The Danger of Sexually Criminal Games

Most games are simulations of real-life experiences; glamorous and exciting fantasies of activities that are denied to us in real-life, whether that be running an NFL franchise or blowing off some dude's head.

Now, new experiences are now being offered that force us to consider what is appropriate or otherwise as interactive experiences, even for adults. We can mostly agree that it is okay for Niko Bellic to mow down some innocent, or shoot a cop, or murder a rival. These are all vile crimes that we accept as entertainment for adults. But very few of us believe it is okay for a character to take on the role of that most disgusting criminal, the rapist.

Last week, Amazon pulled from sale a Japanese Hentai game called RapeLay in which the main character indulges in the most horrible and violent sexual crimes. Nobody believes this to be an unreasonable course of action by any retailer. And yet, if Amazon had pulled Grand Theft Auto 4, the hue and cry would have been immense. It looks like we are okay with casual mass-murder, but not okay with rape.

It would be facile to try to make the case that 'if murder is okay then rape should be too'. It is understood in our culture that there really is such a thing as the heroic killer; but never a heroic or like-able rapist. Rape in entertainment is almost always about the victim's response to the crime; never about the criminal's motivation. Rapists in fiction, unlike murderers, are afforded zero sympathy by the writers and by the audience. Rape, also, is not just a disgusting crime; it is also a potent symbol of oppression, a favored tool of oppressors throughout history, and today.

Jokes, an area where all taboos are broken sooner or later, rarely touch on rape. Gags and skits about rape are not unknown, but they are about as culturally acceptable as jokes about race-lynching or the Holocaust.

Games about Rape

But here we are, talking about games about rape. As games become more graphically realistic, and as game-makers become more sophisticated crafters of experience, so the realism of the fantasy is 'improved', and so the reach of fantasy lengthens. The rape game of today is a very different proposition than, say, Custer's Revenge. One was a crude expression of ignorance; the other is a detailed fantasy world allowing for multiple expressions of sexual violence, and delighting in the pain and trauma such activities induce.

There can be no doubt that watching someone die in a videogame is a vastly more realistic experience now than it was 20 years ago, even when you consider the rich and varied 'unrealistic' stylization of killing in games. It follows that simulating a sexual crime now is a far more realistic experience than it ever has been.

Worse, there is a vast market for rape as entertainment. The fantasy of rape is not uncommon; now the market is being offered new and potent tools through which the fantasy can be indulged.

As members of a business that creates everyday fantasies, we must confront our response to the existence of ugly fantasies. I have no doubt that graphically realistic games will be widely available in the near future, that depict all manner of sexual depravity. Do we, as a business, acknowledge any responsibility about this trash? Or do we hope that the public's response will be to divorce one set of fantasies from another, as we divorce pornography from other forms of visual entertainment?

Not only this, but the time must be coming soon when a game-maker is able to tell a story about sexual crime in a sympathetic way; how far are we from a 'game' that attempts to tell the story of a rape victim and which, inevitably, features the crime itself as part of its narrative? (Roberta Williams' 1990s horror game Phantasmagoria featured a rape-scene, and violence against women, but did not dwell on the emotional impact of the crime, so much as the gothic disturbances that had promoted the crime).

When such a product becomes available, will we, as a business, be able to present it as an important work, or will it be engulfed by the monstrous market for violent, interactive pornography?

Unfortunately, a retail ban on games that glorify rape is going to be no more effective in stemming the availability of such products, as a retail ban on violent, sordid pornography has been. We are entering a world where every taste is accommodated by easily downloadable entertainment, and games are just a part of that mix.

But games, unlike books, pictures and videos, involve activity. This, and gaming's relative newness, presents a difficulty. Without encouragement and education, the public at large is not going to be so willing to make a complete disconnection between games about football or petals on the wind, to games about rape, in the way that they have about, say, a Tom Cruise movie and a shameful skin-flick. If we are unable to recognize this problem and deal with it, we will be unable to cope with the difficulties it will present.

http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/the...criminal-games