Gay Marriage, Child Molestors, Torture, Abortion & Nihilism

[Archer666]

Drakengard takes care of the child molestor thing. Your partymate is a pedophile! And in the game you murder child soldiers with such zeal that even your partymembers are crying for you to stop!

Gay marriage doesn't need to be in a game, but if gay romance could be equally presented it would be pretty swell! Or even depicting gays as regular people without the whole THIS PERSON IS SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY GAY! A GAY GUY!

Abortion has no place in video games. Neither does torture. Both are extremely personal experiences that you can't simply replicate in a video game correctly.

 

[evilneko]

Y'know, it occurs to me that a game based on A Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire could also very easily blend in all of these subjects. It would also have the benefit of lending itself to an actual game better than my earlier idea of a Kojika game.

 

[Grygor]

Child Molesters: I'm sure there's been some Japanese visual novel dating sim where the... um, "Participants" in said date aren't of legal age. I suppose that would count.

Dunno, the age of consent in Japan is low, I think it's 13 or something. Which means that any teenager would be "legal". Then again, I wouldn't put it past them to have a game with characters who are even younger. Say, 12 to deal with the whole "feels right, but it's wrong" angle. Or the characters may even be 8 or something, who knows.

The national age of consent is 13 - but every prefecture and many cities have set a higher age of consent, usually 16 to 18.

 

[mental_looney]

Hmm abortion which you could also include miscarriage as there is none of that either, I don't see what it adds I mean it's a very personal experience for the person who has it and is a different experience for men and women and the circumstances play into it greatly, there are only the there was something wrong with the baby we were devastated or it was a hard decision but I had to make it and chose what was best for me, types of stories in the media already. The problem with these is they are fundamentally female centric stories and very hard to write convincingly without experience.
The same really applies for stories about pregnancy, birth and that whole area it's wonderful and horrible all at the same time but I don't see how they would fit into an interactive medium, without bringing it down to base mechanics of this is how you have babies or interactive novel type drama.

 

[paislyabmj]

I think silent hill 2 contains child molestation themes but since I have never played it I don't really know.

 

[Saviordd1]

This was a pretty good torture scene especially for the time it came out.

 

[Unsilenced]

ITT: We all forget that Amnesia: Justine ever happened.

If a game in which you can stretch a man on a rack until he splits in half doesn't count as having addressed torture, I'm pretty sure nothing will.

And then there's The Dark Decent, which has less torture taking place during it, but still has the whole "graphic descriptions that you can/have to read" thing, and deals more with how fucked up torture really is on a psychological level. It's all about how Daniel

Spoiler: amnesia

became the raving, psychopathic torturer and murderer he was before he wiped his memory, and how he justified his own actions in his head. Listening to him mock his victims, assuming he can do no wrong to them since they are "evil," is scarier than any monster.

If that somehow doesn't qualify as "having adressed torture," I'm pretty sure nothing will short of a game entitled "Torture 101, introductory torture" consisting entirely of a semester's worth of lectures by a college professor detailing both historical torture and the basics of torture physiology.




Also, Far Cry 2 was a lecture in nihilism. Like literally, the Jackal just straight-up lectures you on nihilism through the entire game. I was almost surprised he didn't give me a final exam on it.

 

[Solo-Wing]

Two of those subjects I am willing to talk about and defend. 2 more I do not want to touch with a twenty meter pole. and the fifth I have no idea what it is.

Anyways each of the topics have been used in games. Just not all at once.

I know that Torture is in quite a few. Remember Black ops? The broken Glass in the mouth scene? I know I do.

And I am sure if you look for the others in games you will find them.

 

[ElPatron]

Because while we are busy arguing about whether gaming is an art form or not, we don't strive to be taken seriously and deal with serious things.

While pretty much every other art form has touched said issues.

"OH NOES THE NEW GAME ALLOWS YOU TO PLAY AS THE TALIBAN! OH MY GOD ITS SO MUCH WORSE THAN PLAYING AS GERMANS OR RUSSIANS BECAUSE THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING!"

I wanted Six Days in Fallujah. Thanks a lot.

 

[Pyramid Head]

Objection! Mass Effect 2 DID speak out against torture!

Again, purely implied- never actually demonstrated.

"Look at the poor jabbering insane man in a completely sealed body suit! *See* how he's suffered! *Hear* the pain in his voice. Doesn't he just sound totally distraught? ... You still here? Go shoot some robots in the face."

Objection again, you shoot more Batarians and Turians in the face than robots in that mission. HA! Still, speaking out that it's common sense that torture is pointless is still SOMETHING. Barely... but the other details like child--

Wait, child molester? In Killer7 you kill a child molester! It probably doesn't count for much because Suda51 was just piling on the evil villain cliches, but again, it's something. As for abortion you see people eat a lot of eggs and destroy a lot of nests in video games. Why is it such a big deal with people and not reptiles? Why is it that with us it's an abortion and with chickens it's an omelet? I DEMAND CHICKEN REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS! LET THEM CHOOSE WHETHER OR NOT THEIR CHILDREN LIVE OR ARE SUNNY SIDE UP!


But seriously, you want a game that really speaks out against these subjects? First you're going to have to get people to make smarter games instead of countless identical cheap action games. And actually be prepared to defend it for when the sensationalist media and the rabid dumbasses at Fox News jump all over it.