The Rapelay Controversy Controversy Contr...

So, Rapelay is a video game in which you play as the not-so-friendly neighborhood rapist as you have your way with a mother and her two daughters. The game ends when you don't' force a girl to get an abortion and she throws you into a train or when a girl stabs you to death if you do...Naturally when this came to light there was controversy.

That was in 2009, three years after the game was published. In that year the creator Illusion discontinued support and Amazon stopped selling it after the controversy in the U.S. was followed by protest and negative press.

Now its 2010 and Rapelay is back in the news. Not because it has gained or lost support, but because CNN has a new video on the subject, warning parents that kids could download it and then...they will become rapist themselves?

Actually it was nice to hear the speaker, Creryl Olson, talk sensibly about video games, despite the hardcore content of Rapelay. She rightly pointed out that the media coverage was making the game more visible for children who would otherwise not know it exist. In the video below the two interviewees only got the game because they saw all the controversy on the news.

I'm not sure what the news was in the story. That Rapelay is available to download is not really news since I found an online copy dated back to the beginning of 2009. CNN is basically covering its own controversy, which I guess is legit, except that they could be fanning the flames.

Also, they briefly mention it in the video, but no one has really fully expanded on the matter: Why is a game where you rape someone worst than one in which you commit murder? I'm not saying that this should or should not be the case and I don't really have an answer, but I suspect that this is influenced heavily by culture. Though it's an interesting matter since in U.S. criminal law murder is a worse offense than rape, even of a child.

It's also of note that games like Rapelay are more porn than games. Hentai-games come from a line of text choice+ picture experiences that have always been more about story or sexual fantasies than about providing any sort of game mechanics. To that extent I've always considered H-games porn not video games and their purpose sexual stimulation and that alone. Games like Rapelay are more about fulfilling sexual fantasies than anything else, like any fetish porn video.

The IpAd? Never Heard of it.

Every other story in the news is about this..."thing." The subject isn't completely unrelated to video games since Apple has been doing very well in the portable games market, bringing in more cash than the PSP. There is a good article on the subject at Flurry.com.

I have no doubt that the iPad will make money or that people will play games on it, but is anyone getting this for that purpose, or are games just a nice add-on?

wow

Well there is not much to say about this, other than their wrong beyond salvation. This is not to say that Metroid is not a great game, but it's nowhere near the elevated status that Michael Thomsen, or the reporters in general, gave it in the video.

For starters in video games the story of a space/normal marine trapped alone in a dangerous planet/place is about as standard as a shooter having guns. From Halo to Dead Space to Lost Planet, It's space soldiers all around.

The larger focus on exploration over shooting, a statement I find suspect, is also found in these titles and Metroid was hardly the first. And if exploration over action is the name of the game then Shadow of the Colossus would be a much bigger contender than Metroid.

The idea of looking at past societies is also well established in most games that even in the remotest way contain exploration and some do it much better than Metroid. Bioshock comes to mind. In fact, two of Bioshock's main themes are nostalgia and the death of society and it carries them quite well.

Looking at the big picture, the search for a video game equivalent of Citizen Kain might be a futile effort. Mostly because video games are not film, they are their own medium. Sometimes this gets overlooked, but you wouldn't try to find the Citizen Kain equivalent in say music or theater. However, I'll leave the unfair comparison of video games to film as a topic for another time.

Fun with Comics

If you don't know the guys at Penny Arcade, they are perhaps the most successful video game three-panel-comic creators out there. Consequently they produce some pretty funny stuff. Check out the comics on their site. Penny Arcade.

Game Lit. 2

Here is a list of books on video games:

Changing the game by David Edery and Ethan Mollick.

Writing for Video Game Genres edited by Wendy Despain

The ecology of games edited by Katie Salen.

Psycho-Study

In one of my earlier post I mentioned the story on Science Daily about Craig Anderson's study. Since then I have taken a look at his work, or meta-study--a study that uses other studies as its data.

It was difficult to assess how definitive his findings are especially since the paper is written for an audience that is well-versed in the study of psychology. It also made it difficult that he talks vaguely about how the negative effects manifest themselves:

"Fourth, and perhaps most important, the newly available longitudinal studies provide further confirmation that playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for long-term harmful outcomes. This is especially clear for aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and empathy/desensitization" pg 19.

He leaves the specifics to the other studies, such as what "harmful outcomes" and what their severity is. After reading the study I was not sure whether he meant that long term exposure to violent video games causes people to be mildly less amicable and more easily irritated or if they are more likely to start vicious fights and leave accident victims to die.

He clarifies this a little bit in the story for Science Daily:

"These are not huge effects -- not on the order of joining a gang vs. not joining a gang...But these effects are also not trivial in size. It is one risk factor for future aggression and other sort of negative outcomes"

At one point he compares the risk factor of playing violent video games to that of substance use, abusive parents, and poverty, which seemed to me a bit hard to accept. However, in a footnote he explains that the studies for video games also include "less severe forms of physical aggression," whereas the studies for the other factors included mostly "violent behavior," making the comparison less applicable. (pg 20)

He says that the public policy debate should shift focus to address this risk factor. His suggestion about a better informed public sounds like a good idea. There already exists a system whereby the consumer can check what questionable content a game has: the ESRB rating system. This is a similar system to the one the film indsutry has for rating movies. The problem is that parents are not very informed about what the ratings mean and may not be attentive to what content their children are being exposed to when they purchase a game.

Other solutions might begin to creep into the realm of more creative restrictions on video game content, something that will not be welcomed by any developer.

Game Lit.

If you are interesting in more than the discussions that occur online, try checking out some of these book on the subject of video games:

A casual revolution by Jesper Juul
Joystick soldiers edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne
The art of videogames by Grant Tavinor