Why is rape in gaming largely ignored?

[Ramzal]

It's a thing. It happens. It's even a topic that is included in literature, movies, and shows. Why should it be removed from video games? Why are video games the exception? Why should we make it so that certain topics are not allowed within video games at all? If it happens in real life, I fail to see why it should be up to the public to dictate what is expressed artistically in content that is made by those who created it. Rape (like murder) is a crime. It's something that is done to establish "Power" and it has almost nothing to do with sexual desires. Maybe the creator of the content is trying to get across a point as to what that character is if he/she is raping someone.

Maybe that character has felt powerless their entire lives and this is how they establish that they have some form of control of the events in their lives? Maybe it was done to them, so they see very little recourse than to do it to others?

 

[Kopikatsu]

I'm pretty sure rape is a thing somewhere in a metal g ear game but cant for the life of me remember where.

Someone gets raped in pretty much every Metal Gear game. Meryl in 1, Paz in Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes, EVA in 3, etc.

 

[happyninja42]

It's a thing. It happens. It's even a topic that is included in literature, movies, and shows. Why should it be removed from video games? Why are video games the exception? Why should we make it so that certain topics are not allowed within video games at all? If it happens in real life, I fail to see why it should be up to the public to dictate what is expressed artistically in content that is made by those who created it. Rape (like murder) is a crime. It's something that is done to establish "Power" and it has almost nothing to do with sexual desires. Maybe the creator of the content is trying to get across a point as to what that character is if he/she is raping someone.

Maybe that character has felt powerless their entire lives and this is how they establish that they have some form of control of the events in their lives? Maybe it was done to them, so they see very little recourse than to do it to others?

I think one distinction of merit between video games and other forms of media is the tendency for games to put the player in the role of the protagonist. Many people, myself included, inject ourselves into the role of the character we are playing. So then, if you subject the main character to a rape sequence, it becomes more immediate and personal, than if you are just watching it on screen in a movie, without the added layer of connection.

 

[omega 616]

It wasn't recently, I dare you to mention the whole ground zero's rape stuff.

This conversation always turns into "we murder people in games, so why isn't rape ok?".

Thing is killing is cathartic and people do it for sport (though when you do that, it's called hunting 'cos telling the missus "I'm going killing" sounds a little grim, hunting is more palatable). Who hasn't thought "I wish I could kill my boss (or insert person pissing you off at that point in time)". Then when you have killed your foe, that's it for them ... no pain or memories of the event. In rape, that person is shaped and molded by it and they get to live the rest of their lives with that memory.

It is easy to write for a person who dies, writing for a rape gets tricky! So it doesn't happen often, so when it does get written it ... it's not handled with the sensitivity it deserves.

 

[AntiChri5]

The scene in Alpha Protocol is not rape. If you say no, there is no sex. She frees you and leaves. The sex only happens with consent.

I haven't played the game so my info may be false, but I've heard that if your "speech" or "persuasion" or whatever stat is too low she ignores your request and rapes you anyway.

You heard wrong.

The hardest thing with that scene, dialogue wise, is getting it to happen in the first place.

 

[happyninja42]

All of your examples are males, and to equate a male being raped by a woman (and 99% of the time, an attractive one at that) to a woman being raped by anything is silly. I can say as a guy, I don't take men being raped by women seriously. Sorry, I don't. It's not near as prevalent, to the degree that you have to wonder what point the game writer is trying to make. It's never, "males being raped by women is a serious issue."

Really? So when I was 13 and a girl I barely knew tried to take off my pants against my wishes so she could try and have sex with me, I wasn't in a state of defensive panic about it? I wasn't feeling violated, and forcibly having to shove her off of me because I didn't find her desirable, and didn't want to have sex with her?

I was being silly?

Interesting, thanks for putting my personal experience into the proper context, all these years, here I was thinking it was an unwanted sexual advance forced upon me by someone else, irregardless of my personal desires.

 

[Scorpid]

I think the media attitude towards male rape is symptomatic of two other problem media have have when portraying sex. One that men always love to have sex and don't have feel any emotional attachement to their partner, and two that women having sex is treated as the woman having to "sacrifice" but she chooses to because she just loves her partner oh so much or because she's so despicable. So when a woman is raped its something like theft and when a man is raped is like getting something for free. Its not polite to complain about a gift. Both of these ignore the complicated nature of sex both physically and emotionally.

Rape is treated very strangely in the current pop culture because sex is treated very strangely as is violence.

 

[Azure23]

OP Missed one with FC 3, Keith is strongly implied to of been raped by Buck.

OT: it's because men aren't able to be raped, only able to rape.

What. SJW's said so.

I understand that this is a joke, but I don't find it particularly funny. Do you know where I heard that rhetoric from after my assault? Because I promise you it wasn't "sjws" or feminists, it was everyone else. My feminist friends (mostly women, but after awhile I learned that "hey, men are capable of empathy and not being monsters") were about the only people who took what happened to me seriously and were empathetic, they really helped me out, even helped place me with a therapist who specialized in treating child abuse survivors.

Now, at the OP: Unfortunately for survivors of it female on male rape is so uncommon as to be almost statistically non-existent. And the vast majority of male rape is male on male. What this means is that it won't get the attention it deserves or the funding to treat survivors properly and educate people about it, which is terrible, a legitimate tragedy. We need public awareness campaigns telling people that it's ok it get help (male survivors of rape of any kind are much less likely to report it due to the attached stigmas, which on top of fact that rape is one of the most under reported crimes in general means that few survivors will actually get help). Hell we need public awareness campaigns that tell people that it exists period (shitheads like certain people in this thread have determined that it doesn't).
Unfortunately we're at a point where female on male rape is seen as a non-issue (why is a whole nother complicated can of worms, personally I think it's society's perception of sexual masculinity that's to blame, just one survivors opinion).

Games just don't handle it well. They don't. I haven't seen one instance where it was handled with the gravitas or maturity that such a personally shattering event deserves. And I've played a hell of a lot of video games.

 

[TaboriHK]

Really? So when I was 13 and a girl I barely knew tried to take off my pants against my wishes so she could try and have sex with me, I wasn't in a state of defensive panic about it? I wasn't feeling violated, and forcibly having to shove her off of me because I didn't find her desirable, and didn't want to have sex with her?

I was being silly?

Interesting, thanks for putting my personal experience into the proper context, all these years, here I was thinking it was an unwanted sexual advance forced upon me by someone else, irregardless of my personal desires.

It's like in your haste to be offended, you didn't actually pick up any of what I said. This is a lazy titillating throw-in that game makers do, and the reality is, regardless of whether or not you're part of the stat, it's not as prevalent. It isn't. Since rape is a sensitive topic, I'm not going to compare apples to oranges. I find that the original poster trying to conflate the two is pretty damn offensive. You are of course entitled to your opinion based on your personal experience.

 

[Ramzal]

It's a thing. It happens. It's even a topic that is included in literature, movies, and shows. Why should it be removed from video games? Why are video games the exception? Why should we make it so that certain topics are not allowed within video games at all? If it happens in real life, I fail to see why it should be up to the public to dictate what is expressed artistically in content that is made by those who created it. Rape (like murder) is a crime. It's something that is done to establish "Power" and it has almost nothing to do with sexual desires. Maybe the creator of the content is trying to get across a point as to what that character is if he/she is raping someone.

Maybe that character has felt powerless their entire lives and this is how they establish that they have some form of control of the events in their lives? Maybe it was done to them, so they see very little recourse than to do it to others?

I think one distinction of merit between video games and other forms of media is the tendency for games to put the player in the role of the protagonist. Many people, myself included, inject ourselves into the role of the character we are playing. So then, if you subject the main character to a rape sequence, it becomes more immediate and personal, than if you are just watching it on screen in a movie, without the added layer of connection.

Okay then. That's where me not understanding the situation begins is injecting one's self into the role of the character. I tend to not do that unless I am playing a game where I literally create the character from the ground up (Which is pretty much the very few MMO's I've played, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, you can get where I am going with this). Personally, I don't do that because I feel that it's more constructive to see it from the character's perspective as opposed to self-insertion because I'd limit my understanding of a character to my morals and my guidelines as to what is acceptable and not acceptable.

That being said: I can get where you are coming from with self-insertion, and that's cool but it does run the risk of you feeling offended should a character do something you personally would not agree with. I don't think either my method of gaming is correct or yours (and many others) is, but yours involves more immersion while mine has a distanced analytical approach. Those who immerse themselves probably have more fun with games though, but I'm good. Thank you for sharing that perspective.

 

[happyninja42]

Really? So when I was 13 and a girl I barely knew tried to take off my pants against my wishes so she could try and have sex with me, I wasn't in a state of defensive panic about it? I wasn't feeling violated, and forcibly having to shove her off of me because I didn't find her desirable, and didn't want to have sex with her?

I was being silly?

Interesting, thanks for putting my personal experience into the proper context, all these years, here I was thinking it was an unwanted sexual advance forced upon me by someone else, irregardless of my personal desires.

It's like in your haste to be offended, you didn't actually pick up any of what I said. This is a lazy titillating throw-in that game makers do, and the reality is, regardless of whether or not you're part of the stat, it's not as prevalent. It isn't. Since rape is a sensitive topic, I'm not going to compare apples to oranges. I find that the original poster trying to conflate the two is pretty damn offensive. You are of course entitled to your opinion based on your personal experience.

Oh I read what you said just fine. You said that the act of rape against men isn't the same as that against women, and to compare them is silly. I could requote your own line if you wish for a refresher. You gave no clarification that you simply meant in a video game, all you said was it was silly. And to say that a person's pain over an unwanted sexual advance is somehow lessened because of their specific gender, and the gender of the assailant is beyond crude and callous. It doesn't matter what gender either party is, if it's unwanted, it's unwanted. The fact that it's not as prevalent as male on female rape is absolutely irrelavent to the crime itself, and how it's represented. To say that a type of crime is less important simply because it happens less frequently is...well I don't really know what to call that honestly.

You can try and restamp what you said originally with a follow up post to say something else, but what your original post said was pretty crude, so crude in fact, that you felt the need to apologize for how crude your viewpoint was in the post itself. And that's fine, you can have that opinion if you want, but I'm still going to point out the shittiness of it when you present it to the rest of us. You said you don't take rape of men by women seriously, so yeah, you could say I'm offended by that. Please explain to me how you meant that statement without the callous offense in it, though I'm pretty sure you won't be able to.

 

[TaboriHK]

Oh I read what you said just fine. You said that the act of rape against men isn't the same as that against women, and to compare them is silly. I could requote your own line if you wish for a refresher. You gave no clarification that you simply meant in a video game, all you said was it was silly. And to say that a person's pain over an unwanted sexual advance is somehow lessened because of their specific gender, and the gender of the assailant is beyond crude and callous. It doesn't matter what gender either party is, if it's unwanted, it's unwanted. The fact that it's not as prevalent as male on female rape is absolutely irrelavent to the crime itself, and how it's represented. To say that a type of crime is less important simply because it happens less frequently is...well I don't really know what to call that honestly.

You can try and restamp what you said originally with a follow up post to say something else, but what your original post said was pretty crude, so crude in fact, that you felt the need to apologize for how crude your viewpoint was in the post itself. And that's fine, you can have that opinion if you want, but I'm still going to point out the shittiness of it when you present it to the rest of us. You said you don't take rape of men by women seriously, so yeah, you could say I'm offended by that. Please explain to me how you meant that statement without the callous offense in it, though I'm pretty sure you won't be able to.

Listen, I know your experience was traumatic for you. I can't be a judge of that; that's for you to decide. But we are in a thread talking about sex dolls "raping" (and I use the word rape with the heaviest quotations imaginable) men "against their will" and the OP is trying to equate that to real, actual rape. I'm sorry you felt uncomfortable and defensive. Some people get their teeth knocked out by a man. When men rape, it's absolutely horrifying. Forgive me for not being able to summon the same bile for women. I don't see them being the same animals men are. Not in the news, and not in the stats, and not on a minutely basis. It absolutely makes a difference what gender the aggressor is, 99% of the time. There is no comparison. That doesn't take anything away from your experience, but your experience is different.

EDIT: And I'm sorry you had a bad experience, I'm not sorry for what I think. And I didn't say anything about importance, except in the context of the fact that the OP is passive aggressive attempting to water down the importance of the discussion on rape (not that he could possibly succeed, mind you.)

 

[Stats ^1]

The thing is, regardless of whether or not you say it's being ignored or not, the situations you linked to weren't ignored. They were all hammered by controversy.

We're simply beyond their time now.

 

[laraem]

Because you can't convey the feeling of being raped in a video game, there's always a detachment.

In almost all cases, It happens to a character in a cutscene. QTEs during a cutscene still count as cutscene. It might tickle your empathy gland but nothing more. If you don't have control similar to normal gameplay, it's just another cutscene.

Integrating it into gameplay as a narrative experience has never been done properly, and would be rather unsettling propably. I'm thinking of scenes like the microwave hallway in MGS4, the end of SotC, or similarly scripted things like bossfights you are meant to lose. It would hit closer to home, because it would happen to your projected self in the game, not an actor in a cutscene. It would be pretty disturbing, and would require the global narrative to support and contextualize that scene, which is propably pretty hard.

QTE, see that's an interesting mechanic that could work in the future when game writing evolves to be capable of handling more serious issues in the same way a well made, well directed, well acted, and well written film does. A long and unwinnable QTE could be a fucked up but interesting way to have a rape scene in a game, but the whole thing would have to be 100% relevant to the game, have long lasting effects on the narrative and characters and be taken at its utmost serious. It also would probably best that it not happen until the industry itself is much less sexualized and mature. But in the right game it could be an absolutely powerful moment.

I agree with most of your post, but QTE's are not the way to do it.
Watching a movie while someone throws rolled up pieces of paper at you that you need to swat away isn't immersive or engaging, and certainly doesn't enhance the experience.
That's why I said it in my original post.

It would have to be in gameplay. It can, or maybe must, be heavily scripted, but it must still feel like gameplay.
Take the ending of SotC again. You are being sucked into the Well. That could've just been a cutscene, bam and it's over.
Instead, you still control your character like usual, but you face an unwinnable struggle as yourself in the game. You lose, not your character.

That's a thing that's unique to games, have things happen to you, the player. No other medium can properly do that.

The reason I said QTE (and sorry what I really meant was mash X, Mash Y, Mash whatever repeatedly) is that the mashing, that insane, stupid struggled to mash the button fast enough (but in this case you could never do it fast enough) could be an effective way. Set it up so that if you just say fuck this and stop mashing you get game over, have it set that you have to make a certain speed (not too fast but not too slow) consistently or game over.

 

[Piorn]

-snip-

The reason I said QTE (and sorry what I really meant was mash X, Mash Y, Mash whatever repeatedly) is that the mashing, that insane, stupid struggled to mash the button fast enough (but in this case you could never do it fast enough) could be an effective way. Set it up so that if you just say fuck this and stop mashing you get game over, have it set that you have to make a certain speed (not too fast but not too slow) consistently or game over.

I see your idea, but I feel it still needs a stronger connection to the gameplay.
Like for example, if you had an infinite swarm of aliens coming down a hallway and you always press X to shoot, then you'd need to mash X faster to keep them away and the difficulty will ramp up until you're eventually overwhelmed. Maybe add reload times too like in gameplay. Anything to make it clear that you're still playing the same game.

Just mashing a random button just to simulate a struggle isn't the way to go. It can work sometimes, but ideally, you'll have to have the same struggle you have in normal gameplay, but streamlined into something cinematic. If Normal gameplay already has a button that's being pressed repeatedly, you could incorporate that, like in my example.

It really depends on the gameplay you already have.

 

[Generalissimo]

Yes it happens it games sometimes, yes we all know it's bad. Are you suggesting in the slightest that I'll play one of those games and suddenly turn into a criminal. There's a line in the sand between fiction and reality and we know where it lies. This isn't an issue, or at least it shouldn't be.