Japanese Eroge Company Renames Rape Games to "Platinum Games"

[neosonichdghg]

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

I have to admit, I was curious enough to download. It has a story, but it's not all that involved. Less plot than an average FPS, and not all that much content either. If it wasn't so controversial, no one would give it a second look.

EDIT: Also, to get to the attractive girl you have to go through her loli sister and Madonna-boobed mother. For me, that's too much squick and goofy (respectively) to be worth it.

 

[ygetoff]

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

I have to admit, I was curious enough to download. It has a story, but it's not all that involved. Less plot than an average FPS, and not all that much content either. If it wasn't so controversial, no one would give it a second look.

EDIT: Also, to get to the attractive girl you have to go through her loli sister and Madonna-boobed mother. For me, that's too much squick and goofy (respectively) to be worth it.

So would censoring a thing like this be such a huge loss to society?

 

[Krakyn]

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

I have to admit, I was curious enough to download. It has a story, but it's not all that involved. Less plot than an average FPS, and not all that much content either. If it wasn't so controversial, no one would give it a second look.

EDIT: Also, to get to the attractive girl you have to go through her loli sister and Madonna-boobed mother. For me, that's too much squick and goofy (respectively) to be worth it.

So would censoring a thing like this be such a huge loss to society?

This is where some people just don't understand. The overstepping of personal rights boundaries always starts with something small. So, a lot of people wouldn't care if this game was banned. Well, next time, it might be something you like, but you'll be in the minority.

I said this on the first page: don't censor lest ye be censored.

 

[ShavingCream]

It isn't rape, it's just sex you didn't know you wanted.

on a much more serious note, these games are not mainstream, more like a small puddle thirty yards away from said stream, you won't find them unless you look for them. The truth is, why would there be a market for these games if they were so despised. Why would developers, let alone publishers release a game without thinking for a second that it wouldn't return the profit?

 

[metagaia]

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

I have to admit, I was curious enough to download. It has a story, but it's not all that involved. Less plot than an average FPS, and not all that much content either. If it wasn't so controversial, no one would give it a second look.

EDIT: Also, to get to the attractive girl you have to go through her loli sister and Madonna-boobed mother. For me, that's too much squick and goofy (respectively) to be worth it.

So would censoring a thing like this be such a huge loss to society?

I suppose that if you censor this game, you might miss out on a really decent rape game. Something like the metal gear solid of rape games (but -8 hours of cutscenes)

Granted, I can't think of anything less likely at the moment. You would be more likely to get a camel cleanly through a needle if you fired it from a rail gun, but the there is that chance...

 

[LeadTaco]

EDIT: I wouldn't mind these so much if they had something useful about them... the same way I don't care how violent a game is if it has a decent or otherwise meaningful story.

Who knows, maybe one of those "Platinum" games is a coming to age story of a rapist with a heart of platinum, which will move you in a way art that doesn't involve non-consensual acts of sexual violence could never. I really doubt it, then again I can't read Japanese and this is really no reason to start.

What creeps me out more is the "Thoroughbred" category. Platinum as a title for a genre is ambiguous enough to be deceitful. People who enjoy "normal" sex games may research them from the misleading names. Thoroughbred has many creepier connotations at least to me. People who look into that category after thinking about the title have some "interesting" tastes to say the least.

Who knows. If anyone who has actually played these games can come forth and testify, please do.

"Thoroughbred" just scares me.

I've played Rapelay, gotta question?

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

How old does the youngest girl look? does she really cry?

 

[IrrelevantTangent]

This is just...really pathetic, disgusting, and sad. Call me a weak-stomached fool who wants to shut down games because I don't personally like them, but if I were in charge, those 'rape games' would be banned, all of them, and I'd put out a notice saying, 'If you attempt to replicate said rape simulators, there will be severe consequences and/or lawsuits against your companies.'

Creating a rape simulator is never justified no matter what you try and call it.

Are you stupid?

Every hour some dweeb spends playing one is another hour he can't use for ACTUAL RAPE.

You're not weak-stomached, you're just the kind of moron who morally equates fiction and reality.

Could you respond to my stance, specifically that creating rape simulators is wrong, WITHOUT making ad hominem attacks or calling me a moron just because I disagreed with you?

Also, I made several posts later in the thread stating that I wanted to apologize for wording my original post too strongly and that while I disagreed with people who defended the rape simulator, I certainly didn't hate them personally because of it. You get bonus points for not reading it.

 

[ygetoff]

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

I have to admit, I was curious enough to download. It has a story, but it's not all that involved. Less plot than an average FPS, and not all that much content either. If it wasn't so controversial, no one would give it a second look.

EDIT: Also, to get to the attractive girl you have to go through her loli sister and Madonna-boobed mother. For me, that's too much squick and goofy (respectively) to be worth it.

So would censoring a thing like this be such a huge loss to society?

I don't want to live in a society where the line between what is and is not legal is "how much of a benefit is this to society."

I also want "how much of a loss to individual rights would it be to give the government this kind of power" to be a consideration when deciding issues of censorship.

EDIT: how about this as a question: how much of a benefit to me will it be for the government to censor this?

None--I can 'censor' it myself simply by not playing it. That sounds like a much more precise, effective, and cheap method of protecting myself from this game than having the government do the job.

Fine. I can agree to that. But there has to be a way to alert people to the content.
"Platinum Games" is simply misleading. If nowhere else, there must be oversight there, so people who would be offended could avoid it.

 

[neosonichdghg]

If I remember correctly, it was labeled as a 'rape game'. I don't know if a clear and honest statement of content is a good idea, though. It seems to offend people.

 

[Booze Zombie]

You too might have an 'insecurity' about rape if one of your close friends was raped, like my housemate was, by some meat-head soldier.

I probably shouldn't have used the term 'universal' as this implies the kind of absolutes that philosophers like Plato talked about, what i meant is that in all societies worth respecting rape is not approved of.

But since you appear to be keen on pop-philosophy I'm going to make an assumption about you, like you did about me, and my assumption is thus: you are a moral-relativist, the kind that says "well, if someone believes something then they are entitled to that belief no matter how fucked up it is". IMHO you can shove your moral relativism up your arse. That kind of logic is fine when you want to say "live and let live" in multicultural society but it fails when you apply it to extreme circumstances.

Would you agree that allowing a nation to commit genocide because their leaders believe a particular race (lets say the Jews) ought to be exterminated in death-camps is 'fair enough'? Would you have ordered the UN to stand down and ignore the slaughter of Bosnians in the former Yugoslavia simply because the Serbs think its 'OK'?

No? So then why do you think that the celebration of rape is 'OK' so long as it takes place in a country where some of the men deem it to be acceptable? I'm fairly confident what the answer would be if you asked a Japanese victim of rape if she thought the man was behaving within his rights.

Rape is a horrifying, terrible experience for anyone to go through and shouldn't be trivialised or applauded in a computer game. Maybe you'd appreciate that fact if it happened to you or someone you know.

I am no advocate of rape, but my point was thus: If a moral choice was universally abhorrent, no one would do it and we wouldn't be talking about it.
Hard as it may be to imagine, some people enjoy treating other people (not women, people) like meat.

Not amount of "moral superiority" will change that.

At least with those rape eroge games, people are simply having harmless (i.e: no victims) fantasies.
I've played a few, actually... I didn't like 'em, in fact I felt kind of ill afterwards, but I played them and I'm not raping people. They can't be that bad.

Also, I invite you to shove your condescending attitude up your arse.

Good day.

 

[WolfMage]

while the Sexual Slave Training category is now known as the "Thoroughbred" category.

I lol'd.
But yeah, if you don't wanna see this tripe, don't buy it/play it.
Kinda simple.
And don't try and be "parent" to other adults, or kids. Your morals are only opinions.
And they aren't ours.
[Not towards you personally, just saying.]

 

[not a zaar]

Man I bet PlatinumGames is pissed, there's going to be some major confusion.

 

[KarumaK]

EDIT: I wouldn't mind these so much if they had something useful about them... the same way I don't care how violent a game is if it has a decent or otherwise meaningful story.

Who knows, maybe one of those "Platinum" games is a coming to age story of a rapist with a heart of platinum, which will move you in a way art that doesn't involve non-consensual acts of sexual violence could never. I really doubt it, then again I can't read Japanese and this is really no reason to start.

What creeps me out more is the "Thoroughbred" category. Platinum as a title for a genre is ambiguous enough to be deceitful. People who enjoy "normal" sex games may research them from the misleading names. Thoroughbred has many creepier connotations at least to me. People who look into that category after thinking about the title have some "interesting" tastes to say the least.

Who knows. If anyone who has actually played these games can come forth and testify, please do.

"Thoroughbred" just scares me.

I've played Rapelay, gotta question?

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

It has exactly the kinda story you'd expect from a game about rape. That said I think it's on par with the story of your average shooter, keep in mind I don't like shooters.

 

[cobra_ky]

However, simply calling this censorship is slightly off, it's merely addressing the knee-jerk issue. The real problem at the bottom of this whole thing has nothing to do with free speech.

Instead, it has to do with if one's open-mindedness is so very open-minded as to induce genuine harm. In a scenario out of the game, we don't walk through a park and see a man raping a screaming 10-year-old girl, shrug, and keep walking, thinking to ourselves, "well, who am I to judge?" So there's a definite limit to how open-minded you can be before you're condoning harm. In other words, there's a point where being open-minded is no longer a function of intelligence, but rather an irresponsible lack thereof.

Creating games about raping people is pretty close to that line. It's a bit of a stretch to say that a game like RapeLay will definitely get a person to start raping people, even psychological experiments finding varying results. However, it's not a stretch at all to say that the open sale of such a product is condoning rape on the level of being content in a game you can buy. At the point where we're a society that chooses to condone rape on an additional level, we're that much closer to the "well, who am I to judge" scenario above.

So, when you break it all down to the fundamentals, the reason why a restriction of a game like RapeLay applies is because the harm condoning it may bring to a society is greater than the harm not condoning it may bring to the benefit free speech brings to society.

this same argument applies equally well to murder or any other crime portrayed in video games.

 

[Professor M]

Pokemon Platinum is gonna have weird undertones now ...

 

[geldonyetich]

However, simply calling this censorship is slightly off, it's merely addressing the knee-jerk issue. The real problem at the bottom of this whole thing has nothing to do with free speech.

Instead, it has to do with if one's open-mindedness is so very open-minded as to induce genuine harm. In a scenario out of the game, we don't walk through a park and see a man raping a screaming 10-year-old girl, shrug, and keep walking, thinking to ourselves, "well, who am I to judge?" So there's a definite limit to how open-minded you can be before you're condoning harm. In other words, there's a point where being open-minded is no longer a function of intelligence, but rather an irresponsible lack thereof.

Creating games about raping people is pretty close to that line. It's a bit of a stretch to say that a game like RapeLay will definitely get a person to start raping people, even psychological experiments finding varying results. However, it's not a stretch at all to say that the open sale of such a product is condoning rape on the level of being content in a game you can buy. At the point where we're a society that chooses to condone rape on an additional level, we're that much closer to the "well, who am I to judge" scenario above.

So, when you break it all down to the fundamentals, the reason why a restriction of a game like RapeLay applies is because the harm condoning it may bring to a society is greater than the harm not condoning it may bring to the benefit free speech brings to society.

this same argument applies equally well to murder or any other crime portrayed in video games.

Yes, but as this post [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.128903.2785009] clearly outlines, you can't just say, "well, we allow violent games, so lets allow a game about tracking down and raping a 10-year-old." The reason being that the context is totally different, and the severity is a major factor.

 

[ygetoff]

EDIT: I wouldn't mind these so much if they had something useful about them... the same way I don't care how violent a game is if it has a decent or otherwise meaningful story.

Who knows, maybe one of those "Platinum" games is a coming to age story of a rapist with a heart of platinum, which will move you in a way art that doesn't involve non-consensual acts of sexual violence could never. I really doubt it, then again I can't read Japanese and this is really no reason to start.

What creeps me out more is the "Thoroughbred" category. Platinum as a title for a genre is ambiguous enough to be deceitful. People who enjoy "normal" sex games may research them from the misleading names. Thoroughbred has many creepier connotations at least to me. People who look into that category after thinking about the title have some "interesting" tastes to say the least.

Who knows. If anyone who has actually played these games can come forth and testify, please do.

"Thoroughbred" just scares me.

I've played Rapelay, gotta question?

Does it have a decent story? Like along the lines of a normal shooter?

It has exactly the kinda story you'd expect from a game about rape. That said I think it's on par with the story of your average shooter, keep in mind I don't like shooters.

Is the story meaningful at all?