The Next Frontier: Fighting the Culture of Rape in Video Games

In a bizarre and disturbing moment of corporate responsibility, Amazon.com announced over the weekend that it will no longer sell the produced rape-simulation game, "Rapelay" within it's online marketplace.

Well, thank god. Someone is doing something right - but how did the game get there in the first place?

For those who are unfamiliar with this story, here is is what the initial game description on Amazon.com was:

Rapelay is an offshoot of the Illusion series, Interact Play. You, like in previous installments, play as a public nuisance that gets away from captivity and starts scouting for new targets. This time around you find a family of a single mother and her two daughters. You quickly begin your hunt and capture each woman one by one. The gameplay involves an amusing training/disposition system with which to break each respective target to your liking....

Ugh. This. makes. me. sick. And yet, it gets worse. In addition to this horrific game, the video game production house, Illusion, carries other lovely video game titles including "Battle Raper" and "Artificial Girl". Yikes.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, which first reported about the game being offered by the major shopping portal, Amazon.com has not commented on the item or said why it was offered for sale through their website in the first place. And despite the fact that Amazon.com pulled this game from it's site, it leads me to believe that it is only a matter of time before this game, or others like it, make their way into the global video game market beyond their domestic audiences.

While I'm admittedly a little late on reporting about this - I felt I had to share the shock over this story. But beyond the jaw-dropping nature of the information, there are many nuanced reasons why this is truly dangerous to not only women in Japan, but all over the world. A game like Rapelay supports the continued dismissal toward rape as a truly violent criminal act. The Curvature has great analysis on the exact wrong doings in this story, beyond the posting on Amazon.com:

The objections to such a game, from my view, seem fairly obvious.  It’s justifying, minimizing and making a joke out of a horrible crime — in this case one that is, in real life predominantly and in the game entirely, aimed at women.  (Which is also why, in my opinion, it is indeed much worse than your standard violent video games.)  It’s hateful, it’s misogynistic, and it reinforces rape culture...

...As someone who doesn’t think that violent video games caused the Columbine shootings (or any other incredibly violent act) any more than Marilyn Manson’s music did, I’m entirely inclined to agree that playing this game would not cause someone to rape, and that if it did somehow give someone the push they need to commit the act, they would already have to be a misogynistic person with violent tendencies.

Which is why it’s not the point.  The point isn’t “oh my god, this game is going to create rapists.”  The point is “oh my god, this game is going to make rapists think that people are on their side.” Which, of course, too many people actually are already, through their rape apologist jokes and excuses.  The premise of the game reinforces the idea of rape as okay and not a big deal.  It reinforces the idea that women exist for the sexual pleasure and abuse of men.  And the preview of the game Boing Boing, which does not include any actual rapes but only attempted rapes, also ends up reinforcing the dangerous and stereotypical idea of your “real” rape victim who always cries, calls out in distress and overall completely breaks down at actual violence or threats of it.

Genuine and logical criticism of the game, I think, isn’t about it causing an actual number of rapes, but about it supporting and expanding the conditions that already exist, virtually around the world, that allow rape to be committed.  The game might not create rapists, but it does make life more comfortable for the rapists who already exist, and life a lot more difficult for their victims.

I felt nearly defeated by a story like this. How can we stop the culture of rape if there is a consumer market to buy a game that literally allows it to happen? But then, in the same moment of defeat, I am invigorated by the thought that there is so much more to fight for as a women's rights activist. Because just as we must stop misogyny in it's tracks in the real world and the online world - there is a new frontier to traverse: the virtual world.