Japanese Eroge Company Renames Rape Games to "Platinum Games"

[BGH122]

It wasn't Ad Hominem. I'm just expressing that I'm too busy laughing my arse off over the irony of the situation to care about anything you had to say there. In a way, it's my admission of a failure to read.

But, any any case, that you dragged "Ad Hominem" out of your bag of tricks indicates to me truly definitively that you are no truth seeker despite your earlier message to that effect. You want to prove me wrong. So... sorry, not interested.

That's a cheap trick and it's untrue. Has it not occurred to you may in fact be wrong and that, like so many incorrect people, you're flailing in your death throes with every tool at your disposal, just one of which being Ad Hominem attacks? If you're incorrect I'll have to prove you incorrect for both our benefit and vice versa.

Please show me how my attempts to cut through your logical fallacies to the root of your actual argument are proof that I don't want to find the truth, that argument would make a very interesting read I reckon.

 

[geldonyetich]

It wasn't Ad Hominem. I'm just expressing that I'm too busy laughing my arse off over the irony of the situation to care about anything you had to say there. In a way, it's my admission of a failure to read.

But, any any case, that you dragged "Ad Hominem" out of your bag of tricks indicates to me truly definitively that you are no truth seeker despite your earlier message to that effect. You want to prove me wrong. So... sorry, not interested.

That's a cheap trick and it's untrue. Has it not occurred to you may in fact be wrong and that, like so many incorrect people, you're flailing in your death throes with every tool at your disposal, just one of which being Ad Hominem attacks? If you're incorrect I'll have to prove you incorrect for both our benefit and vice versa.

Please show me how my attempts to cut through your logical fallacies to the root of your actual argument are proof that I don't want to find the truth, that argument would make a very interesting read I reckon.

I've explained my position well enough in that private message. Feel free to post it up here if you want.

I'm not in death troughs or anything, I just have absolutely no interest in argument on an Internet forum.

If I'm anywhere in the wrong here, it's simply that I created a great deal of spam out of a simple desire to not participate. Not participating by participating may seem so very Zen, it is to a great extent the great expenditure of energy I was hoping to avoid.

 

[Azraellod]

well, personally i don't particularly like the idea of rape games, but i have no objections to them being released. it's a game, not real life.

however, reclassifying it to platinum? this kind of bothers me, since i would more then likely be one of those "poor saps" who stumbles upon these games by accident thanks to an improper labelling system.

 

[Amnestic]

Wow. This thread really took off. I would've thought when BGH122 posted this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.128903?page=3#2779022] (which was a similar if not identical argument to the one I posited in the most recent RapeLay thread (which seems to have disappeared. Can't find it on the forum search, nor on the most recent ten pages of the News Room...)) it would've died off. Apparently you guys are just too damn insistent on ignoring logic though.

 

[BGH122]

Wow. This thread really took off. I would've thought when BGH122 posted this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.128903?page=3#2779022] (which was a similar if not identical argument to the one I posited in the most recent RapeLay thread (which seems to have disappeared. Can't find it on the forum search, nor on the most recent ten pages of the News Room...)) it would've died off. Apparently you guys are just too damn insistent on ignoring logic though.

Teh intarnetz doesn't like logic, it likes to be opinionated. The one vaguely intelligent objector I can find (geldonyetich (I'm presuming his verbosity is a sign of intellectualism, I'm probably jumping to unwarranted conclusions)) is refusing to debate, so this has just becoming a large flame pit.

 

[Nomad]

As much as I like to be the one to pull for the hard-working game devs, these guys can get bent. This is NOT the kind of game that should be encouraged. Out of all the illegal activities portrayed in games, I think this is crossing some sort of line.

Is it worse than violent, repeated and casual murder? How many people can you murder in 5 minutes of GTA? How is murdering hundreds of innocent bystanders, who in real life would have families and loved ones, any better than raping a few innocents? In the first case, you ruin the lives of hundreds, even thousands. In the second case, you ruin the lives of maybe five or six people. The reason you think the murder is acceptable is because those pixels don't have lives, they don't have families or loved ones. But guess what - neither do the rape victims in the "simulators" you want to ban.

And just because you might do it in a game, it doesn't mean you approve of it in real life. Just like the vast majority of everyone who casually run over pedestrians in GTA wouldn't support someone doing just that to real people in the real world.

I'm sorry, you lost me at 'I own rape porn.'

Why? Rape fantasy is one of the most common fantasies among both sexes.

Because if one owns plenty of rape porn and has that as a personal fetish, they can hardly be objective about this event. I mean, if we're going to be judging people based on their reactions to this event...

If one owns plenty of games and has that as a personal hobby, they can hardly be objective in a discussion about whether or not gaming should be banned or not. Same logic, I just exchanged "rape" and "fetish" for "game" and "hobby".

Sure, rape is awful and criminal and whatnot. But newsflash, so is murder and assault. And theft. Yet these are things we tolerate, even expect in most games. Virtual world does not equal real world.

If you're going to take the time to simulate the tears and terror in the victim [http://www.somethingawful.com/d/hentai-game-reviews/rapelay.php] (NSFW), I'd say you indeed had the goal of creating a rape simulator.

If you're going to take the time to simulate the blood and pain of the victim, I'd say you indeed had the goal of creating a murder simulator. Come on! You people are using the exact same arguments that you laugh at the Thompsonites for using! You're just exchanging "murder" with "rape"!

What these people need is rehabilitation. Ice-cold. From a hose. Seven days a week.
>,>

Certain Rorschach tendencies surfacing here..Must..Repress..

... Yes. Much like the people who play murder simulators need rehabilitation, instead of having their murderous tendencies encouraged by the gaming industry, that provides them with all the gory FPS action they crave.

Put another way, the other day, I was checking out a Manga Fox forum on a comic about incest. There were a number of threads going on about how okay incest really is. Guess which side would appear to be winning? That's right, if popularity on an Internet forum is all you really need to determine right from wrong, we should all be boinking our sisters right now.

Incest should be okay as long as both parties are in agreement, and the sex is non-reproductive. Because then no harm comes from it. But that's a completely different argument, because that's about goings-on in real life, as opposed to the topic at hand that deals with occurings in games.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

I figured they'd go with something along the lines of "Pearl Games."

 

[Valiance]

...

I come across so many issues with this news that I'm unable to formulate a dignified expression of my feelings.

I find it amazing yet terrible how the games can just be sold under another label and it's ok all of a sudden. I find it hilarious how people think it's really, really a problem if someone wants to play it, and I find it even more hilarious that people start trying to justify the fact that they want to play it.

It's ok to murder in a game, since we won't in real life, but is it ok to rape in a game?
Like I think it's a terrible thing, honestly, because when I play a FPS, I'm not, say, holding someone down, screaming at them, watching the fear in their eyes as they beg for mercy and I slit their throat.

When I kill someone in an online game it's effectively like a game of tennis. I get the ball over the net, they missed it, gg, we play again. When I kill an npc, I really don't care - it's a nameless faceless npc (a mob in WoW, say, or generic nazi 01.)

I don't know exactly how these games portray rape, but if it's supposed to be erotic and play to a rape fantasy, I'm going to ASSUME that it's more up-close and personal than "murder" being a sniper rifle shot from 1.5 KM away.

 

[ryuutchi]

I figured they'd go with something along the lines of "Pearl Games."

OUCH. That pun hurt.

 

[BGH122]

I've explained my position well enough in that private message. Feel free to post it up here if you want.

I'm not in death troughs or anything, I just have absolutely no interest in argument on an Internet forum.

If I'm anywhere in the wrong here, it's simply that I created a great deal of spam out of a simple desire to not participate. Not participating by participating may seem so very Zen, it is to a great extent the great expenditure of energy I was hoping to avoid.

I disagree: if you're anywhere in the wrong here, it's out of the fact that you feel that you can post contentious opinions and then not defend them.

It'd be like me going on to a forum discussing crime rates and stating "Yeah, I bet they're all [insert nationality here]" and then saying with a morose sigh, 'Woe be me, all this just for posting my opinion, how unfair!'.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Wow. This thread really took off. I would've thought when BGH122 posted this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.128903?page=3#2779022] (which was a similar if not identical argument to the one I posited in the most recent RapeLay thread (which seems to have disappeared. Can't find it on the forum search, nor on the most recent ten pages of the News Room...)) it would've died off. Apparently you guys are just too damn insistent on ignoring logic though.

Sounds like everything's par for the course, then.

They should force those Japanese devs to rename their rape games, though. "Platinum" is the label under which Xbox "greatest hits" games were sold. So it's VERY misleading. They could probably make a case for it being bait-and-switch, since the genre of game has nothing to do with platinum anything. "Thoroughbred," while disgusting in the images it conjures, is at least somewhat suggestive of the sort of things which occur in the game.

But calling a rape sim "Platinum" is like calling God of War a "cake action" game. It just makes no sense at all.

 

[Krakyn]

Like I think it's a terrible thing, honestly, because when I play a FPS, I'm not, say, holding someone down, screaming at them, watching the fear in their eyes as they beg for mercy and I slit their throat.

Actually, there are quite a few games out there like this, where you can hold somebody, they'll struggle, then you can strangulate them or stab them...one of them is Metal Gear Solid 4. Yeah. Also, Manhunt is extremely brutal like this too, and people love it.

I don't know exactly how these games portray rape, but if it's supposed to be erotic and play to a rape fantasy, I'm going to ASSUME that it's more up-close and personal than "murder" being a sniper rifle shot from 1.5 KM away.

And you're right. Just like every other type of eroticism, there are close ups of things that excite the viewer.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

...

I come across so many issues with this news that I'm unable to formulate a dignified expression of my feelings.

I find it amazing yet terrible how the games can just be sold under another label and it's ok all of a sudden. I find it hilarious how people think it's really, really a problem if someone wants to play it, and I find it even more hilarious that people start trying to justify the fact that they want to play it.

It's ok to murder in a game, since we won't in real life, but is it ok to rape in a game?
Like I think it's a terrible thing, honestly, because when I play a FPS, I'm not, say, holding someone down, screaming at them, watching the fear in their eyes as they beg for mercy and I slit their throat.

When I kill someone in an online game it's effectively like a game of tennis. I get the ball over the net, they missed it, gg, we play again. When I kill an npc, I really don't care - it's a nameless faceless npc (a mob in WoW, say, or generic nazi 01.)

I don't know exactly how these games portray rape, but if it's supposed to be erotic and play to a rape fantasy, I'm going to ASSUME that it's more up-close and personal than "murder" being a sniper rifle shot from 1.5 KM away.

Hitman disagrees with you. Which is what I think is so great about the series. We as gamers have been "killing" things since the Nintendo days, but the Hitman series makes you sit up and take notice-it places gravity and emphasis on each kill. It makes you think about the way you've been gaming for the last 10-20 years.

 

[ryuutchi]

...
It's ok to murder in a game, since we won't in real life, but is it ok to rape in a game?
Like I think it's a terrible thing, honestly, because when I play a FPS, I'm not, say, holding someone down, screaming at them, watching the fear in their eyes as they beg for mercy and I slit their throat.

...

I don't know exactly how these games portray rape, but if it's supposed to be erotic and play to a rape fantasy, I'm going to ASSUME that it's more up-close and personal than "murder" being a sniper rifle shot from 1.5 KM away.

Yeah. I really keep feeling the need to point out that IN THE US, a rape is committed every eight minutes. I'm pretty sure the murder stats don't reach anything like that high.

The fact is that there are people who are going to play the rape games who will go out there and rape-- not because they played a video game, but because the game is one part of a culture that says it's okay, that it's just sex (for the men, anyway). And as desensitizing as violent games can be, they don't desensitize as much, with the same sort of reinforcement. I mean, you don't hear people saying "oh, she wanted to be killed" in murder trials the same way you hear "oh, she wanted to be fucked" in rape trials.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

I figured they'd go with something along the lines of "Pearl Games."

OUCH. That pun hurt.

Ba-dum tish?

 

[gdnvs]

(Gang Raped by the Entire Village ~Girls Covered in Milky Liquid~ became The Trap Set by the Entire Village ~Bodies Covered in Milky Liquid~)

I almost like the straighforwardness of the titles. Imagine Halo being called "man in tin can shoots aliens".

 

[Amnestic]

Wow. This thread really took off. I would've thought when BGH122 posted this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.128903?page=3#2779022] (which was a similar if not identical argument to the one I posited in the most recent RapeLay thread (which seems to have disappeared. Can't find it on the forum search, nor on the most recent ten pages of the News Room...)) it would've died off. Apparently you guys are just too damn insistent on ignoring logic though.

Sounds like everything's par for the course, then.

They should force those Japanese devs to rename their rape games, though. "Platinum" is the label under which Xbox "greatest hits" games were sold. So it's VERY misleading. They could probably make a case for it being bait-and-switch, since the genre of game has nothing to do with platinum anything. "Thoroughbred," while disgusting in the images it conjures, is at least somewhat suggestive of the sort of things which occur in the game.

But calling a rape sim "Platinum" is like calling God of War a "cake action" game. It just makes no sense at all.

Oh no disagreement there. Naming them Platinum is misleading and could do with a change. As for the content though...well, my opinion's already been stated when I agreed with BGH112. So hey-ho, no sense in repeating what's already been said, otherwise I may as well apply to the Department of Redundancy Department.

 

[BGH122]

It's ok to murder in a game, since we won't in real life, but is it ok to rape in a game?
Like I think it's a terrible thing, honestly, because when I play a FPS, I'm not, say, holding someone down, screaming at them, watching the fear in their eyes as they beg for mercy and I slit their throat.

When I kill someone in an online game it's effectively like a game of tennis. I get the ball over the net, they missed it, gg, we play again. When I kill an npc, I really don't care - it's a nameless faceless npc (a mob in WoW, say, or generic nazi 01.)

I don't know exactly how these games portray rape, but if it's supposed to be erotic and play to a rape fantasy, I'm going to ASSUME that it's more up-close and personal than "murder" being a sniper rifle shot from 1.5 KM away.

Yes, you made a pretty interesting distinction in that a game produced specifically to cater to the sexual fetish of rape, which is all about domination, would have to be as visceral in its portrayal of domination as possible, whereas a game about shooting needn't be.

However, as with all adherents of this argument, this falters a little when faced with the fact that the vast minority of shooting games have you kill a faceless NPC. Consider the fact that on GTA IV you can kill a police officer on the floor whilst he softly moans, "Oh God, I'm bleeding, I don't want to die!" (actual lines from the game, I remember them because it made me feel a bit guilty) or that you can make a choice to kill certain contacts or let them live (such as the Russian terrorist financier on a United Liberty Paper Merchants mission) and if you choose to stall for time whilst you make your decision them you get lines such as "Please, please, I just wanted a second chance, I've got a family, please let me live." before blowing them away.

As it is games are as visceral as possible in all unethical genres, why is rape different?

 

[TheEnglishman]

Well, that's my friends Christmas present bought.

Oh those Japanese...

 

[Big shiny red button]

isint there "rape" in most of the GTA games? Maybe im just getting confused.