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Japanese ESRB Bans Rape Depiction In Games
eldavojohn writes "The Ethics Organization of Computer Software (EOCS), now 233 companies strong, and met in Tokyo yesterday to ban a controversial title from Japan known as RapeLay, an eroge game (something much more adult than the more popular dating simulators). It's gotten a lot of press as reviewers have noted at one point the player must force sex on a 12-year-old. More importantly, the large ($353 million annually) adult game industry in Japan will now need to stay away from rape in their games if they wish to remain a member of EOCS. RapeLay seems to be available on Amazon's UK and JP sites, sparking outrage and causing a former US Ambassador to Japan to write an editorial criticizing Japan, saying, 'Only Japan allows people to possess these hideous images without penalty. Six of the G-7 countries have found ways to protect the innocent from being prosecuted for possession of child pornography. Is it not time for Japan to find a way to punish the guilty?' Singapore's Straits Times has more details, pointing out that it's still not illegal to possess these materials in Japan. We discussed this and other games last month in an editorial."
"It's gotten a lot of press as reviewers have noted at one point the player must force sex on a 12-year-old."
I almost vomited when I read this...
I always feel sickened to my stomach when you read news of some sick bastard who rapes someone, especially a child.
To have a "game" promote this as an achievement is disturbing.
There are plenty of strange sex acts that consenting adults can engage in, including fantasy rape scenes, that can border on the illegal but don't .....wow... I am so disgusted I cannot even finish my thoughts.
Promoting such acts should be banned, and anyone who actually performs such an act should be castrated/killed.
I've read a lot of ridiculous contortions on Slashdot, trying to depict realistic video game violence as pedestrian free speech, having no effect on society, even salutory for society. And I do realize that the intellectual giants behind a lot of this stuff are 24-year-old kids for whom video games and Taco Bell are still Very Important elements of their lives.
But when you get faced with more and more concrete examples of marketed, play-acted extreme violence, which keep trying to outdo each other, and which any mature, moral person apprehends as soul-deadening, and these kids still choose to stay wrapped in their simple ideologies and keep defending it....you really have to write the lot of them off completely.
Next up: game where the player tries to capture, rape, and torture the children and families of tech blog editors with adolescent ethical development.
and the mob behaviour that would in turn be incited would burn them clean out of existence in no time flat.
Some things deserve to be destroyed.
Depressing as this may sound, I'm inclined to suspect that such a game would succeed on this side of the pacific.
As a warning to the police as to who to look for first when someone gets raped..
"Demand for perverse behaviour" isn't a Japanese thing, it's a human one.
Moral equivalence in action. You suck.
You might be wiser to ask why there is no such backlash in Japan,
Because Japan is sick?
Go to any AA or Narcotics Anonymous or women's shelter and see how many of them were sexually abused as children.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Did we see an uptick in people jumping from high places when Mirror's Edge was released?
Hopefully, only the Mirror's Edge developers...