Oats162
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As a lover of all things Japan, I have always been interested in their styles and media content. Whether it be anime or dress codes I always saw Japan as the way to go. As I dived deeper in my obsession with the high tech island, I came across something rather.... disturbing. At first I scoffed and made my jokes and comments about it with friends but as I sit and really think about it, clearly a line had been crossed. Around 2008/2009, Japan's gaming market was set ablaze by the production of what was considered “rape games”. These purpose of these games being to rape girls for various reasons/motive. Violent and graphic these games went on sale in japan, and of course became available for download all over the digital world.
In one particular game outlined, “Rape Lay” you are shown a seen with a young teenage girl, and you the player, can grope, molest and stalk her and her sister and her mother. As the games goes on the player can rape these women over and over as much as the user wills. These rape games were later banned but the issues of its development stayed with me. As I sat disgusted at the thought, I started reading comments and peoples reactions to this knowledge and realized, there was nothing new or unusual about these games.
Game developers have always been at this. Excessively violent games such as Grand theft Auto where the more laws you break(murder, theft) the more points you attain or first person shooters where your score and game victory is dependent on the number of men you kill. As I compared the two I saw no difference. If the purpose of a game can be murder, theft or violence, why not rape? Not to endorse the idea, but it is a reasonable train of thought. Are these rape games really any different from other such brutal games? There was also an argument that these games allow 'would be' perpetrators to carry out there dark fantasies without actually harming anyone. Not sure how that holds out.
Clearly in my opinion we need to have a total revamp of what is acceptable in society, what can be tolerated and what shouldn't, what people can be sensitized to and what should be restricted. Maybe this freedom of speech things has gone a bit too far. #justsaying
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/30/japanese-rape-fantasy-vid_n_518891.html
http://kotaku.com/5275409/rape-games-officially-banned-in-japan
