The "rape" video game!?!
 

This, according to CNN-
Whole story here

What do you think? Freedom of speech and just a game? Or???


My thought is... Seriously? Who thinks up stuff like this as a game?

Is it sad that I knew it was made in Japan just based on the thread title?

This kind of thing is hardly new or shocking. According to another article, the Japanese have been putting out cartoon/anime adult "sex adventure" games for years. You name it... tentacle rape, demon rape, rape on subway cars, rape at school, gang rape, lesbian rape... they're all about weird sex.

Back in my army days I had this one guy, looked like a parrot with glasses, who used to play a MS DOS-based computer game called "Ring Out" where captured cartoon/anime schoolgirls were forced to compete in some lesbian bondage MMA fights. Really kinda creepy. Well, that and his snorting.

...

Something tells me a few guys here at TFP are experts on these games.

I had no idea and I lived in Japan for six months.

Well, you don't strike me as a drooling computer perv, Tully... maybe just perv, regular type, one each. Anyway, I've always been told that Japan is full of outta control sexual fantasy media in plain view (in bookstores next to cooking guides and school texts) and that their culture basically accepts it because they feel it prevents real life sex crime. As one of my bros would say, "Dude, it's the land of bukkake! That says it all." And it kinda does.

Good thing you added "computer" in there.

It's Japan.

They have vending machines that sell used panties.

Don't tell Eden. He'll change his plane tickets.

*sniff* *sniff* *SSSSSSSSSNNNNNNNNnnnniffff* If you microwave them for a few seconds, it makes them feel like she just took them off.

Boner'd!

*****

Seriously, this doesn't surprise me. I've seen some of the games that have come out of Japan and I'm just surprised there are not tentacles. I look at it this way, America has the "gore" games ("Hey man, if you shoot this zombie in the head JUST RIGHT, it explodes! Look at the blood stains on the wall!") and japan has the sex games. Like Planster9000 said, this isn't that abnormal. I got a friend who whacks it to tentacle rape hentai scenes, if you could think about it in a sexual way, someone is trying to make money off of it.

I bet money Tully is going to get me to download this game and bring it to him in Mexico on my external HD.

"Guys, grab a drink and make yourself at home... I'm... uh... going to the bedroom... to... uh... trade stocks! Yeah, trading socks! I mean stocks!"

*Runs off with laptop and a pair of tube socks*

Well, as long as there is a safe word, it should be OK. ( some sarcasm for ya )

It's role playing, and is in all probability not going to cause people to go out and rape. While I find it completely repulsive, I would see no reason to ban it, but would encourage people to express their depth less disgust at it's existence.

Well, you find what you seek out (or in my case, you just happen upon most knowledge of the world's cultures in the span of a single lazy year of independent research).

Plan9 is right; this is not even close to being new. Simulated rape video games, manga, hardcore anime, and even some live hardcore features all make full use of this sexual scenario, especially in Japan, so much so I'm thinking it goes back several decades, at least. It is somewhat their niche (more-so than the Brasilian, Eastern European, and American porn industries, I'm guessing combined).

Hell, I just found out yesterday of a Japanese "DL site" that caters to this sort of thing (though because of the intimation, connotation, and real effect of the word, "rape", in any language, most of the very intricate and truly-out there fantasies of the Nihon island's population are mostly played out by big-eyed, big-boobied anime dolls)

This is yet another thing I'm going to have to try to unlearn.

This game has been out since 2006. There's been like five waves of outrage since then. It's a game. There are movies of the same genre. Not outraged at all.

Let them make whatever they want.

If they really want to 'protect the children', work on better rating systems and better enforcement of it. It's no different than cigarettes and alcohol. OK if you have the adult werewithal to understand it for what it is.

More discussion in the thread Cyn made about this game:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general...-hundreds.html

I read a really interesting article about an American woman who went to Japan for grad school or something. She wrote particularly about dating and sex in Japan. Turns out in the Japanese view of sex, the woman should pretty much lie there and be passive and make embarrassed noises during sex. That explains a lot about the hentai I've seen, because it's basically exactly that--the man is aggressive and, to Western eyes, basically assaults the woman, who looks downright unwilling. But that's normal sex for Japan.

She wrote that, not knowing this, she climbed on top of her first Japanese sexual partner, and started riding him, and he went very still and just laid there until she got them both off. Afterward he said how kinky and weird it was to have his partner "turn him into the woman" like that. Turns out ONE partner has to be the "fuck-ee", and changing up the gender roles is at least a little bit taboo...

Anyway, in that context, you can see that rape is of questionable wrongness. She's supposed to "not want it" in normal sex anyway, so...

Yep, that's what I was thinking.

If its coming from a Country that likes buying used panties, well, the sky's the limit, ain't it.

Yeah LE, like I wear socks.

Don't remember any used panties vending machines, but hey everything was written in Japanese. So???

I do remember vending machines for beer, porn mags and hard booze.

Sorry I searched and didn't see the other thread discussing this, if anyone feels the need merge them.

Hey, RB you just explains the end of several dates I had in Japan. Mystery solved. Seemed odd young women would ask you to dance and drink all night with you then invite you home and sleep, only sleep with you. They were probably just as confused as many of us sailors.

This further coarsens, cheapens, and dehumanizes us.
It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

This game has been around for years now - CNN needs to get with the times. Let me know when they learn about Artificial Girl, where not only can you take advantage of multiple ladies, but you can design them yourself!

question, does Japan have a high percentage of sex related crimes? I just wonder if this is the whole "video games influence behavior" argument.

I think some can, i think some are too shallow to evoke conditioning from it's players. Say the difference between a Rape Simulator or a Rape MMO

Not new; not unusual; not seen as a big deal in Japan or the internet (save for the Women's Rights group protesting this game, and to a somewhat broader extent based on our Puritanical history, humble Americans at large. The problem is that we, as a whole populus, do not intimately know of Japan's (not even Canada or Mexico's history even) once-repressed societal structure, and how they have come to evolve into an entirely different nation now based solely on their obsessiveness with virtually anything/everything).

I don't have a specific title for you, nor will I tell more easily how to access such a game, but this, too, is not anything new or unheard of as of yet. Crude versions of this type of game in which you describe I've known about for at least fifteen years, and newgrounds probably has equally as rudimentary examples of what you have described.

I've been thinking about this for the last hour and I feel like there's an untapped video game niche:

The modern American college-age nearly-an-adult-but-not-really relationship! All the drama, half the sex.

Just imagine: You play Schmoe Average, the Destroyer of Bud Light, a senior at Whatever-U. You were used to slacking off in class and pulling that C average, going to keg parties with your frat bros, and trying to nail anything with tits.

That is until you met Kaylee Keeper, the Destroyer of Single Men. She's reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent, and hell... you were totally wasted that night you gave her rugburn on your buddy's basement couch. It was a whirlwind romance until you got caught up in the title thing and now you're pretty much a married bitch. You know this as true because you've talked about minivans with her before at great length.

Life is kinda miserable now. You've gotta somehow salvage your GPA, your weekends consist of compromising on movies or doing laundry, and you haven't seen your friends since last semester (since they don't go to class). You only have sex on Saturday nights (if you remember the right ABAB combination) and you sometimes find yourself in pleated khakis (reduces HP to 3). Suicide is an option, but only after you get that diploma (level 9 - Graduation, followed by level 10 - Whining About Marriage) and remember to pick up some soymilk (Paperboy-style) on the way back to your apartment. Ya know, the one that used to have all your death metal posters and now looks like its full of furniture that no one uses.

/humor

^ we MUST hook up with badnick sometime this summer...

Reading this with the combination of the thread title and what I just wrote is really funny.

Old news. Saw this on CNN. They even said it themselves, Japan has been making these video games for years. I'm not condoning these games nor have I ever played one, but I think CNN/America has their own problems to worry about rather than calling upon an entirely different country's society to change something that has nothing to do with the US in the first place. Japan has a lot of other weird shit too.

k since nobody answered me


non-issue, Canada is rapey

They made that already Plan9: Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He goes out of his way to not show any of the sex or nudity in the video. That one is Artificial Girl 3.

Rapelay is a simpler/earlier type of game where there's only 3 fake chicks to choose from. Artificial girl you can customize everything from body to outfit. Rapelay ya just go about your raping, in Artificial Girl you have to go and actually get the fake chick to like you before you do anything. There's various personalities and traits you can set for each girl as well.

Basically this is all much to do about nothing. If a parent is doing their job no kid will come in 100 miles of this game unless they download it illegally off the internet. You'd never find this in any store in the US.

I don't get what a woman's rights group has to say about this. They have the right to be offended and that's about where their rights stop in this case. Don't want it, don't buy it. Don't want you kids to have it, be a fucking parent and make sure they don't get their hands on it.



This one is the one they mention in the OP:

Awwh, boolsheet. How is that pathetic enough to echo real life?

Raises hand. Then other hand. Then makes victory fists.

People (read as: you and/or me) need to play it in order to receive a vicarious thrill because the alternatives to such are not available to us [/hypothetical loser lives we lead]
What do "victory fists" look like?

I picture something akin to the "Macho Man" winning throwing somebody out of the ring.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3485/...a03d37d8dc.jpg

That's probably the best representation that one can find on google images, yes.

We've certainly become desensitized, if nothing else. Most of the people on this forum are probably too young to remember, but in 1976, a video game called Death Race was released. In the game, you drove around in a car chasing "gremlins" (they had to call them that - to consider them as people probably would have prevented the game's release), and when you ran them over, they turned into tombstones and you got points.

That seems pretty tame nowadays, doesn't it? But the outrage at the time was even more widespread than it is now over this game. It was a very big deal.

You can't legislate taste, I guess.

EDIT LATER: Plan9, your idea sounds like a variation of the Leisure Suit Larry series

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

Don't you just love sensationalist media? Video in link is whatshisface at CNN trying to interview the co-author of Grand Theft Childhood. I guess they didn't actually read the book so they cut the interview short when they found out she wasn't going to just agree with everything he believed.

I remember talking about these games a year or so ago...prob. more.

Obie, when there comes a time when all parents are able to control every piece of information that comes into their child's lives, then please let me know. It's very disingenuous to purport that kids can be 'protected' from seeing anything by having good parents. Not unless you keep them locked up 24/7. Rather, as a parent, the best you can hope for is that you have prepared them adequately for the times when they will see things you would prefer they didn't. And they will, you can count on that.

As for the games themselves, I think they are disgusting and I wish fewer people wanted to play them. And I wish more people would find them objectionable on principal. It's kind of telling that some people would express more indignation at the fact that some 'women's rights groups' are dismayed about the games than they do about the games themselves. Games that are obviously based on male anxiety about loss of control in a modern society...loss of manhood. It's not surprising given the demographics of the board, though.

This takes pornography to its logical conclusion: guaranteed sex without fear of the consequences.

At the same time, this is a play on a male fantasy; that there is a market---of any size---for this kind of thing is telling of that.

This is along the same line as that game Manhunt, except in that instance it's about engaging in stealth and brutal violence (even for video games).

It's important to remember: this is fantasy. What's interesting, I think, is exploring that bridge between fantasy and reality. What tempts one to cross it?

You know... I don't neccesarily agree at all. Especially the dehumanization aspect. Realistically there's an implied social rule that prohibits desiring things which I htink is bad. A perfect example - teen girls (say late teens - 17 perhaps?)

An adult male having sex with a 17 year old girl is illegal in many Western countries. But most guys can look at a 17 year old hottie and think, "Damn! That would be so awesome!" It's not about maturity and love. It's not about being the older guy and having domination or whatever. It's about instinctive procreation and sex drive for something attractive. Period!

I think that by allowing people to explore what I see as VERY human elements that are not socially acceptable, it makes society a bit safer and more secure. Personally, I don't dig the rape fantasy... but a lot of guys (and girls) do. Actually raping a girl = bad. Fantasizing about it = your personal nature.

Also, for an example of why forced social norms should make us wary... look at the Catholic Priesthood.

Responding here to this by Baraka_Guru:


"It's important to remember: this is fantasy. What's interesting, I think, is exploring that bridge between fantasy and reality. What tempts one to cross it?"
__________________


As if human beings had some idea of the difference between so-called "reality" and "fantasy." What should I think? That human beings typically take time to educate themselves about phisosophical considerations and deep subjects such as "what is reality"? Come on. When does the charade that there is something rational and sensible about typical human behavior cease?

We're barely conscious. We're led around by the nose by huge social and cultural forces that play our unconscious fear and desires like so many harpstrings.

We like to flatter ourselves. How about we take a hard look at ourselves once in a while? What are we afraid of?

Really, MM?

First of all, these kinds of sexual motivators are not modern or new at all. Video games may be, but rape is as old as dirt. I think it's disingenuous to make assertations otherwise. EVERYONE has their kinks, socially acceptable or not. Mine is as mundane as redheads. Some guys dig older women. Some guys want to feel some power. Some guys want to be dominated. As long as your sexuality is played out in a consentual fashion (or in this case a virtual fashion), then what's the big deal?

---------- Post added at 07:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:24 AM ----------

Well, that's a whole different thread in a whole different forum. But for the sake of continuity, I'll just pose this.

We're human. Always have been, always will be. We're no smarter now than we were a thousand years ago or a million. We may have slightly more knowledge, though that is debateable. How long ago was it that the "smartest" people thought the Earth was flat? That nuclear weapons were a "good" idea? In three hundred years, people will look back at us from their high-horse thinking how backwards and ignorant we were. But you know what? In three hundred years, there will STILL be guys that fantasize about or commit rape. I'd bet my fortunes on it.

There is a sentiment that Philip Pullman recently expressed that I want to fit to this situation:

Nobody has the right to live without being offended. You have every right to avoid the things that offend you by not partaking of them, but you have no right to force them not to exist.

Also, I want to point out 3 more things:

1. A vast majority of Japanese hentai involves rape or emotional resistance to sex. As ratbastid has pointed out, this permeates their culture.

2. Japan has about a 30 times lower rape-per-capita rate than the US.

3. The above statistic should be handled with caution, as fewer things are classified as rape in Japan.

Yeah, I'm not too fascinated by the acting-it-out argument - it's a red herring. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking human stupidity, miserableness, insensitivity, alienation from each other - things we all feel and have to live with.

The time I spent in Japan indicates to me that the people inhabit a sad, repressed, alienated, miserable culture. That's the problem here. Our "entertainment" is trauma-based - fucked up, in other words. That's how fucked up we are. It doesn't take a genius to see it or say it.

When was entertainment NOT trauma-based? Ever? Anywhere?

Epic poems of war? check
Biblical descriptions of suffering? check
Gladiatorial battles? check
boxing/wrestling/mma? check

Why do we watch a train derailing? Why do we rubberneck as we drive by an accident? I said it a few posts ago, and I'll say it again - this is not new. Sex, violence, fear, elation - humans are wired to want to biggest and most intense feelings that can be mustered. And while love is grand, you can't have pure love on demand. But you can have pure sex. Pure fear. Pure violence. Our entire collective being throughout history proves that it's no different now than ever.

So we should give things like man's inhumanity to man, endless war, endless violence, endless rape a pass?

I don't get it.

Is there something defensible about typical human behavior?

Or are you... "just sayin'"?

I'm neither "just sayin'" nor accepting of it on the whole. But I think there needs to be an understanding and a common middle-ground met between human nature and social utopia.

Offering an option to explore socially-abhorrent behavior in a safe way (a video game, an anime, a website, a dungeon) is the middle-ground in the case of this thread. Do I think we should just allow people to rape each other? No! Do I think we should try to dissuade people from feeling how they feel though? No!

If we could get all the angry leaders and politicans and warlords to take out their aggression in Battlefield: Bad Company instead of waging wars, wouldn't that be an awesome plan? Sure, it'll never happen universally, but having venues to release your socially unacceptable nuances sure beats having them pent up and then having them actually negatively affect another human being.

So this is the theory that if I spend my time rehearsing, fantasizing, jacking up all the worst parts of my nature that I will somehow end up a better person?

This is the kind of silly indefensible scenario we're left with if we refuse to accept the degree to which we are seriously fucked up - as a species, a culture, and as individuals. If we accept it perhaps we can do something about it. That's all.

It seems to me that either we keep that in mind - daily - as we go about our business or else we seriously - and dangerously - continue to delude ourselves that we are somehow OK - both collectively and individually.

And sorry, but if there's one thing I'm sure of it's that we are not "OK."

The way I see it, Art, you cannot know light without knowing dark.

I am often reminded of Scientology's claim to remove unhappiness from a person's mind. The only way to do this is to also remove happiness.

So, if your ideal world does not pander do the animalistic side of humanity, then I don't think it can embrace the "finer" points of the human psyche either.

ART, out of curiousity, what culture isn't fucked up? Even historically, I think you're hard pressed to give an example of one that doesn't have some facet or another that would magnetically draw it into your definition.

I see fewer cultural differences here and more of the human condition acted out in a way unique to Japanese culture. To much of the world (as you've already noted) American culture is bizarre since we'll put gratuitous violence in childrens' movies (Home Alone, anyone?) but any sign of a female breast or cigarette immediately makes it unacceptable for anyone under 18.

I guess it depends on how you define "OK". A lot of people think being gay is not "OK". In fact, there are groups dedicated to teaching gay people to NOT be gay anymore. Hopefully, you find that abhorrent. If you do, you should at least see some of my reasoning. You can't make people be different than who they are. People don't legitimately change their true nature. But you can prevent, to a degree, action on people's darker nature if there is an alternative outlet for it.

However, if you think that the aforementioned groups are on the right track with the Great Fixing of Society, then, well... we'll agree to disagree.

Jazz...all cultures are pretty much fucked up. It is a measure of the degree to which human beings are a dangerously self-destructive species.

For me it is axiomatic - based on a study of history and human behavior. Our only hope is to admit how seriously deranged we are. It's the only way we will ever get serious enough to repair ourselves. I think it's possible. But not the way we are going about it.

Take culture, for example. It's obviously a mirror into ourselves. We just seem to have a hard time admitting how fucking ugly, messed up, and sick we look in that mirror.

The only reason I can think of is that we just can't handle it.
We like to think we're somehow better than that.
That's no reason for me to enable the delusion.

*

edit to respond to Halx...

Yeah, I just don't believe it's necessary to be a slave to some sort of dialectical belief system, either. What's so hard about saying that some things are fucked up and choosing to change them?

That's all I'm saying. I don't see any reason to believe we can't somehow make choices while we go about evolving ourselves. That's what creative evolution is about, as far as I'm concerned.

I just think it's strange how timid we are about saying some things are just fucked up...period.

ART, I'd love to get you and Voltaire in a room together.

Conceeding the premise that humanity is inherently flawed for the sake of argument, I have to argue that it's a fatal flaw - we ain't fixable. There are few constants in human history, and one of those is human nature. We diefy those who somehow transcend that nature - Christ, the Buddah, Mohammed, etc. - but at the end of the day, we're a pissy little species hell-bent on destruction at the fastest possible rate. We've become incredibly efficient at inflicting misery on everyone and everything around us since the day we came down from the trees.

In other words, if you're right, we're doomed.

Jazz, I don't see any reason to believe that. We can get smarter. We can make better choices. But if we keep giving ourselves a pass - or if we just keep throwing up our hands and saying "that's just human nature" - we are doomed on a daily basis (I'm sure you have noticed this).

So it's simple and doesn't require a meeting with Voltaire.
We admit how fucked up we are.
We decide to get smarter and change ourselves.
That seems to be worth living for.

Everything else is just diversion, delusion, and trauma-based entertainment...

Well, the whole point of "trauma-based entertainment"---or even if you apply that to the arts----is that it's an exploration of extremes with regard to our capabilities, both good and bad. Most art that I appreciate I would assume was made by an artist who believed that the future was at risk. Why else would one create art? If the future weren't at risk---i.e. we lived in a utopia---would it be art, or would it simply be some nice craftsmanship?

Now I can't say this game is art, but it is entertainment. It explores a deep, dark fantasy amongst a certain population. I wouldn't say the game is indicative of a doomed race or essentially a dehumanization of who we are. To me, it is a reflection of both fantasy and reality.

It's exploring these things I think is what makes us innately human. The problem I have with the game has more to do with its aesthetics/vehicle than its subject matter.

Yep. Makes sense to me.

It's all art. The question is always whether a particular form of art is any good, good for anything, good for nothing, or whether it is just plain crap art.

This is about taking positions and making choices - not making excuses and giving our guilty pleasures a pass.

That's what creative evolution is about.

First of all, I hardly need you to tell me the history of rape. It is irrelevant. Rape in the past, and largely in the present, was not a form of Saturday night entertainment. My objections to this game are not based on my objections to rape - which are objections prob. shared by most of the people on this board.

Second of all, I really don't need you to tell me about kinkiness, particularly about rape fantasies. My objections to the extension of fantasy to the realm of what could loosely be considered non-consensual roleplaying is that there is no mutually agreed upon 'control' - it's a free-for-all with one participant in control. And not just played out in the mind, but being visualized for you with sight and sound. I think it crosses the line from fantasy into something else...that I don't have a name for.

Thirdly, before someone tries to force the moniker of 'censor' onto me, I have no desire to see these games banned. What I would like to see is less people finding these things to be acceptable - and that includes any ultra violent forms of role-playing, not just these games.

What was that they used to say about men's brain waves when feminine-protection commercials came on? For all the interesting tidbits herein, I'm VIRTUALLY comatose.

Meh, interactive porn, whatever. And its not like rape fantasies are new. I've known many women with rape fantasies as well. Now there's an untapped market.

I admit that it is a common enough fantasy and that you never will or ever can loose the darker edge of humanity (after all so long as there is the reproductive urge and human lust for power, or void of power in lives, the rape fantasy will always be present, agreed?) however I think there is simply no need for it to come into publication like this :-/

So long as an action causes fierce pain and prolonged damage to any other human being it should always remain a taboo.

In my opinion videogames like this aren't so much endorsing it as they are bringing it to the surface, as they become increasingly common they will be frowned upon less and less and eventually blend in with society, people will stop caring. The same patterns as violence in video games (don't get me wrong, I've played a few myself and despite being the worse crime in a sense they're the lesser crime ... um... far fewer people have murderous fantasies to indulge than there are rape fantasies. Such is the nature of a commercial society. We're tied into life lacking control and choice on the whole and naturally seek it elsewhere, but that's a story for a different night :p) but in the end the more publicity it gets, the more it's thought about.

And not necessarily the bad sides ...


I suppose what I'm trying to say is treating topics as a social taboo is not perfect, but it's the best we have.

If we choose not to ignore a topic, but to condemn it altogether those few still with wobbly morals, capable of swinging one way or another, will have the fear of God put back into them. They learnt it's disgusting. They learnt it from their parents, from their religion, from their society, from their peers and to commit the crime would seem perhaps a thousand times more damnable.

It's social manipulation, but benevolent manipulation.

Our instincts are not always right, our desires are not always right and they are already twisted by the world we've created around us (are we naturally material? No. We're naturally competitive, this has been cleverly manipulated around to keep the monetary world and power wheels churning. Are we naturally dominating like this? I couldn't say, but I don't doubt our lifestyle contributes to this), but if we're willing to manipulate things in a selfish way, should we not manipulate ourselves in a selfless way?


You could always turn my argument against me on the grounds that rape crime's are lower in number over in Japan, but this is a completely different culture!

How many of them do you think are reported? Especially within marriage. The women there have been taught how to react, how to feel, what to expect by their media (which is no less than this) and certainly wouldn't report it! They wouldn't be taken seriously from what I can make out :(

... and they're less free to commit crimes, look at the way they're raised in comparison to the western world. Not all of them, but a good majority are brought up stricter on obeying the rules that they've been given.

The number of possible, plausible outside influences are staggering, the two can't really be compared :-/




Watching some of the videos where the girls in it are sobbing (they enjoy this?!) I have to say it's an absolutely disgusting take on women as it is. What about the boys that play these that have little experience with real girls as it is? I'm talking teenagers, who are still in the stage of developing empathy at this point physically and mentally ... where do these games put them? I'm sure it's not drastic, but isn't it a step downwards none the less?


... I would also call it out on being sexist, but then I've seen the other side of the coin produced also.


I disagree with that too :P

Just a game, a dark one albeit, but IMO it should be legal for sale/play by adults. No actual women or children were harmed in the production of this game, as far as I know.

Bah, if I were concerned about this stuff, I wouldn't be sending my daughter to Japan for a year on student exchange :)