next »

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

let's not go down a weird road here where we fetishize how caring and sensitive and non-violent women are, ok?

Pompipompi's thesis is false because while, yeah, in the sudan or whatever society is driven by muscle and AKs, but in a wealthy developed nation where we argue over video entertainment software that's just not fucking true and there's no excuse for letting violent bullies direct culture in a civilized society.

[PompiPompi]

Well at some point you realize dealing with one thing just won't solve it, you need to deal with plenty of world problems that would take us a life time to change.
At this point you think "Should I invest my life to maybe prevent this horrible yet relative rare crimes?" and I think most of us will just prefer to invest in their own life than to fix the world.
At this point you always reach the same conclusion:
"The world sucks, get used to it".

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

At this point you always reach the same conclusion:
"The world sucks, get used to it".

teenage nihilism, my fav.

[Faust06]

@faust
"Conveniently ignoring all the rape joke feminist condone and actually find funny ..." they even tell you why and what's the difference

Who's ignoring? Find one for me written by a male if you think it's that common.

@faust06 so basically in your mind criticism equals censorship

aka you're fucking stupid

OMG YOU WANT TO CENSOR ANYONE WHO DOESNT LIKE RAPE IN VIDEO GAMES

god, fuck off with that tired bullshit already

All I said was that your cheeky "no one is saying he should be forced to remove it" is a semantic triviality, I'm not actually criticizing censorship because I don't think that comes into play here. If you were to say "the author should remove it", by popular demand, that can be considered force (or "a force" anyway). So what? Not necessarily censorship.

rape is a sacred cow

It was mentioned earlier that we can't know or understand rape if we haven't experienced it. I wouldn't have the audacity to say it's worse than verbal and physical abuse, or car crash survival, or seeing someone familiar executed.. all of which finds its way in popular media often without much warning (i.e. the media isn't always "about" those things). We're all about not marginalizing the minority (on the surface anyway) which should mean taking all PTSD into consideration (I think we actually try in most cases, but when it comes to R or M content, anything can happen, and viewers are aware). The difference is that rape is about women, while those other forms are not. So the sacred cow here is women, by virtue that violence against women exists. Maybe that's the way it has to be for now. I think rape cases in the West will continue to decline (though not disappear), and maybe one day women on the whole won't feel so jeopardized by trivialization.

[Alevice]

At this point you think "Should I invest my life to maybe prevent this horrible yet relative rare crimes?" and I think most of us will just prefer to invest in their own life than to fix the world.
At this point you always reach the same conclusion:
"The world sucks, get used to it".

If that were the case, we wouldnt have reached the elightenment age, not independence war would be fought, no slavery would have been abolioshed. So I lean to believe this is a fallacy. Solving one problem at a time is a healthy solution rather than carrying the entire burden of the world.

[ThemsAllTook]

A bit late but still relevant:

-No one (and I mean no one) is willing to recognize the fact that their own individual opinion is not correct.  Everyone appears to be so absorbed by their own views, that they refuse to realize that's all it is: a personal opinion of what could change for better or worse.

I posted a few times early on in this thread, but have been reading quietly for the last 18 or so pages. From what's been written here, I've gained a better understanding of why it's necessary to treat the topic of rape as something very different and much more severe than the type of violence that's already in the game. I'd like to take back my earlier implication that they aren't all that different. I still think extreme violence is taken too lightly, but it wasn't useful to have brought it up in this topic.

Having participated on discussions like these before, I know they can be really frustrating and it seems like nothing is accomplished by it, but some of us are watching from the sidelines and taking notes, actually learning from it. Your efforts aren't in vain.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

It was mentioned earlier that we can't know or understand rape if we haven't experienced it. I wouldn't have the audacity to say it's worse than verbal and physical abuse, or car crash survival, or seeing someone familiar executed.. all of which finds its way in popular media often without much warning (i.e. the media isn't always "about" those things). We're all about not marginalizing the minority (on the surface anyway) which should mean taking all PTSD into consideration (I think we actually try in most cases, but when it comes to R or M content, anything can happen, and viewers are aware). The difference is that rape is about women, while those other forms are not. So the sacred cow here is women, by virtue that violence against women exists. Maybe that's the way it has to be for now. I think rape cases in the West will continue to decline (though not disappear), and maybe one day women on the whole won't feel so jeopardized by trivialization.

remember that you have to take into account both how traumatizing something is *and* how common it is. perhaps it is true that execution of a family member in front of you is more traumatizing than rape (on average). but rape happens much, much more often. even if only 40% of rapes result in trauma and 95% of execution of family members in front of someone result in trauma, the vast numbers of rapes outweigh that, making the group of people who can't play a game because it has rape much larger than the group of people who can't play a game because it has someone seeing an execution of someone else

as i mentioned to allen i think, just because it's impossible to avoid everything that people have adverse reactions to (e.g. every instance of spiders in a game) doesn't mean you shouldn't try to hit the biggest groups when it's easy to do so and requested of a developer by fans. cactus has had several people ask him to remove the rape thing or to make it optional. he hasn't had people asking him to remove executions in front of family members, spiders, or whatever else. this indicates that the former group is larger than any other groups (imaginary or real)

i think the approach to this doesn't even necessarily have to be proactive, being reactive is fine. don't go out of your way to make your games palatable to everyone, but if enough of your fans are asking you to change something specific which is a minor part your game, and if it would not affect normal players at all (since it can be optional), and if changing it has no important or political significance, then not doing so is just bad business for someone developing commercial indie games for sale

[gimymblert]

btw
If thegoal of the game was to shock people since the 1, it's a total failure.
MGS2 is much more interesting in that same goal and have some shock value in it too.

[Blambo]

I have a "rape culture" question that got buried in the thread split:

When people use "rape" as a term of exaggerated violence, is it totally dissociated from the actual meaning of the word or is it made totally aware of it?

The original reason I started this thread was to gauge how people felt about rape culture specifically, and whether or not intent of the expression of rape in media and in life registers in everyone's mind.

[Dragonmaw]

Whenever people say stuff like "wow you raped me in that game" I get really pissed.

[Blambo]

Well why? Is it because its over-usage is a normalization regardless of intent, or because the imagery is disgusting?

Do you feel similarly when someone says "wow you killed me in that game"?

[Faust06]

but if enough of your fans are asking you to change something specific which is a minor part your game

As with most instances with the R word, you can't discern fans from non-fans when it comes to complaints, so this a wash. News of this will finds its way into quite a bit of game media and even non-gaming news sites. For instance, is Cara, who wrote the preview, a 'fan' of HM?

if changing it has no important or political significance, then not doing so is just bad business for someone developing commercial indie games for sale

It is bad business. I wouldn't argue against that.

[gimymblert]

We should say "you have totally funyaripa me"

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Well why? Is it because its over-usage is a normalization regardless of intent, or because the imagery is disgusting?

Do you feel similarly when someone says "wow you killed me in that game"?

but killing is what you actually do in the game

[Blambo]

Haha okay how about "wow that test MURDERED my GPA".

[gimymblert]

you still don't play a multiplayer rape game

[Blambo]

And it's because it hasn't been as normalized as killing, no?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

but if enough of your fans are asking you to change something specific which is a minor part your game

As with most instances with the R word, you can't discern fans from non-fans when it comes to complaints, so this a wash. News of this will finds its way into quite a bit of game media and even non-gaming news sites. For instance, is Cara, who wrote the preview, a 'fan' of HM?

if changing it has no important or political significance, then not doing so is just bad business for someone developing commercial indie games for sale

It is bad business. I wouldn't argue against that.

she says she is a fan of the game, absolutely. she said she loved the first game, and loved the demo she played of the second game up until the rape point. how much did you read of her article? if you read it it's hard to miss that she's a die-hard hotline miami fan

[Faust06]

Fine, I'll assume you don't disagree with the rest.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

"the rest" was only a claim you can't distinguish between fans and non-fans, which i showed was untrue by distinguishing cara as a fan and not a non-fan