You Can't Be the Hero If You're the Rapist

[Gashad]

Hmm, I would say my gut feeling is that games like that are bad(they feel wrong). However I cannot rationally explain why rapelay is bad while GTA series is ok. I would view murder worse, or at least as bad as rape. Moreover I seem to remember that when playing a GTA game at a friends(can't remember which game think it was one of those that came between 3 and 4), one of the missions was literally to cause as much mayhem as possible(Mainly consisting of machinegunning down civilians and blowing up cars), which would indicate that the game actually encouraged the player to act like that, so the argument that in GTA its a choice may not be entirely accurate.

So as I cannot rationally explain why GTA is ok while Rapelay is bad I have to go with that both are ok. Moreover I believe that censorship of all kinds is inherently evil.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Defend the censorship of a game about rape all you want, but that cover potentially advertises child rape too, and theres no way in hell anyone can say THAT shouldn't be censored.

People can, and [a href=http://www.japanator.com/elephant/post.phtml?pk=8753]have[/a]. Whether you think they have argued their point successfully, that is certainly debatable. I happen to agree with them. I can't fathom the benefit of trying to draw a line through the grey murkiness of whether a given fictional image represents pedophilic content, especially when a child was not harmed by the creation of the image, and I haven't seen any conclusive studies indicating that the existence of the media cultivates an environment that encourages harm to children (both grounds on which I COULD see the benefit).

By the way I find it interesting that almost all of the people arguing in favor of simulated rape are male. I guess men just don't have to worry about it as often.

Much as most "pro-choice" individuals would rather not be referred to as "pro-abortion", I think most of us in this thread, dare I say all of us, would classify ourselves as "anti-arbitrary-censorship", not "in favor of simulated rape", thankyouverymuch. There is a social good to discouraging people from yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater... where is the social good in censoring rape in media?

LOL Nihilism, because nothing has an objective purpose and the universe just is what it is.

LOL @ "LOL" as a refutation of an established philosophical worldview. Oh, look, I can be sarcastically dismissive too!

P.S. Props to whoever raised the question of A Clockwork Orange. When I was mocking everyone earlier for the implications of their stance in other media, I couldn't think of a good example. So, how about that, everyone in favor of a ban/censorship? Are you ready to ban A Clockwork Orange, both the best selling novel and the acclaimed Stanley Kubrick film adaptation? If there were a game, with Alex as the protagonist, would we have to leave out the rape?

 

[Tales of Golden Sun]

This whole uproar about some rapegame just shows how people live in fear these days.
"OH NOES, WHAT IF THIS GAME INSPIRES PEOPLE TO RAPE?"

If people want to rape, they rape. They do so because they don;t give a shit about the consequences.
These games are for people who have sexual fantasies about rape, but don't want to go to jail or bring trauma to their victims.

So it really doesn't matter

 

[omega 616]

The phrase going round in circles comes to mind .....

6 pages of rape is wrong ... no rape is justified (how? you killed someone so I'll rape you?) .... rape and murder/manslaughter are bad as each other ... playing devils advocate ..... [insert dark distastful joke] .... and everyone is eager to show off there Freudulant analogys or that they took a psych class. (I know im adding to the mix but I just love irony that much ... I even spell perfetc wrong on purpose ^_^)

So some of you want to rape people in games, others think we should tone violence down, I think we should make manhunt 2 like it was meant to be before they waterd it so far down it would make a good childs game (I hanv't played it but I bet its that bad)

I find rape in a game to be .... unessercery, everytime a female npc appears on screen she has clothes on than homless guy with breasts bigger than her head, (how many guys out there have looked at lara croft for a little to long?) I think we have more than enough sexual content (not just in games, you cant flick a tv on without 2 people going at it and how many pages are there on the net of porn? how many dvds of porn? how many cinema films have sex in? how many girls flashing in town centres? how many revealing dresses are on sale?) these days without making a game forcing people to have sex against there will. If however you do want to have sex with pixels play leisure suit larry, how many of them are there? ... at least them pixels constent ....

I wonder if the next game japan will come up with will be selling people into sex slavery ... sex slave tycoon maybe?

 

[CircuitDruid]

Basically: making a generic assumption on the demographic of this thread, I cant help but assume that the majority of you have an inherent bias (which is kind of a positive thing if you consider all the negative attention these games are provoking).
Most of us have experienced violence at some point, even if only to a small degree. however I find it highly unlikely that anyone posting here has ever been subjected to, or been close to someone else who has been subjected to sexual assault. If you have I can only salute your bravery posting here.

Is rape better than death? well I dunno is rape better than torture? why the hell do we need to compare an apple to an orange? To my knowledge there is not a video game based solely on the phisical torture of other people, and if there are one or two deviants out there, its hardly a booming industry.
The article states that violence in games is almost always towards some heroic goal. In a video game we are given a scenario where violence is acceptable. The problem, having had to examine a few of these rape games in the past, is that they attempt to create a situation where rape is acceptable. Hell in the end most of the physically improbable girls seem to be enjoying themselves.

This is not an acceptable alternate reality.
A rape victim goes through no less trauma than the most hardened of war veterans. In my experience it affects the victim for the rest of their lives, drastically altering their personality, their health and their overall well being. I can kind of imagine someone who's lived through being shot at some point picking up a copy of halo and shooting at some pixelated dudes for fun, cant say I imagine a rape victim picking up one of these games.

I don't believe in legal censorship, but I believe in social censorship; and quite frankly if japan decides to ban the making of these games I'm not going to have a moral dilemma over it.
omega 616 has it right on the head, there's plenty of willing pixelated girls out there. Heck take a shower comb your hair and step out of the front door you might even find a real girl who wont pepper spray you.

At least until she sees the new game you just bought home from japan.

 

[BGH122]

Normally, I'd agree with the whole, "good and evil are constructs" but...
No.
Even in cultures where a husband is expected to kidnap and have sex with a new bride, no matter her will...
Just no.
There is a difference between accepting other cultures and treating them with the distance one does with an animal eating its own young. We're social creatures, and we must follow social rules. Sure, good and evil is relative to the society, but whether or not you want to admit it, you're a part of this culture, and if you don't believe that rape is wrong, then you're a sick, disgusting person.
So if you want to participate in modern Western society, get with the program, or get out.

There is no logic to be analysed in this post. It is equatable to you posting "Some cultures and people say rape is right. My culture and people say rape is wrong. Therefore rape is wrong." It's just pointless. There's no reason to post that since it isn't an argument.

`

And you just posted a straw-man fallacy.
If you need to simplify my post, it goes: "Some cultures say rape is right. This culture says rape is wrong. If you want to participate in this culture, but believe that rape is right, then by this society's standards, you are not properly participating. Therefore, if you want to participate in this culture, then you need to conform to society's standards, or not participate in this society."

That is a logically sound argument. You can write a logical proof for that. Whether it is "right or wrong" is a matter of personal opinion, but it is logical.

Okay, you've got more kick to you than I appreciated but your argument is still hideously biased. You're saying that your culture says that rape is wrong and cannot be justified, but since I proved (or believe I proved) with my Ayush the Space Cowboy example that rape can be justified then your argument becomes incredibly extremist as you have to say that there is genuinely no circumstance which would mitigate rape, which Western Civilisation would plainly disagree with.

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

This article made me sign up just so I can post here.

Much of what I wanted to say is already here; I'm in this 193 comments too late. So, I'll go back to the points on which I disagree with the article. Disagreeing is much more fun anyway.

Point #1: "Rape, on the other hand, can never be justified."

I find this unlikely. Every other crime in gaming is justified by some paper-thin explanation, usually "I'm saving the world." What makes rape sacrosanct? Is it because the victims are so traumatized? The difference between rape and murder is not the magnitude of the after effects, but only on who experiences them. Rape victims hold it themselves, in murder the trauma passes to all loved ones.

A more direct proof would be a rape-justifying plotline. I'll invent one right now. Rape Cell. Your squad has captured a bunch of sexy terrorists that planted bombs in New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. If you don't "interrogate" them hard and fast, they won't reveal the exact locations of the bombs and how to disarm them. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a saved world with zero kills, zero drops of blood spilled.

Point #2: The assumption that there is one kind of rape.

Rape, at it's most brutal, is a subset of the category Non-Consent, or nc as a label for erotic fiction. NC is a wonderful world where "no" means a phalanx of non-no things such as "maybe" or "we shouldn't do this, but you're so darned attractive." Articles like this fill me with fear that there is a movement to take NC away. For a country with free speech, America threatens a writer's ability to explore boundaries an awful lot.

Point #3: Rape games are in the same category as Halo 3.

Rape Lay is behind the 18+ line. It caters to a specific fetish and is therefore for a small number of people. It's reason d'etre is too far removed from Halo's to put them on the same playing field, say, by arguing that killing goes on in Halo so rape can happen in Rape Lay.

The article cites games that contain violent and bloody acts. Rape and Kill are King and Queen of Immoral Hill so if one is tolerated in games, why not the other? That seems to be the logic before we are shown why rape is intolerable and mass murder is. The whole time, no one seems to realize the games have vastly different purposes.

*********Other thoughts********

It is unfair to cross the 18+ line into Adult Land and start saying which practices should be censored. People can't help liking what they like. Thank the gods and the industry that for nearly any desire, there is a rich source of digital media to help fulfill that desire.

As for society, no matter what the fantasy is very few people will get off their butts and do something. Lots of people fantasize about going back to school or starting a business but hardly anyone ever does. Lots of people play Halo but few ever actually kill someone. Those that do usually have non-Halo reasons and kill with non-Halo methods. Those with the prerequisite violence in the brain to actually kill may enjoy Halo as an ideal scenario or creative consultant, but the game doesn't create urges from nothing. Rape games follow a similar pattern. Few dare to dream, but a remarkably small number will actually act. A human who gets off on rape games will seek the rape game. It is preposterous to imagine things the other way around--rape games and kill games seeking out innocent children and prothelitizing.

 

[Kiutu]

Ok, the article seems to think the game and other games like it are intended to be like...well like any other game. It is porn, plain and simple. Ofcourse, since raping REAL people is wrong, there is stuff like that.
(Since the inital topic had me arguing with an idiot, I likely won't linger here as much)

 

[LtFerret]

Reminds me of this qoute from a Something Awful review

"For example, if Kengo were in an American game, his parents might have been murdered by virgins or he only would rape virgins if they were serious criminals. Sort of like a vigilante crime deflowerer."

 

[Muphin_Mann]

Just responding to the question in the OP: Because murder can be justified.
See also: Dexter.

Rape can never serve a good purpose.

And now to read.

EDIT: Well fuck. It looks like you pretty much agree completely.
That's actually a bit weird.
Or maybe it's just a more common viewpoint than I thought.

What sort of effed up world do you live in where you can justify murder? And you use a fictional serial killer as your case-in-point?

 

[Haydyn]

Okay, we know rape is bad, and can be viewed as worse than murder, and intolerable in any situation, but let's give the Devil's Advocate his say:

Devil's Advocate: You don't have to be the hero in every video game. Look at Overlord. Look at light vs dark games that give you the option of being the bad guy. Video games let us do things we wouldn't be able to do in the real world. Picture this hypothetical game: Suduce, a game that lets you play as a hero in a world that's under attacked by raunchy Succubi. In order to kill them, you must have sex with them, but they won't let you. Thus, in order to save billions of people, including women, children, sick and elderly, you must rape demons from hell.

And like previously stated, sitting around arguing over banning video games isn't stopping the actual rape that's going while people are arguing. To me, rape is a terrible, horrific thing, but that doesn't mean video games in particular can single it out as too horrific to cover.

 

[omega 616]

Another point is, in all other forms of media, you sit and watch/read the rape happening (or incase of the news that it did happen) were this is diffrent is that your controlling the rape, you chose to buy the game and you chose to sit there with the sole intent to simulate rape. I think thats what makes it worse then in films and books like the clockwork orange.