After noticing this article from CNN [http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/30/japan.video.game.rape/index.html?hpt=C2] on my homepage, I just had to post it here. It concerns the game RapeLay, as well as the very old, though CNN describes it as if it is new, controversy that came with it. Basically, it ends up boiling down to this: should Japan ban games such as this, especially since they have now reached international attention?
I find this intriguing. Honestly, I'm slightly offended that someone would even ask this question. I don't feel like we, as Westerners, have the right to say that Japan shouldn't release media with content such as this, especially considering how much we are supposed to respect freedom of speech. It just comes of as if people are judging a culture they don't know very well harshly because they find something in it, which they are unwilling to look at through the eyes of the place from which it emerged, objectionable. Granted, this is not to say that rape is approved of in Japan, but rather to state that the game itself may not be considered strange there, at least by some portion of the population, and that we don't really have a right to impede upon their culture with our own.
So basically, rather than the controversy surrounding RapeLay, I'd rather this discussion be about examples of cultural imperialism, from any culture against any other, in video games. For instance, is it really proper to criticize certain gameplay elements that may be popular in Japanese games when these titles are released in the west?
I find this intriguing. Honestly, I'm slightly offended that someone would even ask this question. I don't feel like we, as Westerners, have the right to say that Japan shouldn't release media with content such as this, especially considering how much we are supposed to respect freedom of speech. It just comes of as if people are judging a culture they don't know very well harshly because they find something in it, which they are unwilling to look at through the eyes of the place from which it emerged, objectionable. Granted, this is not to say that rape is approved of in Japan, but rather to state that the game itself may not be considered strange there, at least by some portion of the population, and that we don't really have a right to impede upon their culture with our own.
So basically, rather than the controversy surrounding RapeLay, I'd rather this discussion be about examples of cultural imperialism, from any culture against any other, in video games. For instance, is it really proper to criticize certain gameplay elements that may be popular in Japanese games when these titles are released in the west?
