Gay Marriage, Child Molestors, Torture, Abortion & Nihilism

[Rednog]

Uhh torture has been in games for a while now, hell the infamous torture scene in MGS1 where you had to damn near break your controller to beat it.
Child Molesters, the recent Silent Hill: Downpour, the main character's kid was killed by a child molester and pops up a couple of times.

 

[trooper6]

People keep pointing out that gay marriage *is* dealt with in games..and you respond by regularly saying this:

Birth/marriage are kind of joint issues that games need to start acknowledging at some point if the medium is ever gonna mature.

...which is a non-sequitor.

There are games that deal with birth/marriage. There are games that deal with gay marriage. Off the top of my head:

Mass Effect 3 (Cortez was married to a man)
Skyrim
All the Fable games
The Sims

then there are the games that don't have gay marriage, but have gay people in them.

Could we have more gay representation in games? Heck, yeah! But the subject isn't completely absent.

 

[evilneko]

You know, I was thinkin... if they made a game based on Kojika, I bet they could squeeze in pretty much all of these. I could totally see Reiji going through a nihilistic phase... [small]Well, okay, maybe the torture thing might require some Alternate Character Interpretation or Flanderization.[/small]

Granted, I'm not sure quite how you'd make a game based on Kojika without it becoming a Viz Novel...

 

[Emiscary]

You know, I was thinkin... if they made a game based on Kojika, I bet they could squeeze in pretty much all of these. I could totally see Reiji going through a nihilistic phase... [small]Well, okay, maybe the torture thing might require some Alternate Character Interpretation or Flanderization.[/small]

Granted, I'm not sure quite how you'd make a game based on Kojika without it becoming a Viz Novel...

Bonus points for being trope savvy

 

[Sehnsucht Engel]

I would love a game with all of these things XD

I don't know, torture can't be that rare? And the others, well, maybe in the future though The sims already features gay marriage, but not with any good story...

 

[The White Hunter]

Swat 4 had that one level with the bloke who killed kids. I think it was implied that he molested them as well.
MGS has the torture scenes too.

But yeah, they're touchy subjects. Big companies don't want to risk the bad press because they might sell less, and it's even worse for little companies who could get shut down if their game has some bad shit in it.

I remember a lovely torture scene from MGS3 where snake gets his eye shot out.

Also because business, alot of people plain just wouldnt be interested in games that made a big point of adressing these issues so why make a game about it?

Fuck those people, those people are boring

Yes, they are xD I personally would like to see games tackle a greater variety of issues than the typical rpg fare, or "america is disliked by country x"

 

[katsumoto03]

It would be a terrible idea to put all of these things in one game, especially if you want to give them all equal amounts of attention. Most of them don't go together (what does gay marriage have to do with torture or child molestation?).

 

[endtherapture]

Torture? Have you not found that recording in Bioshock which holds the sounds of a man being interrogated using electricity?

I wanna see it represented in a non disney fashion. It's only ever *implied* to happen, it doesn't actually happen. If there was a more visceral representation of the act you'd get a much much stronger reaction to it. (Also: Saw, Hostel & The Human Centipede. I win.)

(Quoting myself again, due to response similarity.)

Go play Manhunt if you want to kill people in terrible ways in games.

In The Witcher 2 someone gets their eyes cut out on screen if that tickles your fancy.

 

[DoPo]

This argument:

"I'm perfectly for dark/mature/controversial content... ...but that dark/mature/controversial content is off limits."

Is always stupid.

No, I think it's perfectly valid. People have their comfort zones. Some can take dead baby jokes, other can't. Then the first ones might have another topic uncomfortable to them, but the second ones might be OK with it. Try playing a PnP RPG if you get the chance - things can get really heated there. World of Darkness hits the comfort zones problem a lot. The whole nature of the game is to be dark and disturbing. And the players are generally ready the things to be dark and disturbing. But you never know if a topic will come up that will be touchy to a player. Want to include rape? What if one of the players had been raped in the past and doesn't like the thought of it? Want to include a character's family dying horribly? What if a player has lost a family member and doesn't like that? Want to have a character tortured and mutilated in graphical detail? Well, it might be safe to assume that none of the players has been tortured or mutilated but you could still disturb them. Not all dark themes are all right with each and every person, but if they don't like just X, why should they skip the whole alphabet over it?

Spoony had somewhat of a similar experience [http://spoonyexperiment.com/2011/11/06/counter-monkey-vampire-spoonys-jyhad/]. For a TL; DW version (and minor spolers of the awesome) - he enrolled in a Vampire the Requiem LARP and on the first night his character showed up, other players abducted him because he wasn't part of one of the dominating groups in that city (the Invictus or the Lancea Sanctum). So he was tortured (IC only) in order to convert (the Lancea Sanctum did it. Lovely dudes, aren't they). He was pissed off (OOC...and IC) by that because it ruined the game for him. Well, Spoony's character, long story short, basically blew up the Prince along with the whole building around him and pretty much the entire cast of characters there.

 

[Emiscary]

It would be a terrible idea to put all of these things in one game, especially if you want to give them all equal amounts of attention. Most of them don't go together (what does gay marriage have to do with torture or child molestation?).

I'm not saying I wanna see a game that features all of them in equal volume (that would probably be one hell of a depressing & oddly campy game), but why the hell shouldn't game devs take a crack at dealing with "controversial" subject matter?

(Amazes me how often the response to people's comments is something I've already said -.-)

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Child Molestors - touchy subject.

Not sure if intentional but I laughed so hard.

 

[George_Harvey_Bone]

If some Eastern European game developer ever makes "The Cellar: Fun with the Fritzls", I imagine that would tick a few of your boxes...

 

[DoPo]

Child Molestors - touchy subject.

Not sure if intentional but I laughed so hard.

Oh fuck...it wasn't intentional. And now I cannot unsee it. Can't stop laughing either. Better edit it. Is that better?

Child Molestors - touchy subject. Games makers try to keep their hands away from the depictions of kids especially where they are hurt, because may pressure the media to come for them

 

[Twilight_guy]

They don't sell well. Games with controversial issues like that have been made and they go over like a lead balloon. If your game is about child killing its not going to sale because the subject matter is too dark. Games like this aren't financially viable.

 

[Vigormortis]

Actually, I'm fairly certain all of those have been used or touched upon in various games from across the gaming timeline/spectrum. All but perhaps abortion. I can't think of any direct examples of it.

But gay marriage, nihilism, torture, and child molesters (and rapists in general) have been presented in game form. Perhaps, in most cases, solely as a means-to-an-end. Like, say, making a villain a child-molester/rapist to make him/her seem more "evil". (though Nihilism is one of the more common motivations for various game villains)

I'm almost positive, however, that no game has ever actually "addressed" those issues; which I believe is what you meant. I've never seen nor heard of a game that brought up any of those topics in a manner of debating their place, relevance, and moral/ethical meanings in society.

 

[kingpocky]

I guess gay marriage could be included in a Harvest Moon game? That'd be interesting perhaps.

Apparently it was. In one Harvest Moon game with a female main character, you could have a "best friends ceremony" where another girl moves in with you, and you eventually adopt a child. Only in the Japanese version though. In the translation, they took the option out, but left in everything up to actually proposing. I'll bet that annoyed a few people.

 

[Unsilenced]

Far Cry 2 was basically about nihilism. At the end of the game you die and a resounding 0 fucks are given by the world for everything you ever did. Apparently the fact that the war even happened only shows up on, like, one guy's shitty blog somewhere. Every choice you make, everyone you kill or spare, means an absolute grand total of Butt. Fucking. Nothing.

And then there's the Jackal. He spends the entire game giving speeches about nihilism.



Torture... come on. Amnesia much?



The rest are hard to put into a game in a meaningful way. Yeah you can get married to someone of the same sex in Skyrim, but that's a sort of hollow, meaningless gesture. The *ISSUE* doesn't even come up. It's just kinda-sorta-so-happens that everyone in Skyrim just happens to swing both ways.

Abortion... well there are probably a few things people could point out that parallel the issue, but I can't think of any direct mentions.

Child Molesters... I think there have been games where it's implied that one or another character molests children, just as a throw-away to make them more evil. Nothing dealing with it seriously though that I can think of.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

If someone were to include child molsters in a game, they would be dismissed as badly written because they were over the top.

go looking for a fan game where you play as high school girl that seeks younger boys for love. Some actually took the time to make that type of game in the old rpg gamer 2001, I won't disclose any title or more information because even I have some ethics.

 

[Erttheking]

If someone were to include child molsters in a game, they would be dismissed as badly written because they were over the top.

go looking for a fan game where you play as high school girl that seeks younger boys for love. Some actually took the time to make that type of game in the old rpg gamer 2001, I won't disclose any title or more information because even I have some ethics.

I thought we were talking about villainous child molesters.