Let's Not Ban RapeLay

[KiruTheMant]

We have a rating system,I think japan has one,All online stores I order from basically say you must enter legal age,its impossible to lie,unless you steal someones credit card. Why ban a game if the 0.01 percent of children who will go through the point to steal are already on that road?why punish the 99.99 percent of people who will play the game?Would YOU go out and rape someone after playing this game?If you would,make sure your speaking of real life and not second life.Punish the people actually doing bad things,There was no raise in massive rape in japan by 400% that year.More people mug a year than rape.Chances are,people underage who had never heard of this might have raped their girlfriend.The point is,don't hate the game,hate the playa(oh my god yes I did just make that joke.)

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

My opinion is defending rapeplay from being banned ban is not the same as defending every game from being banned. A game that promotes women rape seems sick to me from the start. Seeing it just from a gamer point of view seems a bit simplist.

Anyway, yes, I say a line should be drawn, and it should be drawn long before this game. I'm sure if it was a child porn game no one would defend it, why should this be any different.

I agree with drawing a line, and this game seems far beyond the line. But probbaly we allready crossed other lines. Lets take murder as an example. I am sure not against FPS or any other kind of action game that involves killing enemies. But usually they are the bad guys, and that makes them morally correct even if some people says it promotes violence. But when the game makes you the bad guy killing just for the sake of slaughtering then I would also say a line should be also be drawn.

The problem is if, like in everything in life, we go for the no bounderies rule we might regret it later as it might bite us back.

 

[rekabdarb]

Um... yeah, according to Kotaku they officially banned rape games in Japan itself, which is some news...

Not... really.

They're just not calling them rape games anymore. Unless something's changed since then.

Whatever be the case, these games are normally meant to act as 'social valves' to let people live out their fantasies virtually instead of criminally(although the recorded crimes in Japan are beyond sadistic)
What I'll never agree with, though, is kiddie porn.
Japan enforced strict laws on that(outside animation and manga) only after foreign pressure to regulate that content.

doesn't japan actually have one of the lowest counts of rape in the "1st world countries?" where us united statesians have a much higher count

That's not and has never been my point. I'm just expressing my disgust regarding real-life kiddie porn.

eye of the beholder really

 

[Timbydude]

As much as I hate the fact that this game exists, it would sort of be hypocritical to ban it. Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are essentially "murder simulators", yet these pervade the market and often find their way into the hands of kids. When, in actuality, murder carries a more severe punishment than rape, it seems odd to ban the simulator of the (legally) less severe crime.

But I have to say...I really am disgusted by this whole thing. I generally don't react strongly to "controversial material", but this is just crossing the line. I was almost in disbelief upon hearing of the existence of this thing. Why are people even producing crap like this?

 

[y1fella]

I'm sorry, wait no I'm not. rape lay is stupid fucked up shit and I do not understand why the fuck ANYONE is defending it. Rape is pretty much the most horrible thing one human can do to another.

 

[PS2MAN]

Rape is pretty much the most horrible thing one human can do to another.

Murder says hi.

 

[Silva]

movies are rated and 90% of the time they are enforced games are not

Games are rated as well, and actually, studies by the FTC have consistently shown that the videogame industry has a higher rate of rating compliance than the movie, video or music industries.

That is to say, it's considerably easier for a kid to get into an R-rated movie or buy an R-rated DVD than it is to buy an M-rated videogame.

None of which actually has much to do with the question at hand, but those are the facts.

Wait a second. At least in my country, the kid will still play the game. An adult, by enforcement if not by law, only has to be present while buying the game. That could be ANY adult, and whatever happens at home once the game is bought is likely to differ. So what you're saying is just not true for Australia, and last I checked the rules regarding MA15+ games were the same here as in America. Maybe you're right for Canada, though.

 

[reciprocal]

Great article Andy. I think this whole "rapelay" issue stems from two basic principles:

#1 - Hypocrisy. "I hate A. Therefore A should be illegal.". It's stupid as hell, but it's the most common mentality. People try to ban what they don't like because they're intolerant, and... Well... On average people are idiots... Accepting that you can dislike something and still live with it isn't easy, and requires people to think, something they seem so fundamentally opposed to. I'm not saying rape should be legal mind you, but "fake" rape? Which leads us to point #2...

#2 - ...People fail to understand why things are/should be illegal in the first place. Rape and child porn aren't illegal because they're "immoral", they're illegal because they're non-consensual and in order to create them some innocent bystander has to get hurt. This is the reason raping someone is illegal. This is the reason child pornography is illegal. It's not because some people don't like it, or consider it "wrong"... It's because people get hurt...

... Here's the kicker, nobody gets hurt in a videogame. Or in an anime, book, cartoon, etc. And here's where #1 kicks in again. People start trying to ban harmless media about these things because they don't like it.

Rape is illegal because people get hurt. -> Rape is generally considered bad. -> People start banning rape-related cartoons and games because they don't like them, under the faux pretenses that real rape is illegal...

Fundamental cause of the whole shenanigan: people are incredibly stupid...

Has anyone here ever played Rapelay?

It's more comedy than porn. The clipping, particularly, is laughable.

however, a line must be drawn somewhere.

Why? It's a game. Nobody will ever get hurt over you playing the game. Maybe barring some Jigsaw-esque scheme, but I think we can agree the game itself wouldn't be to blame there.

Why should we draw a line on what we can do if it's not hurting anyone? Would I defend a child porn game? Yes. I probably wouldn't play it myself, let alone buy it, but I can't see a single reason why it should be illegal. Cannibalizing babies? Why not? Probably not the best promotional stunt (then again...). Anything. I might not like something, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal.

As Voltaire once put it: "I might not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to death your right to say it".

This eloquently sums up my position on this.

I would like to add that I've seen the statistics regarding sexual crimes per capita for different countries and I also acknowledge that it gets underreported across the board. My question to everyone is how many of those cases were influenced by "artificial rape simulators" or even had access to them? Even if you cannot consider the option that distribution of "artificial rape simulators" decrease the number of rape cases, how about that they have little or no affect at all compared to the numerous other factors out there.

What with the current outcry regarding Catholic priests, don't you think that there are a lot of other factors out there that are worse than a video game? How about we start talking about forced celibacy for starters?

 

[FFKonoko]

Of course we shouldn't ban it. Is this the old bullshit claim that if you play a rape game you're automatically a rapist yourself? Riiight. I suppose that if you see gay you do gay as well then? If you play GTA IV then you're a fucking psychopath that needs to be chained to the bathroom pipes every night in case you get any funny ideas like killing your neighboor with a lawnmower..?
It's bullshit. Games are a form of escapism, what seperates it from books and movies etc is that it's interactive. If we have a fantasy that we desperatly we want to live out what better way to role-play than in a game.

This seems to be my general view.
I've not played the game myself, but I looked stuff up about it around the FIRST time all the controversy happened and from what I gather the only endings are bad. So while you can in theory keep the game going, sooner or later you mess up and get stabbed or hit with a train. Thats kinda interesting...rape choices in various H-games being punished, and even in the game centred around it, there's no happy ending where it ceases to be a horrible act?

Edit:
Between that last fact and the lower rape incident in japan...honestly, I would probably not be any more against a 'child rape' game, as people seem to be bringing up as a point. As a kneejerk reaction, sure, it sounds horrible and plenty of people would support it. There's already a young character in Rapelay though, judging from the pictures. The emphasis is that its a CHARACTER. Its not a child and never will be, and thus it is just as fundamentally harmless as all the other pixels. Exactly as harmless as reckless driving in Crazy Taxi, or beating an old lady with a bat in GTA, or savaging military in Prototype.

 

[addeB]

I only have one thing to say...
When did rape become a more serious crime then murder?

 

[Xvito]

Erotic games are always rape, because games can't say no.

You, sir, are pretty much completely awesome! That is the best first post ever!

 

[Shycte]

I'm sorry, wait no I'm not. rape lay is stupid fucked up shit and I do not understand why the fuck ANYONE is defending it. Rape is pretty much the most horrible thing one human can do to another.

Did you even read the article? It's no about defending RapeLay (that's one word, not two) as a game, it's about censorship and why it's bad. Jesus.

And Andy, I've been saying the same thing for ages and totaly agree with you. Just wish I ghad the skills to put in down in words as nicely as you do.

 

[WindKnight]

Um... yeah, according to Kotaku they officially banned rape games in Japan itself, which is some news...

Not... really.

They're just not calling them rape games anymore. Unless something's changed since then.

Whatever be the case, these games are normally meant to act as 'social valves' to let people live out their fantasies virtually instead of criminally(although the recorded crimes in Japan are beyond sadistic)
What I'll never agree with, though, is kiddie porn.
Japan enforced strict laws on that(outside animation and manga) only after foreign pressure to regulate that content.

doesn't japan actually have one of the lowest counts of rape in the "1st world countries?" where us united statesians have a much higher count

Reported rape, anyway.

In japan, a raped woman has a huge social stigma placed on her as she has brought 'dishonor' onto the family. If she reports what had happened, she risks her neighbors, friends, even family shunning her.

As has been mentioned elswhere, they have had to introduce women only carriages to reduce the amount of groping that occurs on trains that women were, again, supposed to ust put up with.

The reason your mobile makes a loud noise when taking photos is because Japanese men were placing them under girls skirts to take photo's.

 

[UtopiaV1]

I played RapeLay, it wasn't great... it wasn't BAD, i mean, the graphics were good and there were unlockables etc to keep you "playing", but it's not really a game in itself, because there's no challenge. You always rape the girls (there's a series of minigames (which invlove stalking and groping the girls on trains, mentioned in above post) to build up to the 'main event'), but there's no way of failing.

I deduced that this is simply wanking material DISGUISED as a game, porn in .exe format. And as porn it was pretty good, you get to choose the camera angles and positions, something no other porn does! That's pretty cool. However, rape is definitely NOT cool, so I didn't keep it (plus, girlfriend wasn't impressed when she found it on my pc). But if this stuff keeps the -actual- rapists off the streets, then i'm all for it!

final word - Excellent article, point well made, I completely agree with you 100%. Hope your discussion thing goes okay, and that you can get your reasonable point across to loonies who would just as soon brand you a 'rape-lover' than actually give you any credit and respect whatsoever. Seriously, they will cut you off, ignore you, and make a villain of you because you're part of that 'evil games industry that makes rape simulators and war games'! Don't do it, they're not worth it.

 

[BlueHighwind]

You know, I'm all for freedom of expression, and the ability for people to choose for themselves what they want to be exposed to. But what is the point of a game that simulates rape? I think we can all agree that some thoughts should be expressed, and some should not. Repression is bad if its a natural impulse that causes no harm to anyone, but how about the impulse to rape a girl, her entire family, and then lock them up in your basement as sex slaves? The people who made this game are either purely cynical and exploiting a disturbed demographic, or as sick and disturbed as the clientel their giving it to.

Not every idea and thought has value. Not every fantasy needs to be expressed, and some ideas should be removed. There is no reason to play this game, and the only possible benefits are to pollute somebody's mind into thinking that rape is somehow expectable. We are affected by the media we watch, there's no denying that. A rape video game can only make its players worse people in the long run.

expectable?

The point of the column by the way is that there is rape everything else. You can get rape porn, rape novels, rape art, rape everything else.

For some reason, games are being vilified more then any other medium.

When did I ever say that I would condone ANY rape medium? Any sort of medium where you are meant to idenity with the rapist and find his actions anything other than absolutely horrible is beyond reprehensible. Though I think that a rape video game is especially terrible. Now, you're not just watching a rape-themed porn, you're not just watching the act and completely unconnected to it. Now you ARE the rapist. This is simulated rape fantasy. Next we can have simulated rape and murder fantasy. How about "Jeffrey Dahmer" the video game?

 

[Gamegodtre]

Umm...
I think I already said something like this last year when this came up, but...

Its not even for sale outside of Japan, no other country or organization has the right to tell Japan what it should and should not ban.

When this story broke ONE YEAR AGO, I remember reading a piece about it on a women's rights site. And as much as I support women's rights and well, everyone's rights for that matter... I have to disagree with the crux of their argument for banning games like Rapelay. Their argument was more or less as follows: Games like Rapelay normalize violence and will lead to increased sex crime rates.

Umm... first off... that sounds a bit like "everyone who reads porn will commit rape at some point" argument. Which turned out to be false by the way. It has been psychologically proven that most rapists aren't after the sex, they're after power.

Secondly, the game itself isn't normalizing violence. In truth, women's-rights-organization's-site-name-I-can't-remember, you are normalizing sexual violence by saying that any game is doing so. Here's why: By saying that all it takes for me, you, anybody to go out and commit rape or murder or whatever horrible crime, is one game, you are normalizing violence. By saying that, you are telling every rapist, murderer or any other kind of violent criminal, that it isn't really their fault, that every heinous act they've committed is because they were exposed to one random piece of media at some point in their lives.

So no, we shouldn't ban it. And neither should Japan, but that's their call.

Why would a women's right group get upset anyway didn't a woman do the voice of the woman in the game making this not a rape game at all............. (since she had knowledge of what would happen or did they put her up to the mic and tell her to moan for no reason or money)

 

[Gamegodtre]

As long as it's only for sale in Japan. This is hard to justify, but at least Japanese society can deal with games like this.

Imagine what would happen if this game came out in the West?

1)You're going to hear a massive uproar from the media, which is bad publicity for all video games since we aren't exactly the most beloved form of entertainment to exist.

2)Communities will speak out and start spewing their own ideological crap, suddenly religions gain opinions on rape games.

3)It's a slim chance that this game will ever cause anyone to actually go out and fulfill a fantasy, but by god if it happens, even if it's only once, it will be, not a scar, but a laceration on the face of the video game industry.

So yeah, we live in a civilisation with a very...open voice..,unless you want that voice to be heard, I think it's best to put rape games back in the cupboard out of reach, not of the ignorant hands of children, but the ignorant hands of adults.

They did Tsuki Possession, Virgin Roster, Sensei 2 All released by G-Collections yet not a sound from anyone since none are rated by ESRB and not many people know of them