movies (“300″, “Rambo”, etc) should be outlawed or that you shouldn’t watch them.

I get that I have a “squick” reaction to war porn. That doesn’t make me right about it, and everyone else ‘wrong’ about it.

I get that a number of people on this thread are having a “squick” reaction to this topic. And I’m not saying their reaction is wrong. Or that they shouldn’t have that reaction.

The question is what a person does about it when they have a “squicky” reaction to something that revolts them.

Are you saying we should outlaw something like this? Or are you saying you’re not going to play this particular game? Are you saying it’s wrong for you? or wrong for everyone? Cause when people just say “It’s wrong”, I generally take that to mean “wrong for everyone”.

Also, would it be wrong for the people here who mentioned that their girlfriend wanted to roleplay some sort of rape fantasy in the bedroom? It’s makebelieve. It’s fiction. Should they not be doing it?

Wrong for you? or wrong for everyone? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

benher

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.

Elijah

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.

Anonymous

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..

Sean Blueart

“This video has been removed has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

How apt.

Small Om

@37.

The comic From Hell(violent, offensive to christianity, and full of offensive words to some) is banned in Australia and not in the US. And the co-creator of one of the best works in the medium lives in Australia. Television’s only censored on the radiowave networks, and movies like religilous have routinely come out with protests rather than censorship. Music Videos are censored out of a choice by record companies and networks, not by anything else(the FCC has no control over cable networks).

De Facto censorship is in every country, but the first amendment guarantees that the most offensive hate speech, the most perverted forms of entertainment(given that no-one was harmed in the making of them, and it breaks no other laws in the code), and the most tasteless of art cannot be snuffed out by anyone other than the company that the artist belongs to. That being said some overzealous DA’s have tried to change that.

Your country doesn’t allow the purchase of certain pieces of art(like From Hell or GQ or Vogue or Cosmopolitan) to full grown adults without being heavily censored. I’m sorry but you have a state sponsored department only dedicated to censorship.

-SH.

Takuan

us?

Synchronyme

And this is worst than the thousand of games where you have to kill others people because… ?

Ernunnos

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.

I Like Cake

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.

kababok

Ugh, too much information. But it makes it clear why you choose to state that “men who rape other men are not homosexual.” No matter how you dress it up.

Redmond Cooper

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.

GregLondon

xopher@303: And several people have said that while they think this game is vile and anyone who plays it is sick, they oppose legally banning it.

xopher,

you just got me to re-read the first 200 posts of this thread. I counted only three posts that did exactly that, state they thought the game was vile but state they wouldn’t try to legally ban it: josh@23, Cpt.Tim@31, Stucco33@72,

many of the remaining posts were generic complaints against the game without really specifying to what extent they would take those complaints. i.e. schratboy@191: More societal decay on parade

Some attempted to come up with a scenario that would triggered our “squick” response, apparently so we would both be “squicked” and both want to stop whatever might make us feel squicked.

antinous@16: 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?

Takuan@143: how about a game where you play a neighbourhood kid who secretly catches, tortures and kills pet cats and dogs?

I assume the idea is that if they come up wtih some hypothetical that finally makes us “squick”, then we’ll go along with whatever they want to do to this game which makes them “squick”.

An interesting conversation took place between antinous, who had a squick type reaction, and cpt.tim, who did not:

antinous@104: won’t ban it, but willing to video tape people and publicly shame them for it.

Tim@115 asks antinous if he would tape two consenting adults in rape roleplay and publicly shame them with that tape.

antinous@118 says he wouldn’t do that because mutual roleplaying is ok.

I should have followed up on this one because antinous failed to really address tim’s question, because “mutual roleplaying” and “solo roleplaying” aren’t really that different, other than the number of people involved. solo roleplaying with a computer is bad. multi-roleplaying with a girlfriend is OK???

There were also squick type reactions that were pretty clear about how far they’d take it:

oren beck@109: not an issue of legal prohibition, game should not have been created in first place

zombie@87, on the other hand, said “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.”

zombie@192: 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.

So, zombie was raped some time in her past and wants this game banned and destroyed.

I was thinking of asking zombie what she thought of two consenting adults who roleplay some rape fantasy, compared to an individual roleplaying a rape fantasy with a computer, but then I realized it’s not about the fantasy, or the video game, it’s about the real violence, and the game is a reminder of it.

ab5tract@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.

Daedalus@189 said “But…no one is doing that here, right?”

ab5tract@193: 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.

So, people see the game and their anger towards real violence towards women, real rape, gets triggered. Triggered hard. Roleplaying rape becomes real rape. The two are completely collapsed. The reaction to the sim becomes the reaction to the real thing. The video game and real rape become the same thing. Indistinguishable.

ab5tract is screaming about real violence against women in 186.

in #189, daedalus trys to point out that no one is committing real rape or real violence against women in this thread, or by playign the game, or by roleplaying rape with their girlfriend.

But ab5tract@193 essentially demands that the real and the simulation, physical violence and roleplaying fantasy, must be treated the same. The game is simply an extension of real violence against women in the real world. which is confirmed a few posts later:

ab5tract@208: Isn’t this game at least on some level indicative of a social acceptance of rape? Or not? If so, isn’t it morally important to speak out against it?

At this point, it’s almost impossible to unentangle the issues of real violence against women from the videogame or roleplaying. If we accept ab5tract’s premise that the game is an indicator of a larger social problem, then attempting to distinguish the game as separate and not connected to real violence is tantamount to continuing the social problem and endorsing violence against women.

daedelus@189 attempts to distinguish between the real violence and this video game and that no one here who may be defending the video game is calling for real violence against real women. But ab5tract@193 essentially demands that defending the game is downplaying real violence.

People who have the loudest “squick” reaction and are willing to take legal measures against this video game are people who have simulated violence and real violence collapsed into the same thing in their mind.

They’re not banning the video game, they’re fighting real rape, and this video game is just another training video for would-be rapists, an indicator of social acceptance of rape.

If the premise is true, if the game is an indicator of social acceptance of rape, if the game is indistinguishable from real rape, then logically you arrive at the conclusion that you must oppose this game with exactly the same outrage that one opposes real rape.

But the premise isn’t true.

I’m probably going to get flamed by folks who believe the premise is true, because in their minds, I’m now defending rape, or at the very least, getting in their way of their fight against rape.

but the video game is a fiction, little different than roleplaying fantasies involving multiple people. If ab5tract and zombie want to stop one person from roleplaying a rapefantasy, and if antinous is willing to publicly shame a person for engaging in video roleplaying a rape fantasy, then I see no logical reason to draw the line at one person. If makebelieve rape is the problem, then it doesn’t matter if it involves 1 consenting person with a video game or 2 consenting people.

antinous essentially dodged this distinction by saying “because”, but it is an arbitrary rule that says 1 person fantasizing about it is bad, 2 people fantasizign about it together are OK.

if zombie and ab5tract are to hold on to their false premise that the videogame rape and real rape are essentially the same thing, then they’ll either need to come out and say that two consenting people shouldn’t roleplay rape fantasies (or need therapy or something), or will need to create some arbitrary rule that excludes roleplaying when it involves two people.

i.e. like antinous’s rule that two people roleplaying is OK, one persone roleplaying is bad.

anyway, this is one of the problems with text-threaded conversations like this. If this had been a voice-to-voice conversation I probably would have picked up the pattern immediately, but since it was text, with individual posts, and the thread spread out over a longer period of time, I didn’t notice this until you got me to re-read the first couple hundred posts.

misshallelujah

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.

Summer

Whiskey Tango… nope, can’t go there, not on this one.

Over.

adric

“Mr Vaz said: â€œIt 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?

Rob

@ #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.

mcarey

http://www.gamesforchange.org/toolkitflash/

Select the ‘Urge’ video and scrub to 8:30, where Karen Sideman, a Director at Games for Change relates her anecdotal experience with Grand Theft Auto as it spilled over into her ‘real life’ mental sensibilities….

(… just happened upon this vid in the course of work-related research after spending the better part of the day thinking about this boingboing post….)

this is really not a question of creative censorship. maybe it is more a question of the maladaptive/base aspects of human nature and how we market to them culturally in the ‘developed’ world…

Xopher

You mean, because I actually know something? Yeah, that’s why. And how do YOU “dress it up?” Do you wear tight jeans? :-P

Rob Beschizza

Sorry the comments didn’t work on this at first — a malformed HTML tag borked the submit form.

Cpt. Tim

“Daedalus, you are right. I am just an idiot with no point. Enjoy your rape simulator”

can we please not fall back on telling people to enjoy their rape simulator? Its idiotic. You lose your high ground.

rasz

Cant see any rape on the vid – lame. You can get harder stuff in Video stores, just not interactive.

arkizzle

I believe they also sell murder simulation games now, too.

/This shit is still fucked up though.

failix

As harmless as ping pong.

Anne K.

Seriously, this is taaaame compared to other Japanese stuff I’ve seen.

And in regards to the poll, how about I vote for “bored”.

kababok

and the sky is green, and the grass is blue

Jarvik7

Someone call Jack Thompson!

Takuan

I think this is one of those rare instances where public shaming would be in order.

Anonymous

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.

zuzu

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.

arikol

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

robulus

@Buddy

OK then, sounds like video games aren’t your bag. I’m a big nerd and would be a shit soldier, and thank God I haven’t needed to test the fact, but its an adventure for me. I certainly wouldn’t want to diminish the efforts of actual soldiers, but I think it would be a bit silly to suggest that I did. I’m pretty sure no airline pilots are insulted by my attempts to fly a 747 in MS Flight Simulator… but maybe they are?

I do, however, think your distinction between video games and movies is pretty weak. They are quite comparable, and should be regulated as such.

Takuan

what do you think would happen if this gamer maker released a game wherein women drugged and castrated random men for points?

Anonymous

ye nodes of feeble minds, the design for such actions in the life of day to day is left to the minds as feeble as such.

Would it be better if this were to be left to thought, imagination, so that one day, intent will create real victims?

Not that I, myself am a fan of this, though having outlets for rage, will reduce rage. Suffice to say the same could be played out with issues of this course.

why not look at the roots that took such a place? realize it’s not the game, but our selfs, and fearing, and neglect… schools don’t foster love as much as they do isolation.

It’s all we do. It’s either raping helplessness, or our planet which is helpless to our rape…

Landowner

#279 posted by truthwillout , February 14, 2009 5:54 AM

to all the ‘nothing wrong with it’ posters

i have daughters. do you?

How does you having daughters prove anything?

Cpt. Tim

personally chess gives me flashbacks. war simulations aren’t for me.

Xopher

My sense was that truthwillout was trying to see if there was a correlation between having daughters or not and being outraged by this game or not.

robulus

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.

ab5tract

@239

Is that supposed to be funny? Because it is.

spazzm

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.

Asoreia

The thing is this game like many other games out there, it borders and even crosses many lines that should not be bordered or crossed on a moral stand point. However, there are freedoms at risk here by censoring this game and many others. The creators of this game knew there would be issues based on the content of the game but because it is their right they still produced the game. If you do not like the content of the game don’t buy it, don’t let your children buy it, but don’t take creative rights from people either.
I personally find the concept of the game disgusting, I found the GTA games to be horrible as well but GTA is one of the highest selling games on the market. I do not see the contents of that game causing the same amount of stir as this game.

GoldMatenes

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.

Anonymous

Bigger sigh. Someone please think about the previous statement. This is not objecting to video games persay. No, rather it is objecting to the content of certain vg’s. When are we as mothers,fathers,teachers,etc. going to stand up and say,Enough!” There is a time to draw the line in the sand. People should be outraged with this rape video,and with all other video games that cheapens and treats life with contempt, and perversity. Why do you think kids are getting so messed up today? Many reasons, for sure. But look at t.v.-the sex, violence,etc., music with graphic and vulgar words, games that focus on killing, pornography-where you can get practically everywhere today, etc. Why is it so wrong, and frowned upon to draw lines in our society these days?????How can people even wonder why todays youth have so many challenges,and problems???? Sex and violence have been so diluted down that people don’t even seem to notice anymore. People,stand up for what is right!!!!Stand up for limits, and for purity!!!How can we possibly expect our children to do what is right if we don’t show them what is right?We need to start demanding our rights to decency,and not to “freedom of artistic expression” which is pure bunk! It is merely a fancified way of saying,”I will sing what I want,and about what I want,with no concern for the wellfare of those(particularily those who are teenagers,and younger) who will have the honor to listen to my musical genius. Because I am an artist! People cannot limit my potential! I have rights! Freedom of speech!” Please, I am pretty sure that “freedom of speech” was not meant by our forefathers to include the promotion of rape,murder,violence,sodomy,beastiality,immoral lifestyles,vulgar and disgusting lyrics,pornography,etc. Need I go on???? Be upset. Be very,very upset. We are losing our freedom to protect ourselves from filth like “Rape Lay”, and all the other sick,perverted,and violent video games we allow into our stores,and some-into our houses. By not caring about such things as “this game”, we are saying to the sick individuals who create,and promote them,”Welcome,come on in.My son’s room is down the hall to the right, my daughter’s room is right across from his.” Do you not want your rights as they were meant to be for our good, and the good of others back?

Tdawwg

@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.

Cpt. Tim

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.

Cpt. Tim

#243 No, its not. Its a pathetically weak tactic. Don’t agree what what he’s saying? Just insinuate he enjoys the rape games.

To boil it down its like someone making an argument for gay rights and you reply “whatever, go enjoy your butt sex, fag.”

Someone doesn’t have to have any affinity for something to make a case for it.

Gexx

#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.

WonderFoo

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.

Antinous / Moderator

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?

Anonymous

#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.

ab5tract

@205

You seem to have been taking all criticism of this game as calls to censorship. I pointed this out in the post that began our current discussion, so I’m afraid it is in your head after all, sorry.

I’m not trying to pretend that I have all the answers. I don’t. On the one hand this game has the right to exist, on the other hand I see no reason to take out of hand your assertion “that it’s not true that this game contributes at all to violence against women.”

Isn’t this game at least on some level indicative of a social acceptance of rape? Or not? If so, isn’t it morally important to speak out against it? Or not? I can’t tell anymore. All I’ve been trying to do is discuss this from my point of view in order to evolve that POV. The one thing I do know for a fact is that misogyny and rape are endemic and widespread, and I wish it were not so. Thus, this game makes me sick. What am I supposed to do with that besides discuss it with the only community I actually feel a part of?

LLLLLL

Thanks MRJOSH Post#23.

You totally got it right. This is about violence against women, and women only. How about we make a video game where you try to shoot as many African Americans as you can.

Or why not have a video game where you try to see who’s the stronger male where the weaker gets raped?

Angelo

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.

Xopher

Kababok 240: and the sky is green, and the grass is blue

“There’s a moment after the sunset,
When the sky goes suddenly green,
And the world stands hushed and waiting
For the first white stars to convene…”

I wish I could link to a bluegrass version of that song…

But honestly, Kababok, why can’t you be a good sport about it?¹ You put your foot in your mouth, and thereby lost the argument. You’re lying in the mud, but am I teabagging you? I am not. In fact I’m offering my hand to help you up.

*offers hand* Freshly washed, I swear. Shake hands, and everyone will know the difference between being foolish on one occasion, and being a fool.

____
¹Yeah, OK, I was gonna say “Take it like a man.” But I thought better of it in time.

spazzm

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

Antinous / Moderator

Rape statistics

….are generally unreliable and completely defined by culture. Rights and dignity for women in Japan are abysmally low for a developed nation.

ivan256

@JACK (THOMPSON?):

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.

Sorry, but “conventional wisdom” is not a sufficiently factual citation to swing an argument. Conventional wisdom is frequently wrong. Are the games being discussed in this article also marketed to kids in your mind?

Times have changed. Get with them.

spazzm

@#15 Antinous:
Yes, and the game box art could look like this:
http://www.newmanumass.org/content/spiritual/Matrix_Priest.jpg

GregLondon

In 1992, Ice-T’s band “Body Count” released the “Body Count” album which included the track “Cop Killer”.

Several Law Enforcement agencies organized a massive push to boycott Time Warner to get them to pull the record. The National Black Police Association opposed the boycott of Time-Warner and the attacks on “Cop Killer,”

Dan Quayle, Bush Sr., and Tipper Gore all came out to publicly condemn the album.

Body Count was removed from the shelves of a retail store in Greensboro, North Carolina after local police had told the management that they would no longer respond to any emergency calls at the store if they continued to sell the album

In July 1992, the New Zealand Police Commissioner unsuccessfully attempted to prevent an Ice-T concert in Auckland, arguing that “Anyone who comes to this country preaching in obscene terms the killing of police, should not be welcome here,”[11] before taking Body Count and Warner Bros. Records to the Indecent Publications Tribunal, in an effort to get it banned under New Zealand’s Indecent Publications Act. (The tribunal found it did not violate decency laws)

The album was eventually pulled and re-released with “cop killer” removed.

I think people here can look back on the “cop killer” controversy and see that it’s a visceral reaction on the part of cops who collapse lyrics about killing a cop with the actual act of killing a cop. They view the song as an indicator of society and therefore they must fight the song.

The National Black Police Association opposed the attacks on the song and cited police brutality as the cause of much anti-police sentiment, and proposed the creation of independent civilian review boards “to scrutinize the actions of our law enforcement officers” as a way of ending the provocations that caused artists such as Body Count “to respond to actions of police brutality and abuse through their music”

I would assume that many people here would not be similarly “squicked” by the “cop killer” song but can see that the cops were “squicked” by the song, and see that the cops took their “squick” reaction, collapsed the song with reality, and fought the song as if it were real.

I would also challenge ab5tract’s attempt to downplay people’s attempts here to ban the video game.

ab5tract@330: I thought I should point out that there has been about zero discussion of banning rape simulators.

Wrong. zombie@87 made it pretty clear: I think I have a right to demand not only that this game is banned, but that every bit of it is is destroyed.

At another point, ab5tract tries to downplay this:

ab5tract@194: Unless someone explicitly stated that they think the game should be censored, do not assume so.

I think this is an interesting attempt to downplay just how visceral a reaction people are having and really, truly, how far they would be willing to go to stop the game.

The “cop killer” controversy showed cops telling a record store they wouldn’t respond to emergency calls so long as they sold the record. We’re not calling for a “ban”, per se, but we just thought we’d let you know of our new 911 policy.

Several people attempted to throw out hypothetical video games in an attempt to trigger our “squick” reaction. Raping little boys. torturing and killing animals. not that they support a ban, you know, just letting you know what we thought.

If someone came into my store and said “Nice place you have here. Shame if something would happen to it” ab5tract would be telling me the equivalent that I cannot assume they’ll burn my place down if I don’t pay them “insurance”. They didn’t say they’d burn it down, you know, just making conversation, telling you how they feel.

Seriously, if everyone here raging against this game thinks they’re incapable of any wrongdoing, you’re kidding yourself.

And personally, I have zero interest in playing this game. It looks stupid to me. And I never bought the “cop killer” song or listened to it. Never appealed to me. But the reaction people are having here to the rape game is about on par with the reaction that cops were having to the “cop killer” song. and I think what people are capable of when they’re in that space is the same whether they’re cops or folks reading BB.

zuzu

I think this is one of those rare instances where public shaming would be in order.

Which is why I always play my rape simulations in private. :p

(Just don’t forget the safeword for the partner(s) you’re with!)

arkizzle

Kababok

FAIL.

mdh

“But the reaction people are having here to the rape game is about on par with the reaction that cops were having to the “cop killer” song.”

Well yes, except that cops are public servants who are supposed to uphold the constitution despite their prejudices, and we’re just a bunch of yahoo’s on the internet.

Cpt. Tim

“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.

grimc

If chess is a respectable game but video games aren’t, what to make of a chess video game?

buddy66

Fantasies for fanatical masturbators.

Xopher

Cpt. Tim 244: Excellent point. That kind of thing lowers the general tone of the argument much more than accusations of being *gasp* queer ever could. Seriously.

Anonymous

C’mon. The poll should be:
People who spend time worrying about the games total stangers play are…
A) Dangerous
B) Harmless

mr_josh

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.”

adric

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…

Antinous / Moderator

adric,

Won’t somebody think of the children?

Actually, it’s good idea if someone does. Enjoy your rape game.

Oren Beck

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….

Xopher

Arkizzle, so far, yeah. But I say if he shakes my hand he shows that the fail was just this time, and not intrinsic to him. Can I get a “so say we all”?

Xeni Jardin

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.

Ilovechocolatemilk

Rape simulators, on MY Amazon?

It’s more likely than you think.

Anonymous

Let’s see how effective the good PM has been in eradicating this game.
When I became aware of this thread, I immediately checked my favourite BitTorrent site for the game.
Sure enough, it’s been available online for over 18 months.
When this thread was new there was about 20 seeders (people who have the game and are offering it for download), and about 50 leechers (people who do not have the game but are downloading it).

At the height of its popularity the game had over 1200 seeders and 2000 leechers.
Now it has fallen back down to 860 seeders and 846 leechers.

In other words: thousands of people have gotten their hands on this game, thanks largely to the sterling work of MP Keith Vaz and the Belfast Telegraph.

urwhatuiz

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.

querent

Patriarchy is a sex toy. The safe word is “feather.”

Sean Blueart

My guess is that TRUTHWELLOUT is experiencing at the most pain, at the least irritation and discomfort, and is looking for some empathy and acknowledgment that the world is wider and holds out more possibility for dignity, innocence and wonder, than those who say “what’s wrong with this?” suppose it to be.

My guess is that TRUTHWELLOUT doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody; that the innocence, dignity, possibility and wonder inherent in his or her daughters are fact enough. Sufficient fact to warrant expressing a desire for more support of those essential qualities in the culture we are lucky enough to share.

My judgement is that TRUTHWELLOUT and his and her daughters, and I, would benefit more from pursuits by other humans that are more life-giving than, for want of a mere buck, spending untold hours crafted a fluid, magical, masturbatory ass-crack for other humans to stick their heads into.

robulus

Hi Greg, interesting, thoughtful post.

I think antinous and others are making the point that it is a necessarily arbitrary, subjective standard that we apply to the suitability of the media we consume, and that even if this game doesn’t fail the test for you, most people will have a point where the material will be too objectionable. Our challenge as a community is to achieve a sensible, workable consensus.

I don’t think the ‘two person role playing’ versus ‘one person video game role playing’ issue is as cut and dry as you state. The difference is that when two people role play the scenario, they are both aware that they are participating in a mutually consenting fantasy, even though the fantasy is about lack of consent. There is no such subtlety with the game.

plousia

-idiots

blueelm

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.

Anonymous

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.

bucksnort

Many males have rape fantasies.
This does not change the fact that many females have rape fantasies (emphasis on the fantasy element)and dreams and often feel very troubled and guilty about it. I have had two women, who I was in relationships with, after a long period of time, after a layer of trust had been built, ask me point blank to engage in some sort of simulated rape in our lovemaking.
Both times I was taken aback and stunned. I thought it was truly F&%#$ and would not participate in this, as much as I loved them I could not breach this limit even in play and intimacy. This was the case even though I felt that they were reaching out in an attempt to heal scars and lick wounds.
I want to be extra clear to those who can’t read the tone I hope I am expressing. While I think that many women fantasize about rape…I think there are almost no women who really want to be raped. The fact that a woman has these dreams etc. Is not an excuse or jusitification of any kind.

lyceum

I’m female, and I think that game looks hilarious. I mean… it does. Those were very, very… *very* large breasts. And I’m not sure what’s up with the watermelon.

Western cultural norms are such that we can’t take a topic like that in a light sense… you have to have a serious opinion about it. Many of us understand that you can get totally wrapped up in running people over and stealing cars in GTA without ever having the inclination to so much as write bathroom graffiti in real life. The cars and people in the game become abstract symbols rather than representatives of reality, and the joy you get out of the wanton video game destruction is about the same as you get from tearing into a really big thing of bubble wrap.

You aren’t desensitizing yourself to murder (which has got to be an incredibly difficult thing for a mentally stable person to do, or the military wouldn’t have as much trouble with PTSD in veterans)…. you’re disassociating the games with reality (which is a pretty sensible thing to do). This is why playing katamari damacy, where you roll up city blocks full of dogs playing trumpets, towering stacks of cake, and screaming school kids into giant balls which subsequently are used to replace the stars which your dad the king of the universe destroyed one night when he was drunk…. um, etc…. is just exactly as much fun as going on a rampage in GTA.

But the rape game we all have to take seriously, as though it were intended to actually pose the question of whether or not women should be raped. Complete with polite teleporting rapists, really, really, extraordinarily large breasts, and watermelon for everyone afterwards. Completely serious. I tend to suspect that in its original culture it may be viewed a bit differently.

Yes anyone who took a rape game seriously would be incredibly creepy and in all likelihood a horrible human being. Also, anyone who did not take *rape* seriously, same thing. But I think it’s possible that people play this game for the same fun you get chasing girls around the playground with a dead earthworm as a kid. Hell… we’ve been saying there’s a correlation between prevalence of rape-themed porn and lack of actual violence against women… but the causation may go the reverse direction. In cultures where people tend not to ever be *actually* violent towards women, it may be much easier to take these games and movies lightly and not associate them with reality.

Honestly the game kinda looks fun… I mean, I imagine it gets too disturbing for my taste before you get too far in. But I think it’d be interesting to see.

dr80085

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.

Sean Blueart

Yes, I agree with LLLLLLL @283. It may be a helpful perspective to consider the “game” by imagining other targets.

In support of that I suggest checking out artist Wafaa Bilal”s Shoot an Iraqi project at:

http://www.wafaabilal.com/

Sean Blueart

ERRATA, revised final paragraph of my post at #284

My judgement is that TRUTHWELLOUT and his or her daughters, and I, would benefit more from pursuits by other humans that are more life-giving than, for want of a mere buck, spending untold hours crafting a fluid, magical, masturbatory ass-crack for other humans to stick their heads into.

Cpt. Tim

on top of that you have to consider television, movies, and literature, and what steps we should take to purge rape from these mediums.

ab5tract

@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.

Bleepo

Hey, I haven’t read ALL the posts completely on this absurd and disgusting thing (yes, even SubGeniuses have a “line” that can be crossed, at least some of us do)… but Amazon has stopped carrying it, apparently.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/amazon-drops-rape-simulation-game-1607820.html

zio_donnie

i don’t get it. this is clearly a niche product aimed solely at adults with a weird and arguably non socially acceptable kink. so what? it’s not that it provoked mass rape or created a horde of molesters.

you find it disturbing? who cares. don’t buy it. it’s not a snuff movie so no actual crimes are commited.

i find more disturbing the thought police croud, especially the types like the dude that screens his friends by looking at what they play or read or listen to. suspicious of someone who plays GTA? mate you have serious issues.

what does having daughters, being gay, or being a rape victim has anything to do with this? see we have this thing called “LAW”. you get punished for what you actually do, not for what you think or would like to do.

i understand that people find this disturbing and i don’t like it myself but the world is like this. get used to it. it’s none of your business what someone does in his house.

RedShirt77

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.

minTphresh

so say we all!

zio_donnie

i didn’t know that there was a version of “body count” without cop killer. i bought it back at the time and i bought another copy some time ago and cop killer was included. though the newer cd had the “parental advisory” thing printed on the front cover and not a sticker on the jewel case.

great album BTW. a classic.

js7a

My only experience with rape was dating this MILF when I was much younger (than her at the time, and than I am now) who wanted the fantasy. She wasn’t very good at articulating it, because she was ashamed of it. But eventually we worked through that and I would show up unannounced and screw her faux-violently. One time I left the door open and the neighbors in the apartment building complained to the super, and she got a weird letter which she showed me.

This has forever tainted my ability to judge anything rape-related with any sort of objectivity, so I just give up. I am sure I’m being callous, but I doubt it was so callous to indulge her in the first place.

Dear future employers: I made this all up in the name of blog-literary art. Please disregard it and hire me. I promise I won’t rape the other programmers unless they ask nicely and in no uncertain terms … and have offices with locking, soundproof doors instead of cubicles.

Fee

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

VICTOR JIMENEZ

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. IÂ´m not playing that game, but IÂ´m don’t feeling offended for it, only people can offend me.

rsk

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”?

Cpt. Tim

#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.

TwiliteMinotaur

#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.

Summer

GregLondon, #265: Okay, now you’ve got me thinking it’s time to post these links:

http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1174

and

http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1175

Xopher

I don’t know what “Cop Killer” said. If it advocated killing cops, I can understand organizing a boycott. That’s within the rights of any citizen, and police don’t lose that right by being cops. I think there’s a bright line between organizing a boycott and calling for something to be banned by law.

The cops in Greensboro were on the wrong side of the line on that. But if I’m outraged by something, calling for a boycott of it, or of the company that produces it, is within my rights both legally and ethically.

Takuan

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.

IWood

Custer’s Revenge, anyone?

spazzm

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?

robulus

@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.

zargas

@204

Throughout history and even to this day, similar arguments of “preventing self-harm” have been used to perpetuate some of the most awful systematic sexual abuse (such as genital mutilation to prevent the “self-harm” of masturbation) and oppression. I can’t take seriously any argument that relies on such reasoning of “preventing self-harm”. It’s as meaningless a concept as “saving souls”.

adric

It’s not my game Antinous.

Gloria

@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.

Daedalus

“I’m not trying to pretend that I have all the answers. I don’t. On the one hand this game has the right to exist, on the other hand I see no reason to take out of hand your assertion “that it’s not true that this game contributes at all to violence against women.”"

It’s not just out of hand. This is what the constant comparisons to other forms of porn and GTA and the like are providing evidence of — GTA doesn’t caue gun violence, so why should we believe that this game cause gender violence? Is there a case to be made? Where’s the evidence? So far, the results haven’t been convincing.

Isn’t this game at least on some level indicative of a social acceptance of rape? Or not? If so, isn’t it morally important to speak out against it? Or not?

No more so than BDSM is indicative of a social acceptance of wearing latex and leather and the popularity of riding crops.

What people do in the privacy of their own room to themselves or to other consenting peers has never been something that, in my mind, it’s good to morally cry out aginst.

If rape were endemic in Japan, maybe you’d have some sort of “social acceptance” argument to be made. But it’s not — Japan is almost wierdly safe. So given that Japan as a society clearly doesn’t condone rape, what is this game evidence of? Basically, that some people are perverts.

That’s hardly something to get upset about.

buddy66

I’ve read this entire thread with no great benefit, since I don’t have a dog in this fight; my interest has been, I suppose, diagnostic and intellectually vicarious, a sort of mean motive.

But now as we draw towards the end of the discussion, L6 has tossed the cat in amongst the pigeons:

“How about we make a video game where you try to shoot as many African Americans as you can. Or why not have a video game where you try to see who’s the stronger male where the weaker gets raped?”

My bet is that everybody now goes home.

zio_donnie

Cop killer! yeah!

I got my black shirt on.
I got my black gloves on.
I got my ski mask on.
This shits been too long.
I got my twelve gauge sawed off.
I got my headlights turned off.
Im bout to bust some shots off.
Im bout to dust some cops off.

Im a cop killer, better you than me.
Cop killer, fuck police brutality!
Cop killer, I know your familys grieving,
(fuck em!)
Cop killer, but tonight we get even, ha ha.

I got my brain on hype.
Tonightll be your night.
I got this long-assed knife.
And your neck looks just right.
My adrenalines pumpin.
I got my stereo bumpin.
Im bout to kill me somethin.
A pig stopped me for nuthin!

Cop killer, better you than me.
Cop killer, fuck police brutality!
Cop killer, I know your mommas grieving,
(fuck her!)
Cop killer, but tonight we get even, yeah!

Die, die, die pig, die!

Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!

Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Yeah!

Cop killer, better you than me.
Im a cop killer, fuck police brutality!
Cop killer, I know your familys grieving,
(fuck em!)
Cop killer, but tonight we get even, ha ha ha ha, yeah!

Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!

Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Fuck the police!
Break it down.

Fuck the police, yeah!
Fuck the police, for darryl gates.
Fuck the police, for rodney king.
Fuck the police, for my dead homies.
Fuck the police, for your freedom.
Fuck the police, dont be a pussy.
Fuck the police, have some muthafuckin courage.
Fuck the police, sing along.

Cop killer!
Cop killer!
Cop killer!
Cop killer!

Cop killer! whaddyou wanna be when you grow up?
Cop killer! good choice.
Cop killer! Im a muthafuckin
Cop killer!

Cop killer, better you than me.
Cop killer, fuck police brutality!
Cop killer, I know your mommas grieving,
(fuck her!)
Cop killer, but tonight we get even!

Anonymous

Harmless
dipshit poster can’t read Artificial Girl 3 is the game that the video is from.

æ¡ç”Ÿå®¶ã®1æ—¥ï¼ˆãã®ï¼’ï¼‰ã€‚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.

Jack

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.

Xopher

zio_donnie 287: i find more disturbing the thought police croud, especially the types like the dude that screens his friends by looking at what they play or read or listen to.

Not at all what I said, of course. And choosing who I’ll hang out with makes me “the thought-police crowd”? I never said it should be banned.

I’m very tired of this. Read into what I say anything you feel like, and feel free to find it “disturbing.”

In fact, bwah-hah-hah.

Anonymous

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.

Anonymous

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.

Tdawwg

@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….

Anonymous

What if someone developed a simulator of violence against Blacks and Hispanics to clean up a crime-ridden neighborhood? I bet there would be unanimous hue&cry against such a game, and noone would bother contacting the local Police Department to see if minority neighborhoods really DO have more crime than normal, and/or remember the riots in LA, or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton making “comments” that led–in a deniable fashion–to arson, riots, and blocking intersections in NYC, arguably America’s MOST Major City!

Although I speak ironically, there WAS a “racist” game recently that was universally decried, appropriately named “Ethnic Cleansing”!

The Moslem cult, however, made several “games” that showed themselves as the “victims”…Great PR, guaranteed exposure, AND historical revision all at once!

Although I agree that sex should be more allowed on the small and large screens, as opposed to 5th-grade level innuendos or people humping with their clothes on, you have to realize that no matter how outlandish the thoughts you put in someone’s head, some people are unbalanced enough to take them as Marching Orders. (i.e. a cult based on L. Ron Hubbard…Good AUTHOR, not a good Messiah!)

And here I put the inevitable lament that violence is more acceptable than sex, chainsawing off a woman’s breast is more accepted than groping it…But what do you do when an act is both sex AND violence? Does the rape simulation include spreading venereal diseases? The earlier examples of crime movies showed that crimes had consequences, including but not limited to, the former victims being out for revenge, arrogance causing them to leave more clues behind, and what happens to them in jail. (Jeffery Dahmer was subjected to a fellow inmate’s “reform program”, with a guaranteed 0% recidivism rate!)

The inclusion of consequence in modern games is what determines their merit as “art” or “training” or whatever. Even “Bully”, the second-most-controversial game, had negative consequences for doing outright “bad” things, despite being a game almost explicitly devoted to Moral Relativism! Modern wargames no longer have health points and healing kits, wounded units must rest and be vulnerable to heal up. (And this is starting to apply in FPS games as well!)

Again, all expression has consequences, and while I understand that “popular expression doesn’t need defending”, there has to be SOME point at which you say, “THIS is sending the wrong message!”
Otherwise, of course, Hate Crime/Hate Speech laws would be superfluous at best, a waste of effort at worst!

ab5tract

First off LOL@Kabakok. I was hoping you would come through and school him for us all xopher.

@Cpt. Tim

I’m sorry if my phrasing sounded at all like the phrase you suggested. Perhaps I never thought to be sensitive to the rights of those who love to engage in the simulated raping of children. Should I be as sensitive to sim rapists as I am with gender issues, race issues, economic issues, sexuality issues, and issues in general? (Which is pretty damn sensitive, and my comment history proves it.) Honestly, I’m really not sure about that. But, like I said, enjoy your rape simulators, rape sim fans. (Now why can’t my weed be legal again?)

Also there is this important distinction: I did not use an epithet. In effect, I said “enjoy your butt sex.” Since I’m protesting it’s existence (morality), not it’s presence (censorship), all I meant to say was “it’s your right, have fun.”

So I apologize if any lovers of rape sims took that as a slight. And to you too, Daedulus, though I don’t understand why you don’t understand that I understand and agree with what you are saying. The only difference is that I think the existence of rape simulators is a big deal. I’m not doing anything other than protesting the fact that this shit even exists, that people get off on it, and that in a few short years when it’s being done in 1080p with hi res textures its going to be some truly disturbing shit.

And to those saying that couples use these, are you speaking from personal experience or the fact that it is theoretically possible?

Daedalus

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.

Sean Blueart

ZIO DONNIE

Respectfully, I get that the POV of many is to knuckle under a culture that bends more towards violent tendencies, domination, and personal satisfaction than to the alternative values of cooperation and respect. It makes for great drama,glamour, and we all get to play the victim of “the way things are.” I get that it feels real familiar and safe to piss on the “other”. We even get to make games about it.

My belief is that kids are born with all possibility of wonder until they get educated differently and soundly slapped with the cultured reality that says it’s all supposed to be that way.

I get that it’s handy to take on an uncaring and sardonic attitudes as a response to the pain I feel, knowing that inside I’m brightly flowering and the world is insisting I’m not because it needs me to cower in order to make it’s own squandered opportunities feel like home.

I’ve got better things to do than to allow myself, or to actively (or passively) encourage others, to be on hands and knees smearing the shit of the world around on the floor.

zargas

@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.

Oren Beck

This has de-evolved into three basic fallacies and one underlying truth.

1: A totally vomit inducing attempt to normalize Rape.

2: The attempt to debate legislation of morality.

3: A belief that sarcastic dung flinging will displace reality.

The truth ? Rape is an unacceptable literal Anathema to be considered conduct totally unbecoming human beings. Which includes of course attempting to make rape something dismissively handwaved away as “less important” than whatever axe one has to grind.

Of course the degenerates and ethically bankrupt of our world will never cease claiming that Rape is somehow not an absolute wrong.

zargas

#143

It probably already exists on Newgrounds or any other large flash game site.

robulus

Australia is a former penal colony full of rapists?

Hey! Fair suck of the sav, mate!

Cpt. Tim

“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.

Cpt. Tim

“perhaps I never thought to be sensitive to the rights of those who love to engage in the simulated raping of children. ”

haha. okay. now you have to be doing it for the LULZ, because no one is that stupid.

Xopher

Wow. I don’t blame the cops for being outraged by that, not one bit.

Ironic that Ice-T now plays a cop on TV.

Nelson.C

*waves at Xopher down on the stage*

Summer

#36: So do I.

SeattlePete

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/japan_pledges_to_halt_production

Seriously…stop.

zio_donnie

well what i get out of this is that even though the song did not get censored, almost 20 years later we did not see the cop killing spree the usual moral police feared (should i say hoped?) it would inspire. actually today you risk more being killed by the police than being killed by a terrorist.

it was just a song. offensive? yes. clumpsy attempt to rip off the black panthers’ ideology? yes. effective cop killing istigating anthem? no.

the very fact that ice-t is a household name a minor actor (and not an urban terrorist) playing a cop pretty much sums it up. it was just a marketing gimmick spawned by the times but with no real social roots.

an excellent PR stunt, yet a classic song (body count is one of the first crossover albums and one of few that black people play metal. a real progenitor to bands like rage against the machine and the whole nu metal genre). you still talk about it, and for one reason or another it still sparks debate. that’s art and it’s more useful to society than any innocent and non controversial belinda carlisle, paula abdul or madonna single of the same period.

holographoenix

apologies if this has been touched on, but most comments seem to assume men will primarily be the consumers of this game…

the only people i’ve ever met with recurring rape fantasys are women. have dated 2 women recently with strong urges to rape-play.

it seems to me this may appeal to them or couples as much as seedy men. how do we feel about it then, if the player is a woman instead of a man???

Anonymous

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.

ab5tract

First off I want to say a few things about this post in general.

1) I’m glad to see this community discuss something so “squicky” for so long. The fact that really thought provoking posts are appearing days later is evidence that bb is not about to let an issue as complicated as this go away without considerable discussion. I think it is a real testament to this community’s intelligent nature that so many people have put a lot of thought and also of themselves into this thread.

2) Not only did this thread teach me a very useful word (wait for it), it has forced me to look at something quite “squicky” with a degree of focus that I probably would not have given it without the discussion that happened.

3) I made a lot of mistakes in my comments. None of them were intentional, and some were the result of unfortunate miscommunication, but there is one that sticks out as not only useless but counterproductive. I’d like to blame these mistakes on the squick, but I won’t. While squick certainly is the context of all my earlier postings, my attack on Daedalus was stupidly wrong and the subsequent miscommunications with Cpt. Tim were my fault too. (Tim – I knew what you were saying the whole time. I read too much into how you said it: the apologies that were not addressed to Daedalus were for any rape sim fans that felt I had used the equivalent of the word “fag” against them. While reserving the right to be impolite, I was saying I never meant to be that impolite. Also, I probably said it in the least successful way possible to get my point across, and clearly failed to recognize that my apologies would sound much like what I was apologizing for. This miscommunication has been bothering me all weekend.)

@Greg London

You are right that I mistakenly collapsed virtual rape with real rape. It is a false equivalency, and will remain that way until someone develops an AI and then rapes it. As was pointed out to me earlier on in the thread, energy spent protesting virtual rape is energy much better spent protesting the real thing. Indeed this may be the Moral of this thread (or at least one of them).

Before I go further in I want to point out that my appeal to not consider visceral opposing reactions as calls to bans or legal actions came from my basic assumption that the boingboing community just isn’t into that kind of thing. Thus, absent a call for banning, I had read all opposing arguments as opposition in a moral sense. I realize now that that is probably naive, and, regardless, people will respond better to your objection if you reassure them that you oppose a ban. May be hard to accomplish during your visceral squick fit, but something I will keep in mind in the future. Also, I can’t believe I forgot zombie’s objection when I asserted a lack of objections later on in the thread, apologies for that. Though outside of zombie’s case most people who were pressed for positions in the end didn’t support bans, I am sorry if anyone felt as if I was discounting their reaction.

It took me a while to dissect my reaction, but I realized a few things and it was worth it in the end. First, while this rape simulator disgusts me, I am actually more disgusted by the idea and potential of rape simulation than I am about this rape sim in particular. If feedback had been posted that this sim was extraordinarily realistic or brutal then my opinion about this particular sim would be different. Absent that, RapeLay in itself is not as horrifying to me as the potential for rape simulation, a potential that I had never even considered until this post appeared in the Directory.

As I pointed out numerous times, the emergence of rape simulation as a genre implies that the complexity, graphics, and realism of rape sims will evolve over time. I realize now that, absent any visuals of this game, I was basically squicking about an as-of-yet-not-made American take on rape simulation. (This bias in my brain has been identified and is currently undergoing an internal court martial.) A “Crysis engine rape simulation designed for (American) rape fans” sounds pretty scary to me, and that is basically what my mind’s eye was (ethnocentrically) picturing.

That leads to the second thing I realized: Not only do I not support a ban, I would now actively oppose a ban, as Daedalus (sorry again!) and many others have done here. (Though I must admit it still wouldn’t be the first rally I’d choose to attend.) Banning rape simulation would result in black market dynamics. This means more violent, more graphic, more disgusting, and, if following trends of previous bans, more popular.

In other words, we would probably see my nightmare-squick rape sim appear sooner if such legislation was introduced to ban the genre. So even if I had once supported a ban, I would now (hopefully) realize that my hatred of rape sims leaves me no choice but to support their right to exist and proliferate. Life sure loves irony.

EH

Is there a 2girls1cup easter egg?

Xopher

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.

Anonymous

How about we work up a video game where we hunt video game developers and their families, and when we catch them, we rape and murder them. They shouldn’t object, it is a freedom of expression issue, isn’t it?

adonai

#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.

ab5tract

@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?

Anonymous

I didn’t watch the video because as a woman whose has been raped it would be far too disturbing to me.

While I don’t believe in censorship I simply wish that people didn’t find rape entertaining.

That said I like video games and I like blowing people away. Is it different that they are trying to kill me? I don’t know. Some people have said that they would rather see this than people actually raping someone, as if this would prevent someone from doing it. Games don’t prevent me from killing anyone. I just wouldn’t.

And to the people who speak of the children; sure that sucks. A lot. But so does it happening to an adult. You don’t really get over it either way. And if you haven’t been raped, don’t say “but it’s ok to murder people? wtf?”. To some people murder isn’t worse. I would rather be dead than have it happen again.

Sorry this is anonymous but I don’t really want to sign up because I don’t usually comment. I just felt I should put in my two cents in this case since this message board could probably use another perspective.

kababok

@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.”

Cpt. Tim

#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.

Gloria

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.

Xopher

Rape-play is one thing, HolograPhoenix. This game is not a mutual thing. It puts the player in the position of the rapist. I doubt many, if any, women would want to play it, even those who like rape-play in real life.

Gloria

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.

Anonymous

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.

buddy66

“I have a pet peeve about fiction that misrepresents war and violence. I even started a website that tries to measure how inaccurate a movie or story shows war or vigilantism or whatever.”

Greg @#280,

Me too. How can I access this site? I googled but got boggled.

GregLondon

zio: almost 20 years later we did not see the cop killing spree the usual moral police feared (should i say hoped?) it would inspire. actually today you risk more being killed by the police than being killed by a terrorist.

That’s it in a nutshell. The visceral reaction they had against the song had nothing to do with reality.

xopher: The cops in Greensboro were on the wrong side of the line on that.

Do you really think they were the only ones?

But if I’m outraged by something, calling for a boycott of it, or of the company that produces it, is within my rights both legally and ethically.

Xopher, I understand. I’m not against boycotts or free speech or any of that.

what I’m trying to point out is that outrage isn’t always the best basis for determining the best action. Especially if it is “squickie” inspired outrage.

I might be making this up completely, but I can imagine that a lot of religious right wingers used antinous/takuan type tactics to craet the worst possible hypothetical situation about gay marriage and then present that in a way to trigger a “squick” reaction in the right wing religious folks and stir them up against gay marriage. You know what I mean?

there hasn’t been a massive nationwide rampage of people going around killing cops. Yet, the racist behaviour that the original song was protesting is still around. Racist cops kill african americans. a band writes a protest song. Cops bury the song. protest is buried. Racist cops are still killing african americans.

The National Black Police Association opposed the attacks on the song and cited police brutality as the cause of much anti-police sentiment, and proposed the creation of independent civilian review boards “to scrutinize the actions of our law enforcement officers”. But the outrage by the cops against the song buried the song and buried the proposal to create civilian review boards to monitor police actions.

I’d say the police outrage and the results it produced were not an improvement.

That type of outrage isn’t the sort of thing that makes things better. All I’m doing is asking people who are reacting with that level of extreme squickie outrage to slow down, take a step back, and try to get away from the level of outrage that can often make things worse. Try to look at it without that level of outrage, and then see if there is anything to do about the game.

ab5tract: It took me a while to dissect my reaction, but I realized a few things and it was worth it in the end.

Cool. That’s all I wanted. Thanks for hanging in there.

Anonymous

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.

ab5tract

Daedalus, you are right. I am just an idiot with no point. Enjoy your rape simulator, I hear the next version is going to be way more brutal and realistic.

@211

He did not say anything about preventing self-harm.

ab5tract

@252

I’m sorry to be so stupid :(

I know that “rights” is the wrong word here.

All I mean is that I’m not convinced I need to be polite talking to or about people that enjoy simulated rape. I’m a civil guy, but I have my limits. Also, even the most polite person will fail miserably at being sensitive to something they were not aware they should be sensitive to. Failing that way is how we grow.

That said, I definitely see your point about debasing my own argument. I shouldn’t have snapped on Daedalus like that. I hope that D and the rest of my bb family will accept my sincere apology. I have already mutated from the form that posted that which is being critiqued now.

So, is this like the Perfect Storm for video game morality or what?

Davin

Some people enjoy sick things. This is just one of many instantiations of that. And sadly comparatively tame — consider snuff films or guro.

Anonymous

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…?

Anonymous

There’s a surprising number of female fans who play these kinds of games, despite them being mainly played by and targeted towards men. Japanese fiction in general tends to concentrate on psychological tension, so a lot of these games actually bear much resemblance to darker bodice-ripper novels.

ab5tract

@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.

Redmond Cooper

@ 192 Zombie “Until you speak from the experience of being assaulted and raped Redmond Cooper – your argument means nothing.”

Honestly I shouldn’t bite on this because its just a red herring to divert attention. Which means you don’t have a valid counter argument. Point goes to me.

Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 Dollars. Go directly to jail.

melodist

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…

Anonymous

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?

Anonymous

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)

robulus

Hi Greg, two issues.

Firstly, I think you are avoiding a fairly basic question here. Is there some material that should be banned from distribution in our community? If so, how do we decide what that material is? The fact is, if you believe some material should be banned, then the consideration of where to draw the line is subjective and somewhat arbitrary.

Secondly, the idea that voicing strong opposition and criticism of this product is an implicit call for it to be banned, and that there can be no other valid interpretation of such opposition, is bullshit. If we, as a community, want to limit government censorship as far as possible, then strong vocal criticism and opposition of material we find objectionable is the best way to try and influence our peers without appealing to authority.

In short, if they say hate it, but don’t call for a ban, they hate it, but they’re not calling for it to be banned.

Here is an excellent research paper on the issue, which calls for better porn. I say yay! for better porn (but boo! for ISP level filtering).
http://www.classification.gov.au/resource.html?resource=243&filename=243.pdf

I’m going to go a step further. AFAIK video games in Australia can’t be given an R18+ classification, which in my view is unfairly discriminatory against the medium, and needs to be changed. However, I think this game would be refused classification in Australia (as would pornography showing rape for sexual gratification of the viewer), even if there was an X18+ category, effectively banning it from sale or distribution. I don’t have a problem with that.

If it is clear that the sexual activity involves minors, it would actually be classed as child pornography in Australia, and you could be convicted of possession of child pornography if you are caught with it. I think that is excessive.

Purly

Some are dangerous, and other are probably just curious about the weird-ass game. WTF.

Cpt. Tim

#256 I really don’t think you understand my meaning at all. If you did you wouldn’t apologize and then re assert that you shouldn’t have to be polite to people who enjoy simulated rape. By doing so you’re employing a variant of your original flawed tactic on me.

I never said you had to be polite to anyone. I said your tactic was cheap, by writing of Daedalus as a rape game enjoyer.

Xopher

Greg, I don’t disagree. But one could also say that Ice-T’s song wasn’t the best approach to the problem of racist cops, since it was over the outrage line, i.e. it was extreme enough that the average person would be horrified by it. I would submit that it was ineffective in raising the public consciousness on the issue in part because it was extreme enough to arm the opposition.

Anonymous

#16: You mean like these? (NSFW!)
http://www.getchu.com/php/search.phtml?category0=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.

LYNDON

@ 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.

pcus27

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.

Cpt. Tim

“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.)

Adam Stanhope

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!

Anonymous

@ 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.

Anonymous

Rape is hate. Hate is not a game. It’s not fun. It’s not entertaining.

It IS comparable to – let’s say – a game called “Happy Fun KKK 1920′s Madison Indiana! Let’s Go Lynch!” – can you translate that into japanese?

adric

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.

Davin

@45,

They made that therapy game. It is called Katamari Damacy. It’s actually the universal therapy game.

Bekah

thank you Gloria thank you Arkizzle! rape is not sex, rape is violence and all violence is unacceptable.

Anonymous

I won’t even bother reading the comments on this one…

The game is wrong. Immoral.

Additionally, there’s a deep problem of domestic violence all over the world and especially here in the US which doesn’t need any reinforcement.

Sexual violence is one of the worst forms of domestic violence and is immoral specifically because there is no consent involved.

The last thing that we need is a the equivalent of a flight-simulator for raping mothers and daughters.

Boing Boing, I can’t believe that you would post even a section of this game on you site. That was extremely poor judgment on your part and I hope you don’t do this again. Not to say that the article itself was made in poor taste, however.

zio_donnie

it’s always encouraging to see people willing to step back and reconsider. makes one optimistic for the future.

personally i am a by-product of the american pop culture. i grew up listening to the dead kennedys, suicidal tendencies, christian death and the more controversial an album or a film was the more it attracted me. my room was filled with HR Giger posters and ramones records.

my parents hated it but they never trashed my records or grounded me for my tastes. they would much prefer if i had joined a sports team in my school but they talked to me about the music i blasted. back at the time i did not give them much importance. for one reason or another all teenagers are angry after all.

i did not become a serial killer, queer bashing rapist. i did not become a blood thirsty satanist by listening to black sabbath and i did not become a junkie ’cause i listened to the sex pistols.

after 20 years i appreciate my parents’ patience. they tought me that personal tastes have nothing to do with being a decent person, different people are not a menace and visceral anger is always a bad counselor.

setting an example is more important than outrage. my grandmas’ house was set on fire twice by the germans in ww2 and my grandpa was a communist partizan killed in the greek civil war. my father never expressed violent anger against the germans or against the right wingers. he always says that rigid ideologies sooner or later will make you do stuff that you will regret. i live by this philosophy.

zio_donnie

@Xopher

i did not name anyone in particular. i don’t care to go back and find the guy that said something in the lines of “i distrust and avoid people who own a copy of GTA” but i don’t think it was you. but if you felt that my comment was about you it means that you choose your friends not for what they are but what they appear to be based on their taste for entertainment. if judging a book by its cover is how you relate with others is none of my business, but it remains disturbing. adults with the mentality of 8 year olds are always disturbing.

@Sean Blueart

my attitude is sardonic but not uncaring. i believe that the world has serious problems and i try to do my part but the “think of the children” crowd strikes my nerves as hypocritic. couch surfer activists that see evil everywhere but in their own selves.

much talk about GTA but noone talks about the real soldiers that return from iraq with PTSD and kill and rape(check the excellent salon.com articles on this) noone accuses the army as much as they do videogames. BTW guns kill people not DVDs. where’s the uproar against idiotic gun laws that allow deranged teens to get their hands on real machine guns?

much talk about rape, incest and child molesters but see what happened to the paedophile priests. noone called for banning the christian church but kids are sent to jail for taking snaps of their own bodies.

so i am sarcastic and cynic for a good reason. REAL facts are brushed under the carpet while sensationalist crap like this game make the front pages.

OMG think of the children. children are young not retarded, so they can distinguish very well between fact and fiction. that is prov by thee fact that 30 million kids that bought violent video games last year did not become 30 million suicide killers. stop treating them as idiots.

dculberson

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.

GregLondon

I’ve typed up a long message, then deleted it, then typed up another long message, then deleted it. I think what I realized is that there are certain reactions on this thread that are visceral, and really, nothing I say will change that kind of reaction.

everdown

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…

zio_donnie

@ xopher

“But one could also say that Ice-T’s song wasn’t the best approach to the problem of racist cops, since it was over the outrage line, i.e. it was extreme enough that the average person would be horrified by it”

rock bands (at least the ones that have something to say) are not politicians. they do not have to respect a moral code and are not meant to produce mall friendly music. they just try to raise issues as best as they can. and provoking outrage is an excellent way to raise awareness.

or you prefer sesame street “rockers” like coldplay and bono that talk like your average politician?

i prefer jello biafra and mojo nixon that have something to say:

Peggy Sue
Got pregnant
And was addicted to fifteen drugs
She went down
To the abortion clinic
And was accosted
By right wing thugs

Oh will the fetus
Be aborted
By and by Lord
By and by
There’s a better
Home awaiting
In the sky Lord
In the sky

Little Mary
Was just eleven
And she was raped
By her own dad
Danny Quayle said
Have that baby
But another choice
She had

Oh will the fetus
Be aborted
By and by Lord
By and by
There’s a better
Home awaiting
In the sky Lord
In the sky

Annie’s pregnancy
Would kill her
Doctor’s warning
Gave her strife
Fundamentalists
Said Jesus take her
She said, I want
My right to life

Oh will the fetus
Be aborted
By and by Lord
By and by
There’s a better
Home awaiting
In the sky Lord
In the sky

Kathy had two
Kids already
And an abortion
Is what she chose
Christian showed her
A bloody fetus
She said That’s fine
I’ll have one of those.

Oh will the fetus
Be aborted
By and by Lord
By and by
There’s a better
Home awaiting
In the sky Lord
In the sky

Tanya lived for
Revolution
Wanted to overthrow
The state
She had fifteen
Commie babies
Phylis Schlafly
Ain’t that great?

Or will the fetus
Be aborted…

sirkowski

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.

GabrielMSharp

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.

Oren Beck

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.

zio_donnie

BTW think of how freedom of speach promotes civilization.

in the “innocent” 50′s, racism, wife beating and queer bashing was the norm yet there was no internet, violent video games, mass pornography and “adult” comics to promote them.

in our “end times” of moral decay we have all of those things yet a black man is president of the US, a woman is the PM of Germany and a transexual got elected in the Italian parlament.

what is your take on this? mine is that freedom is feeding itself. responsability makes things better not ignorance. explain to your kids that evil does exist and educate them to avoid it. don’t pretend that evil does not exist by trying to sterilize their culture.

yoyopron

@ 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.)

ab5tract

@257

You have officially lost me. I didn’t mean re assert any such thing, only to apologize for it happening originally. I’m here trying to dialog, and am not premeditating any tactics here.

What I said about politeness was to clarify that I a) didn’t see the issue that proved how stupid I am (#252), unless b) you thought I meant human rights, when c) I meant the right not to be spoken ill of.

rAMPANTiDIOCY

the people who play this game c) need to get laid.

Xopher

Well…I have to say “right on, Zio.”

Anonymous

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.

pyster

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.

Anonymous

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.

failix

Rape is bad because it hurts (in many ways) other individuals. This game doesn’t hurt other individuals, so in the state of a fantasy, or an imaginary setting, rape isn’t harmful, and apparently for some, even enjoyable. Again, it’s just porn.

And please, please! Stop comparing it to GTA! GTA is not porn.

Anonymous

I don’t think the people who play this are necessarily anymore dangerous than people who play first person shooters or other violent games. These game aren’t new. After searching for hentai games I found called one called Popotan who’s screen shot is of a girl that appears to be a minor masturbating and another rape sim called Virgin Roster Shukketsubo.

@jake how are these game in anyway marketed to children?

Anonymous

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.

buddy66

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?

Anonymous

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

Manooshi

I have a friend who has PTSD for never having gotten treatment for rape, because she has morally conservative parents, and could never confide in them about her trauma. (She was raped and beaten long ago. And then drunkenly date-raped by her ex long ago as well). Her alcoholic ex is a coward and a liar. He partially contributed to her having PTSD now, and can never admit it. Her therapist for treatment she finally receives now– tells her that alcoholics often have problems accepting responsibility for anything. And yeah, rape-victims with PTSD are pretty normal people that others should not be afraid of. I assume that PTSD comes in varying degrees and colors and shapes– especially when it’s a result of so many different kinds of traumas.

grimc

@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?

Daedalus

@ 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?

ab5tract

Unless you meant d) doesn’t apply to my point?

I see where you are coming from, now. Unless I don’t.

failix

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.

buddy66

@#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 â€” the games, not the kids, who are angels come to earth â€” 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.

matthb

@210: “Both times I was taken aback and stunned. I thought it was truly F&%#$ and would not participate in this, as much as I loved them I could not breach this limit even in play and intimacy. This was the case even though I felt that they were reaching out in an attempt to heal scars and lick wounds.”

You need to read that NYT mag article (linked @#187). It’s not about wanting to be raped and probably not about healing. It’s complicated but it APPEARS to be about wanting to be wanted.

ab5tract

Though before I can really bow out of this, I just want to point out that I am far from convinced that GTA doesn’t contribute to gun violence. That kind of assertion is just as broad as claiming that it does. Neither of which I think is proven definitively at this point. (For instance, if GTA increases the degree of violent incidents rather than the number, that would be a hard correlation to prove statistically.)

Not to mention the fallacy of false equivalency in your (GTA : Gun violence) :: (Rape Sim : Violence against women). You ask why we should believe that it does contribute, while I ask why we should believe that it doesn’t.

And in all cases, to reiterate, I am not calling for censorship. Which leaves me only outrage.

ab5tract

Either way when I was talking about sensitivity I was reacting to how awful “enjoy your butt sex, fag” sounded and apologizing if my phrasing was that offensive. While clarifying that I never prepared myself for sensitivity issues re: rape sim fans.

Xopher

That “right on” was for 357.

Though I must say I like 358 too. I agree that musicians are not politicians. But there are still some things that wind up being over the top and become totally ineffective.

Diluted

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.

;)

Anonymous

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.

minTphresh

greg, abstract, etc… i hear ya. rape is probly the most heinous thing you could do to another person. it robs them of their very self, and causes them to question everything in their life, and in many cases whether or not to keep living it. i’ve seen men and women live thru it, and none are ever really the same person again. that being said, i’ve had more than one woman who truly desired the fantasy of it, and because i loved them, i eventually got over my revulsion of it, and came to actually enjoy it. it doesn’t make me want to go out and molest anyone. i think it does make me more attracted to the type of woman who would be into that ( whatever that means) sort of play. although my last two girlfriends weren’t into that, and i never brought it up. does that make me a bad person?

TallDave

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.

Anonymous

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.

GregLondon

kababok@228: xopher: That is the most homophobic statement here. As long as you don’t “recieve” you tell yourself you’re not gay.

(COUGH) (HACK) (HAAAAKKK!)

Damnit man! I think you made me snort my own tonsils!

crap that hurt.

acx99

can you get an instagib mod for it?

Tdawwg

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?

arkizzle

Xoph’

Belated: So Say We ALL!

/Embiggened

Xopher

JerkZilla 194: He was speaking metaphocially during online play. It was supposed to be funny.

Oh. Well, it failed.

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.

Lovely. “Sodomized” as a metaphor for losing a game. That doesn’t strike you as just a wee big homophobic? Even if you consider it solely forcible sodomy (i.e. rape), that’s still pretty fucked up. What kind of games do you PLAY, anyway? When I was a kid, it was “last one in is a rotten egg!” and all they did was CALL you a rotten egg, if they even remembered after all the splashing. When did that become “last one in has to grease himself and let us all take turns!”?

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.”

Donkey Kong does not, as far as I know, contain enactments of tormenting and terrorizing realistic-looking people (I’m safe there, as it doesn’t even have any such people). And I said I would refuse to associate with someone who played RapeLay more than once (once is “see what this game is about” and so on; twice—you like it). I distrust people who play GTA, and so far in this thread the players have presented evidence that I’m right. And if you cheat at games the way you cheat in conversation, I’m not surprised you’re reduced to playing against machines.

Buddy66 195: Actually, even babies get erections. Many a young mother has been shocked to discover this. I certainly did, as a child.

Kababok 196: If you like to stick your penis into another man’s asshole, you are gay! No matter what you say.

Continue to display your ignorance, Kababok. I get the popcorn concession. And if you don’t see the homophobia in what you’ve written in this thread, ask someone who doesn’t think you’re a jackass to explain it to you. If you can find anyone.

Xopher

Zio, if you HAD looked to see who said it, you’d have found that a) it WAS me, and b) I didn’t say quite what you remembered me saying. This would have improved your comment.

Jack

@#56 POSTED BY TALLDAVE

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.

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.

Daedalus

“Daedalus, you are right.”

I agree.

“I hear the next version is going to be way more brutal and realistic.”

Man, when will these developers learn that graphics are not what people play rape simulators for. Have they learned nothing from the Wii?! They should make a rape simulator the WHOLE FAMILY can enjoy! More than just dorky kids play videogames these days!

Also, where do you get your rape simulator news? Is there a blog I should be following? Maybe a new Penny Arcade strip I missed?

GregLondon

xopher: Ice-T’s song wasn’t the best approach to the problem of racist cops, since it was over the outrage line,i>

Are you still squicked by the song and looking for a way to hold on to that squick reaction?

Or have you gotten un-squicked and are looking at it from the point of view of what’s the best thing everyone could do?

I’m just asking, cause I’m not sure. a lot of emotional context gets lost in being translated to plain text, so I can’t hear the tone of your voice to get a sense of where you’re coming from.

The thing is I’m not really proposing the best way to solve the problem of racist cops, it was an example of squick-over-reaction. If people can see they were squicked and can get themselves unsquicked, then I think the solution sort of naturally shows up.

For the video game, I think ab5tract pretty much came to the same conclusion I did. banning it just gets it more attention. it also raises teh question of what the government gets to do in the bedroom. roleplay with 1 person and an AI? roleplay with 2 people?

better to educate people about real rape, I think.

That’s basically what I did with my war porn website. I’m not looking to ban “300″. It would give the government the power to stop movies like “apocalypse now” for having an anti war stance then. We already have bans on images of american dead returning from teh battlefield. Who’s to say that there might be a ban on fictional portrayals of american dead being shipped home and buried in virginia?

But I am looking for a way to come up with a scoring system to show how a story diverges from the realities of real combat. Not so people stop watching movies like “300″, but so that when people watch it, they see the fake and phoney plot twists and don’t cite it as a reason why we should do something militarily in the real world.

i.e. O’Reilley citing “24″ as justification for committing real torture.

the point of the war handwavium score is to point out the reality, i.e. torture does not work. It’s a ten point penalty if you’ve got torture in a work of fiction and it produces useful intelligence.

as far as the video game goes, I think having facts about real rape is more important than trying to condemn people for playing the game. I liked “Kill Bill” but I can watch it knowing I’m watching something about as realistic as the “A-Team”.

Statistically, I think it’s safe to say that most people who might play the game will not become rapists. So targeting the players will target a lot of false positives.

As for Ice T, not every protest is successful. And not every failure is solely the fault of a badly executed protest. Sometimes the country just can’t hear it. The Dixie Chicks and their comment about Bush’s war were no where near anything I would call “over the top”, but it crossed the “outrage” line. There was massive backlash against them, people burning huge piles of their records, they got death threats.

Much of the country was outraged, therefore one could argue that the “crossed the outrage line”. But I would hardly fault them for what they said. The actual comment was about as tame as you could get, but they had the misfortune of saying it during the height of militant neocon fascism in this country.

Which comes back to the whole “squick” thing. Being squicked is a personal reaction. But people who get squicked very often take the personal feeling and turn it around into an attack at the source of what squicked them. They take their personal reaction and attempt to projec it into some kind of moral absolute.

There is no absolute “moral outrage line” to cross. Its just that some topics will cross your squick line and some topics won’t. Where is the absolute outrage line for the Dixie Chicks? There isn’t one. Some people got outraged by what they said. I didn’t. If you didn’t get outraged by their comment, then you’ll probably see the people who did get outraged as overreacting. If you did get outraged by their comment, then you’ll probably come up with some justification to reinforce whatever absolute moral pronouncement you invented in your mind.

Again, I’m not so much trying to figure out the best action to take regarding the video game, IceT’s song, or the Dixie Chick’s comment. But I’m trying to point out to people who are squicked that they are in fact squicked. I’m tryign to point out to people who are outraged at one of these topics to the poitn of blind rage that they are in fact talking from a place of rage rather than from a place of the best response that addresses not only the issue but any new issues that the response creates.

Was IceT’s response teh best possible approach to the problem of racist cops? Maybe not. But I’m not going to claim that it crossed any sort of absolute “outrage line”. some people were outraged. And the Dixie Chicks’s backlash I think is a good example that not all outrage is indicative of the morally superior position.

spazzm

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?

Xopher

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.

Akezys

So, to sum up:

This game exists. The general boingboing audience does not seek censorship of said game. Some see this game as an indicator of systemic violence against women and/or an oppressive patriarchal society and/or indicative of social acceptance. Some don’t and see it as a ‘fantasy’ rather than a reality or indicator. These two groups are not likely to see eye-to-eye.

Can we all call it quits and watch more videos of foxes jumping on trampolines?

jerkzilla

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?

robulus

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.

Anonymous

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

Ugly Canuck

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.

Akezys

(Also note, @ Xopher, etc. : the quoted ‘sodomizing’ of halo players has to do with the simulated act of a player, after killing another player, crouching up and down quickly on the corpse as a simulated sex act (sodomy)). Not condoning or appreciating anything here (I think it is vulgar and rude [along with the aforementioned killing] but it is something that grew out of that community…. somehow.)

Cpt. Tim

“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?

ab5tract

@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.

Xopher

I liked watching the foxes. I think there should be more foxes.

matthb

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?

Xopher

I thought that was teabagging, Akesys. Sodomy usually refers to anal sex, in my experience.

If they’re simulating anal sex with a corpse, I should think the term ‘necrophilia’ would take precedence over ‘sodomy’ to describe the act.

GregLondon

timeline: 2088AD
location: amazon.com

New and Improved! The SB5000! The latest AI Fully Functional SexBot! Turing Complete! Passes Voight-Kampff rev 6! Fully User-Compliant! IQ of approximately 170! Fully conversant and Multi-Lingual! Empathy capacity doubled with twice as many mirror neurons!

(audience: Cool!)

Includes new rape fantasy program!

(audience: Gasp!)

Are we legislating what we can do in our own bedrooms? What we can do in our own living rooms? Are we looking at sexbots that come with “morality programs” that proscribe appropriate sexual behaviour? An entire network of hackers who figure out how to disable these program restrictions?

Or are people having negative visceral responses without the desire to put legal limits in place?

I’m not sure.

No, really, I’m not exactly sure where people are coming from here.

ab5tract

@293

I’m a little scared to get back into this thread, but I thought I should point out that there has been about zero discussion of banning rape simulators.

That is, the visceral reactions have not included calls to take legal recourse, unless I missed a few posts that did.

Anonymous

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?]

Anonymous

@ #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.

pelrun

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?

Catmother

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

ab5tract

@293

I’m a little scared to get back into this thread, but I thought I should point out that there has been about zero discussion of banning rape simulators.

That is, the visceral reactions have not included calls to take legal recourse, unless I missed a few posts that did.

And you are right, all those things are remarkable and do give me a small sense of hope for the future.

Itsumishi

Japan… has a very low incidence of violence against women, this game doesn’t surprise me with it’s existence.

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.

stucco33

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.

ab5tract

@218

A little bird told me.

@219

Yes please.

arkizzle

“..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).

Jack

@#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!

Daedalus

@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!

arkizzle

#57 Jack,

GTA 4 has a “Mature” rating (17+).

Antinous / Moderator

GTA 4 has a “Mature” rating (17+).

“Mature content” and “Adult content” have certainly taken on ironic meaning in the last couple of decades.

azz100c

This game is what we economists call a “substitute good.”

We ought to encourage these, not discourage them.

LogicalDash

Ridiculous comparison. “Piss Christ” was never mass marketed to kids. GTA and these hentai/rape-fantasy games are marketed to kids.

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.

Antinous / Moderator

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.

Xopher

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.

arkizzle

Jack, please provide specific evidence or citation of GTA 4 being specifically marketed toward children.

Schratboy

More societal decay on parade

Sean Blueart

@213: AB5TRACT;

Yes, the next versions will inevitable increase the simulation to a higher sensory level. And here we go, a massively effective opportunity for increased isolation and diversion of energy from human intimacy.

@211: ZARGAS

Yes, There exists lots of opportunity to violate others. Human imagination is rich and violation can happen based on any construct, even ones built on the intention to dissuade harm. Anything can be perverted, that’s a given. My point is, what do you want to do?

Jack

@#73 POSTED BY ARKIZZLE , FEBRUARY 12, 2009 9:20 PM

GTA 4 has a “Mature” rating (17+).

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 never acceptable”.
Bleh, I’m calling out this tired old meme

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.

Anonymous

This is so sexist, i mean, my boyfriend and i concur, why not boys to rape? Sexist game.

nutbastard

Bottom line – there’s no point in banning that which cannot be banned.

Case in point: drugs.

Regardless of the rules, these sort of things have, do, and will always exist. So you can either create another victimless crime and start putting people away for their fantasies, or you can be an objective, intelligent human being and realize that it’s really none of your fucking business what they other guy is doing in his free time, as long he isn’t hurting anyone.

Jack

@#76 POSTED BY LOGICALDASH , FEBRUARY 12, 2009 9:24 PM

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.

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.

GregLondon

I think that mutual kink is fine, although it has been known to go horribly wrong.

most people don’t die because they forget the safeword while playing a videogame.

But all preferences are indicators of some aspect of our inner selves.

You just conflated a whole bunch of different mental processes into a single mental trap. Like “if we think it, we must want to do it”.

If I have any urge to violence, as victim or perpetrator, I want to at least know why.

Hormones, for one. a million years of evolution that developed our lizard brain into what it is today, a system of completely conflicting processes that try to keep us alive, fed, semi-social, and procreating. And safe from sabertooth tigers.

The last thing we are is rational. But before you get to rational, you’ve got an entire litany of things going on consciously, subconsciously, emotionally, and whatever else.

If I could only get off in rape scenes, it would be time to see the therapist.

That doesn’t really have anything to do with the guys playing this game though. You’re sort of implying a slippery slope type of connection: play this game or even think of playing this game and you’ll only be able to get off in rape scenes.

I’m not a therapist, but I do some life coaching. Most of it is dealing with emotional stuff, subconscious stuff, mental stuff people aren’t even aware is affecting them.

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