Content Restrictions on Japanese ero-games

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

That's a really, er... tortured analogy, I have to say. The issue here isn't "unpleasant moral themes", it's violence against women. Granted of course that it's fiction in all cases, but there's still not really much point belabouring the obvious distinction. They're not in any way analogous.

You might be right on this point but as a matter of fact rape is a crime as much (or actually less) as homicide is. You can kill innocent people in GTA and many other games, if we start from banning rape then you'll have to ban all the rest.

[Leo_Otaku]

^ exactly look at GTA what the hell is that shit! These feminists really need to get a life how is this concerning them 0_o it isn't even in their country! Just to state I'm female and can not stand feminists they take everything to the extreme.

In my city we had a museum called "Museum of man and nature" now it is "The Manitoba Museum" like seriously who cares.

[Tyabann]

No one would have cared about RapeLay if it was another "murder simulator" like GTA.

It's just because it involves violence against women in particular that it got so much media attention.

Now, what does that say about society?

Originally Posted by Leo_Otaku

In my city we had a museum called "Museum of man and nature" now it is "The Manitoba Museum" like seriously who cares.

If I lived where you live, I'd tear down the new sign saying "The Manitoba Museum" and put the old one back up.

PC needs to die. HARD.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

You might be right on this point but as a matter of fact rape is a crime as much (or actually less) as homicide is. You can kill innocent people in GTA and many other games, if we start from banning rape then you'll have to ban all the rest.

Well, please consider the context of the quote. The analogy in question wasn't to homicide (if it were, I would likely have conceded the point to a degree), it was to adopted-sibling relationships (which I don't consider analogous at all). If we were talking about murder, I wouldn't have said the same thing.

Still, I would comment that, in America in particular (disclaimer: I am not American), sex-related crime actually seems to hit a slightly stronger chord of moral outrage than murder, especially if the victims are younger. And emotional outrage isn't based on straight logic like "if you ban this, you must by extension ban everything logically similar"; it's based on a gut feeling that "that's just not right". If you took a poll and asked people: "Which of the following games would be worse: a game where you can kill people, or a game where you can rape people?", what do you think people would answer? In the "Western world", acceptance of general violence/murder in video games is much higher than acceptance of sexuality (or especially sexual violence). (N.B. It may not be the same way in Japan, though I'd be interested to find out what said survey would reveal.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that games that appear to promote sexual violence may end up be more heavily self-regulated than games that promote other more consensual adult content, even though some would argue that this form of violence isn't especially worthy of distinction. But that basically reflects the way certain vocal portions of the population feel. And I have to say that, on a purely personal level, I can play a GTA-like game with no problem at all, but any rape scene in any medium makes me feel extremely ill. That's not to say that objectively it's any more right/wrong/whatever, but perhaps that's just my societal imprinting.

My main point is simply "I can see why some people feel so strongly about this particular issue." But I don't think that's an excuse for forced censorship either.

[Leo_Otaku]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

No one would have cared about RapeLay if it was another "murder simulator" like GTA.

It's just because it involves violence against women in particular that it got so much media attention.

Now, what does that say about society?


If I lived where you live, I'd tear down the new sign saying "The Manitoba Museum" and put the old one back up.

PC needs to die. HARD.

That is exactly it they are just looking for reasons for protesting. That is exactly true some reason murder is more acceptable.

I so wish I could XD I hate this place. It would make top news!

[meh]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Well, please consider the context of the quote. The analogy in question wasn't to homicide (if it were, I would likely have conceded the point to a degree), it was to adopted-sibling relationships (which I don't consider analogous at all). If we were talking about murder, I wouldn't have said the same thing.

Still, I would comment that, in America in particular (disclaimer: I am not American), sex-related crime actually seems to hit a slightly stronger chord of moral outrage than murder, especially if the victims are younger. And emotional outrage isn't based on straight logic like "if you ban this, you must by extension ban everything logically similar"; it's based on a gut feeling that "that's just not right". If you took a poll and asked people: "Which of the following games would be worse: a game where you can kill people, or a game where you can rape people?", what do you think people would answer? In the "Western world", acceptance of general violence/murder in video games is much higher than acceptance of sexuality (or especially sexual violence). (N.B. It may not be the same way in Japan, though I'd be interested to find out what said survey would reveal.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that games that appear to promote sexual violence may end up be more heavily self-regulated than games that promote other more consensual adult content, even though some would argue that this form of violence isn't especially worthy of distinction. But that basically reflects the way certain vocal portions of the population feel. And I have to say that, on a purely personal level, I can play a GTA-like game with no problem at all, but any rape scene in any medium makes me feel extremely ill. That's not to say that objectively it's any more right/wrong/whatever, but perhaps that's just my societal imprinting.

My main point is simply "I can see why some people feel so strongly about this particular issue." But I don't think that's an excuse for forced censorship either.

The bolded part is why I used incest as an analogy rather than murder. But if you feel that's a bad analogy, then so be it. I guess in this regards you can't just lump all "westerners" into one big group. In southern US where I grew up, people are much more conservative than normal "westerners". So I would personally find it a more apt comparison than others.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by meh

The bolded part is why I used incest as an analogy rather than murder. But if you feel that's a bad analogy, then so be it. I guess in this regards you can't just lump all "westerners" into one big group. In southern US where I grew up, people are much more conservative than normal "westerners". So I would personally find it a more apt comparison than others.

Fair enough. I suppose, to put it bluntly, I just have a hard time picturing someone, even in the conservative deep south, getting as riled up about a consensual fictional relationship between adopted siblings as they would about a rape simulator. But if you say that they are analogous in that culture, then I suppose I must at least consider it. I guess that just goes to show that as much as I am lead to believe that there's a reason this particular form of violence is getting special attention, other cultures can place differing values on things. In some senses, I guess the tables have turned.

[Duo Maxwell]

http://kotaku.com/5272475/and-now-ra...anned-in-japan

Lolz.

[5cm.per.second]

Rape= not a good thing (understatement)
Rape= fetish (for some ppl)
Japan has low sex crime/rape rate or whatever (so what?)
Meaning despite having a large amount of fetish type porn media, enough japanese are well grounded enough to not act it out (and other countries are different?)
Everything from Grand Theft Auto, wrestling, to Power Rangers led to ppl hurting/killing other ppl in the U.S (so there shouldn't be rape games in America where any moron who can't separate what's real from what's not can buy it.) Which is how it was. The ppl who wanted that type of game had to import it knowing full well what was.

I don't think we or anyone really needs a rape genre, but banning or changing something in Japan just because a tiny feminist group who really only could do what, encourage their members to write letters of complaint over something, in another country, that they never knew existed or even affects them, is dumb

[izmosmolnar]

I'm pleased to see the news, that the broadcast about the issue was greatly exaggerated.
TBS = Japanese Fox News.

[aohige]

Except TBS isn't heavily right-wing the way FOX is.
But yes, they are similary guilty of reporting "news" before they check the source.

I was able to bring the news early because of several EOCS members that leaked the information after they saw the TBS news and went "EH!? .... WTF?"

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by 5cm.per.second

Meaning despite having a large amount of fetish type porn media, enough japanese are well grounded enough to not act it out (and other countries are different?)

I may have false belief here, but do you think the bold part is actually the reason?

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Anyway, the bottom line is that games that appear to promote sexual violence may end up be more heavily self-regulated than games that promote other more consensual adult content, even though some would argue that this form of violence isn't especially worthy of distinction. But that basically reflects the way certain vocal portions of the population feel. And I have to say that, on a purely personal level, I can play a GTA-like game with no problem at all, but any rape scene in any medium makes me feel extremely ill. That's not to say that objectively it's any more right/wrong/whatever, but perhaps that's just my societal imprinting.

My main point is simply "I can see why some people feel so strongly about this particular issue." But I don't think that's an excuse for forced censorship either.

You are perfectly right on what you said, a particular truculent murder scene is considered more acceptable than a sex scene, even consensual. But that's because sex scenes are automatically considered pornography. Even Japan doesn't allow that. You can see a murder being filmed from any kind of angle without concealing one bit of it, but that just can't be done with a "coitus".

In other words this is just a matter of "moral" acceptance and has nothing to do with the actual gravity of the crime represented. If I compared homicide and rape it's because you used "crime relevance" as an argument to make a distinction between incest and rape (in some countries incest is illegal, btw). However you already realized that.

[MakubeX2]

The Genre will survive this fiasco just like how it had weathered the loli and incest crackdown years back.

If the worse scenarior were to happen, I believe the ryoujoku-kei games will continued to be pushed out by small Doujin Soft groups after other software house ceased to. Why would they give hell about anything since they did not joined the likes of Sofurin or EOCS in the first place ?

[izmosmolnar]

Well yeah, remember the time when they forced ero-games not to show any genitalia.
They solved it quite nicely, surely they come up with something creative even if the worst will happen. *crosses fingers*

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by izmosmolnar

Well yeah, remember the time when they forced ero-games not to show any genitalia.
They solved it quite nicely, surely they come up with something creative even if the worst will happen. *crosses fingers*

Even back then, I heard there were like hundreds of custom uncensor patches for those games by... avid fan modders.

If you draw naked, they will come. (ok bad pun)

[Deathkillz]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

My main point is simply "I can see why some people feel so strongly about this particular issue." But I don't think that's an excuse for forced censorship either.

I'm personally neutral on the genre but seeing them making a big fuss out of what is essentially a game that is aimed at adults in the first place is simply annoying. As if "those" people have nothing better to do but to pick at something obscure and no one who doesn't know the "scene" would care about. This is one of those cases where if you don't like it, just look the hell away, unless you have proof it turns people into rapists. *laugh*

[MakubeX2]

You know, there is a nagging feeling that Japan is having a heated argument over such trivial things that have gone unnoticed for years now without having much of a averse effect on society as a whole while a true psycho next door is threatening to lob nuclear missiles over.....

[incorrupts]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

You might be right on this point but as a matter of fact rape is a crime as much (or actually less) as homicide is. You can kill innocent people in GTA and many other games, if we start from banning rape then you'll have to ban all the rest.

This is what i always say, about these kind of situations. While i do not agree with "banning" fiction-whatever-that-is, double-standards, always do manage to annoy me.
Like i say "if it is not Stallone, troll it." Sure, Rambo-ish moves and Scarface assaults, are alright, but sexual themes, will scar you. Like, please.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by MakubeX2

You know, there is a nagging feeling that Japan is having a heated argument over such trivial things that have gone unnoticed for years now without having much of a averse effect on society as a whole while a true psycho next door is threatening to lob nuclear missiles over.....

True enough, but hasn't the Japanese government also recently expressed an interest in increasing their cultural exports (especially things anime-related)? If so, perhaps certain forces in power feel there's some reason to sweep something like this under the rug for now. Certainly, it's trivial compared to global political affairs, but something like this could certainly be a blight on trade in this industry (even though, certainly, this area is totally unrelated to all the others, but that's sort of how people are in these sorts of things...) I don't know; I'm just throwing it out there.