Poll: Is featuring rape in a game going too far?

[Andy of Comix Inc]

It all depends on the context. If the game is all about committing the act of rape (RapeLay), or has unjustifiable interactive rape, then it's horrible. Rape is evil. My family's been the victim of rape, countless people have. It's a subject that has to be dealt with deftly.

If it was the cause of emotional disturbance for a character or characters in the game. If it was making a narrative point (let's say it's a war game set in Africa, and some soldiers raped a woman to make the point that the country's rights are being completely torn apart and how awful the war is, or something). If it was a comedy game, maybe, and an anthropomorphic pillow got "raped". There we go, we have context to the sexual violence. Even Grand Theft Auto gives context to its characters killing hookers - your character isn't a good person, they're gangsters.

That's my answer. Rape for the sake of rape, horrible. Sexual violence within context, slap an AO/18+ rating on the game, and you're good to go. I mean, I dare say you could raise awareness on the issue in a really, really powerful way using interactive methods. Let's say you played a character who has to watch their sister, or mother get raped. That would haunt you forever. And it would raise awareness to a vitally important human problem.

 

[CleverCover]

It depends on the situation.

Give a person the option and let them choose. If they want to so badly in a videogame, at least they're not doing it to a real person.

That's not to say they won't get the awkward stares and the hushed whispers.

It's weird because we all see murder as better than rape. :/

 

[Slayer_2]

I wouldn't mind it, we already virtually kill people, burn people alive, torture people, commit mass murder, drop nukes, etc. Rape is bad, but I find it far less terrible than the acts I mentioned above. The problem is sex is still taboo, and even putting a full-on interactive sex scene (even in an M or A rated game) would get the developers of said game torched by North America's media.

 

[Toriver]

The player should never be given the option to rape, not even as an evil character. No matter whether the character is good or evil, people play games for personal entertainment, and it should not be an entertaining thing to do or experience. Even if the player's character is a complete monster, it should not be seen as a "good" thing for the player to do in any context.

This is different from killing in games in a variety of ways. First, if you're killing someone in a game, chances are, they have the ability to fight back and kill you too, and the majority of those enemies will be doing just that. Most of the time killing in games is a part of war or in self-defense, which in certain contexts and situations can be justified. Well-known games in which one can kill innocents are usually regarded with some amount of infamy in the industry and society at large already. We don't really need a game that does that for rape. And any game with rape as an option would be that game, because there is no victim that "deserves" rape or circumstance that would justify it. It's one of those evils that's universally wrong, and allowing the player to commit rape in a game would only make it worse.

Another difference between rape and killing in games is the way in which it's presented. There is a great variety of ways to present death in a game that can make it accessible to a wide audience, including children, or make it as realistic or fantastical as the developer desires, from simply disappearing in a puff of smoke like in many children's games to dying in an ocean of their own blood like in No More Heroes. You can't really do that for rape. There are a limited number of ways it can be depicted or implemented into a game, and none of them would be pleasant to program, much less play. You just can't make light of rape or make it fantastical in a way that would be acceptable to the public.

And who would want to play such a thing, as many have said? What kind of person would actually enjoy that? The main reason games sell so much is that they are fun, and I worry for people who would find that fun.

Though rape as subject matter in a game, if done with care and consideration, and probably only implied, is something that could be done, as others said, to make villains more despicable or as a tragedy that happened in a character's back story or as a plot point. Of course then it's handled no differently than other media handle it, but this seems to be subject matter that really isn't suited to the unique storytelling methods games bring to the table.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Another difference between rape and killing in games is the way in which it's presented. There is a great variety of ways to present death in a game that can make it accessible to a wide audience, including children, or make it as realistic or fantastical as the developer desires, from simply disappearing in a puff of smoke like in many children's games to dying in an ocean of their own blood like in No More Heroes. You can't really do that for rape. There are a limited number of ways it can be depicted or implemented into a game, and none of them would be pleasant to program, much less play. You just can't make light of rape or make it fantastical in a way that would be acceptable to the public.

What about Pepe le Pew? Seriously, what is that character if not anything but an unsuccessful rapist? Isn't his character an example of "mak[ing] light of rape or mak[ing] it fantastical in a way that would be acceptable to the public? If you think I'm just making this up, look at what someone else had to say about the skunk character:

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Another difference between rape and killing in games is the way in which it's presented. There is a great variety of ways to present death in a game that can make it accessible to a wide audience, including children, or make it as realistic or fantastical as the developer desires, from simply disappearing in a puff of smoke like in many children's games to dying in an ocean of their own blood like in No More Heroes. You can't really do that for rape. There are a limited number of ways it can be depicted or implemented into a game, and none of them would be pleasant to program, much less play. You just can't make light of rape or make it fantastical in a way that would be acceptable to the public.

Here is a link to the video that mentions an observation on Pepe le Pew:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUmYGLIubho

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

[s/]There are Fallout and Oblivion mods for that...[/s]

In general, I would approve......... If gaming wasn't squarely in the sights of all scrutiny.

Also, how about we actual, non-PG-13 sex scenes in our games FIRST? Second, we get games to the point where they can actually talk about it in an intelligent way. THEN we can talk about including rape.

 

[mrblakemiller]

I'm completely torn about this. On one hand, I do not support censorship of any kind, I think that there should be a way for responsible and intellegent adults to get their hands on things like RapeLay without a government saying they can't if that's what they want, and, while I think murder is a patently worse crime than rape, I don't have any bigger problem with all the killing in games than 99% of people do.

But.

It does worry me that some people want to experience simulated rape as escapism, I DO BELIEVE that all the years I spent killing people in video games has made me more likely to think about murder than if I hadn't consistently exposed myself to it, and I don't really think games have evolved narratively enough to feature rape in the plot in a mature way.

For comparison, think about how quaint and two-dimensional comic books were in the '60s as compared to now. Spider-Man was pretty much the first superhero with doubts, guilt, and real-world problems, but putting rape in one of those old stories would have looked bizarre. Nowadays, comics have expanded to deal with such mature subject matter. Video games are growing as well, but we've only just had mature and intelligent sex scenes in games (comapre MAss Effect to Custer's Revenge).

My final verdict is: if you want it, I shouldn't have the right to stop you, but I'd rather we at least wait until the games industry and art form is ready.

 

[LiquidGrape]

Player-initiated rape in a game is something I unequivocally oppose. I don't care about the context in this case. I really don't. I think it's irrelevant. The fact that it would an act decided upon by the player renders it inherently fetishised.

I do not object to it as an aspect of a particular story or similar (although it would have to be handled very carefully and sensitively), but player-initiated?
No.
Never.

 

[Toy Master Typhus]

Not that women's rights movements don't have a case here, because the world will get awkward once you realize quite a few people around you would prefer forced to consensual sex, but In a way is this no different then porn? I mean we have simulated rape porn on the internet, and simulated snuff films for that matter, and as far as I know there has never been a real huge stand against it. (On the other hand I really have been avoiding watching the news lately)

What Rapelay kinda boils down to is a point and click adventure of something I saw on pornhub/kinky so I'm kinda not seeing the deal here. Also they have been known to make a few rape yaoi games and I'm wondering why that wasn't mentioned in the segment, not that it is important but it's not like it's strictly women portrayed being raped.

How ever I kinda wish people could be open enough to accept a rape seen in context in a video game. It probably won't happen because some how making babies is worse then making orphans but whatever.

 

[DanDeFool]

Well, OP's really found a topic of interest this time, hasn't he?

I voted, "Depends on the situation.", mainly because, if it's done right (and it has to be done VERY right for this to work) it can really add a lot of emotion to a story and tell you a lot about the characters and their motivations. A good example might be A Streetcar Named Desire, or for the Anime inclined, Narutaru (the latter gets really fucked up towards the end... but I have to say it was pretty damn effective).

That said, from a storytelling perspective I think you really ought to leave that card at the bottom of your deck.

Now, since OP brought up the infamous RapeLay, I suppose I ought to mention that I don't think pornographic games are on quite the same page as other types of games. Personally, I don't think porn games, even the really hardcore ones like RapeLay (or graphic, non-pornographic games like Manhunt and Fallout 3 for that matter) are harmful in and of themselves. If anything, I'd say that realistic or semi-realistic pornographic games, especially if they could be made to the quality standards of a modern AAA game, could be a viable alternative to "ordinary" pornography, which many feel is exploitative of and damaging to, real women.

Illusion (the makers of RapeLay, and other games) have a lot of technological chops on display in the games they make, though their efforts are sadly hamstrung by the absolutely incomprehensible Japanese decency laws. Granted, that's not an endorsement of their choice of subject matter; I just think it's nice to see a company who's not afraid to make a high-quality porn game.

Spoiler: An Aside

For those of you who don't know, Japan has laws which state that you are not allowed to show genitalia in any kind of media, so all Japanese pornography has to be censored. And they still have similar age restrictions on who can purchase pornographic materials as the rest of the world.

So... the Japanese are (or were, perhaps) perfectly fine having a game where you can graphically rape an elementary school-age girl, as long as you don't show any dicks.

Well, this is a country with one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, so they must be doing something right... but still, I don't think I'll ever understand the Japanese.

Personally, I feel that games like RapeLay, though perhaps not directly harmful, wind up doing a great deal of damage. Not because they're going to make all our sweet innocent young men turn into child molesters and wife-beaters overnight, but because they're reinforcing what I perceive as a deep-seated cultural phobia surrounding all things sexual in the West, and worse yet, tied that phobia to video games.

Oh well. I guess if we can't have sex in western media, we can always have violence. Who's up for a Saw marathon?

 

[Mr. Eff_v1legacy]

It needs to be used in context. For example, I was once talking to someone about the film A Clockwork Orange. They said they didn't like "senseless violence."
The thing is, it wasn't "senseless." It was used to tell the story. You couldn't just say "Alex is bad and needs treatment." The rape scene in that movie provided context for what happened later.
The same applies to games. Anything used to (tastefully) tell a story gets no argument from me.

 

[Callate]

Depends on how it's handled in the game. I don't think what we think of as "conventional" games would or should ever have rape as action or cut-scene treated as a "reward", but then, "RapeLay" isn't a conventional game; it's pornography designed to cater to a particular desire, sought out by individuals looking to fulfill that desire. It's not like it's going to blindside any of its players. (And the culture out of which it came, whatever faults it may have, has about a tenth the rate of reported sexual assault of the U.S.; I refuse to take it as a given that antisocial fantasies=antisocial acts in the real world, thanks.)

For that matter, it ought to be pointed out that rape in video games isn't entirely new; the adventure games I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Phantasmagoria both featured scenes of rape, but neither was particularly designed to titillate the player; both were horrifying.

As far as the player committing rape in a "conventional" game, I think that would have to be handled extremely carefully. I really only could see it in a "Have you considered what kind of monster you've really become" kind of context. I'm cognizant that many people who have suffered real-life sexual assault can suffer a kind of PTSD reaction from such things, so it certainly shouldn't be something added trivially, but only with a particular point of plot or message in mind, one that goes far beyond generating controversy or appealing to an audience seen as jaded.

 

[coolkirb]

Well anyone who would deffend video games as art I would think would have to say no. I on the otherhand will say yes, yes it is to far.

 

[Ham_authority95]

My question is that if there can be games like Manhunt, the Punisher(PS2), and Dead to Rights:Retribution which has excessive violence in them where the player can interact and commit such acts, is it acceptable to have games that feature rape cut scenses or options for the player to interact with other characters and rape them? It seems like many games have no problem allowing players the option to stab someone in the throat, and people have expressed desires to have the option to kill children in games like Fallout 3, but few games seem to touch on the subject of rape. So escapist, do you think games that allow you to nuke towns (Fallout 3), graphically depict killing people (Manhunt), should also feature the option to rape people?

EDIT: People seem to be focused on the idea that women would be the one's being raped, but what about the idea of heterosexual or homosexual men being raped? Would you still feels as strongly opposed to the depiction of rape if the victim was male? What about if the rapist was a woman?

Here is a video that touches on the subject:

1)Is it important to the plot?
2)Does it make some sort of statement?
3)Does it make the game more compelling?

Those are the two catagories in which I think rape is okay in gaming.

 

[zehydra]

Nope. As I'm sure others have already said, we kill thousands of people in CoD, but that doesn't make us killers, and it does't mean we condone murder, or war for that matter.

 

[lord.jeff]

I don't believe in filtering content no matter how bad in taste it is.

 

[Saulkar]

I played the game Rapelay myself and as a few people have pointed out it is far overblown. Just a bunch of morally indignated butt heads who want attention. Penn from Penn and Teller on the other hand has some really striking words on this subject matter that I believe you should hear.

Also note.

 

[EboMan7x]

If its a porn game then it's fine. Just keep it hush hush so we don't all get yelled at by FOX again. However, in a game designed to be played with two hands, it just wouldn't be worth the trouble, as no amount of hush-hush could stop that from throwing the public perception of videogames as art back 500 years.

 

[ProjectTrinity]

No, and unless you're against seeing murder or even torture/violence in a game, you shouldn't think otherwise, either. Any other answer is borderline putting your emotions too into the cold logic of "torture and death is a *lot* more permanent than rape". You can argue emotional impact, but I would *love* to hear how torture is less emotionally horrifying than rape.

So go ahead and feature rape, especially if it helps the plot. Or is purposely running over and killing innocent people in the older Grand Theft Auto games somehow more acceptable?

(No, you're not horrible for suggesting it - The 17 voters are rightfully in the minority)