Rape Day

[Minuend]

So recently Stream removed/ banned this game. I think it's kinda an interesting issues, usually colored by strong feelings in whatever camp you're in.

So, I do think rape in games is worse than murder. Killing in games is often a type of tag game where you try to anticipate where the other person (or NPC) is and try to eliminate it before it eliminate you. But even so, the focus isn't really on the act of "murder". The killing act isn't really in focus. If the killing act was in focus, it would be about being able to choose your targets and being able to feel the life seeping out of it, how you as a person could inflict death on the individual. Appealing to the feels people who enjoy killing would feel. For someone who enjoys and want murder, FPS games aren't really meeting that need. FPS meets that need as little as space invader does, for the most part.

When it comes to rape, however, it's very difficult to create a scenario where the act of rape is as detached and strategic as killing can be, or making it a game of tag like a lot of FPS can feel like. It's difficult to see rape as something else than inflicting psychological pain and harm on to a person, as something that can be detached from the needs and wants of the people engaging in it. Using rape as a means to be the hero or save someone is very difficult to imagine. The act itself requires someone to do some very intimate and psychological harm to someone.

People tend to shout out how if killing in games is ok, then rape should be too, but I think this is lacking context and lacking the understanding of what drives those two actions. Raping is most often about fulfilling certain desires, while killing can be necessary or a means to an end. In a lot of games, killing is mostly a form of advanced chess where you put certain skills against another to see who wins. Playing a game of rape to see who wins isn't quite the same as an overwatch battle.

 

[Hadoblado]

Rape is functionally more like torture than killing, so yeah, not a great gameplay mechanic even if it didn't trigger peeps.

Who argues the rape vs. killing position though?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

That position is all over the internet.

 

[Hadoblado]

Really? I've never heard it. Weird.

 

[Cognisant]

I think the most telling thing is that you could have a game that's superficially about rape, like you're playing as a stealthy tentacle monster that sneaks around abducting women to rape them but they're immediately into it, and when you're finished with them they're soiled disheveled and exhausted but not traumatized, it's superficially rape but it's sanitized, it's not a depiction of what rape actually is.

In theory even the most heinous depiction of rape is fine as long as the player can maintain that separation of fiction and reality, however in practice there's a limit to what's tasteful and I think actual psychologically traumatizing rape is on the far side of that limit.

Like I can see some appeal in abusing a character to explore their psychology, like taking something apart to see how it works, but that desire to get to know the character better implies some level of interest/attachment to the character so the desire to get to know them better would conflict with the distastefulness of traumatizing them.

I think we've all gotten to that point in a game where we've attacked or been rude to a character we like just to see what other dialog options they have or how it affects the story, there being this perverse desire to get to know them better by any means possible. So even if you could rape a character in a game the appeal wouldn't actually be the act of rape itself, at least I don't see any appeal in that, even if the act of rape itself was the goal (as with the game in my first paragraph) I don't derive any stimulation from causing harm, them being into it is what I find compelling.

 

[CatGoddess]

@Minuend, Yes, I think rape has more of an emotional impact than the murder typically depicted in videogames. I believe people's objection to that murder arises from an erroneous conflation (formal fallacy of "equivocation") of the words "kill" and "murder", though; in other words, "murder" has a certain emotional/motivational weight to it, whereas "kill" sort of lacks that weight. It's what you'd use to describe swatting a fly, and that's sort of similar to how you're "killing" a collection of pixels that you lack emotional connection to (i.e. FPS characters and Zelda enemies are generally fairly flat). But those pushing their rhetoric online first use "kill" and "murder" interchangeably because they're ostensibly synonyms if you disregard connotations, and then they argue based on the emotional impact of "murder" when that impact doesn't really apply to "killing".

It's fairly difficult to have the player engage in simulated rape, though, without emotional weight to the act. It's a very... visceral sort of act, which I think is significant. People would find murder in videogames a lot more objectionable if you (the player) disemboweled your enemies in 1st person view.

Although, here's a question: does all this actually mean that rape games should be removed from the market? Like, the player does no direct harm through playing the game, so you have to look at indirect effects, and... it's inconclusive. There seems to be no proof as to whether games featuring rape encourage people toward sexual assault irl, or if they allow people a harmless outlet for rape fantasies and thereby actually reduce sexual assault. What sayeth INTPf?

 

[JohnnyLawrence]

I think it is all part of a wider movement to push moral reletavism

 

[crippli]

I would presume that there is more emotional impct with rape as one is still alive.

With games. Doubt it. Zeroes and ones. More habit.

 

[Puffy]

I often feel like rape is worse than murder as a crime in general. What someone is often looking to get out of doing it is so petty and trivial. Weighed up against the potentially extreme and lifelong amount of damage it can cause it's just really grotesque. Whereas with murder yes it does result in the more extreme consequence of termination but it's far less commonplace and normalised (in everyday life) and so often happens in quite extreme or highly emotionally charged contexts.

I'm not really in favour of video-games desensitising people to any extreme acts of violence. I'm sure it must be possible to represent rape in a way that has some kind of artistic merit, like delving into the consequences of it, what it says about the culture around rape, what it means to the gamer that they did it, etc. But I can't currently think of any examples I've found tasteful.

 

[JohnnyLawrence]

I often feel like rape is worse than murder as a crime in general.

would you rather be raped or murdered?

rape is a horrific experience that a person would have to overcome. Death is harder to overcome...

 

[Pizzabeak]

Is it just about seeing who can make the most realistic game possible? They're trying to develop VR-sex technology, I'd imagine.