Serious warning: this post contains nudity, images of graphic video-game violence, and detailed descriptions of rape and torture. The intended audience for this post is adults.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this month, in a 7-of-9 majority, that the State of California may not prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors. Such a ban, the majority argued, restricts the free speech rights of the video-game manufacturers, and is therefore unconstitutional. Read the ruling here.
Let me do a thought experiment with you. Suppose you have a child—a young boy, aged 13. He’s just been given his weekly allowance for helping out with the chores. Now you’re given a choice. You may allow him to do one of the following two things with his hard-earned cash:
Option #1. Purchase a magazine containing the following image:
Option #2. Purchase a video game in which he role-plays a sadistic protagonist, torturing a female victim while she screams in agony. Then he rapes her, urinates on her, douses her in gasoline, and sets her on fire. In another level he can recruit the help of a virtual buddy to inflict the torture. For example, the players can grasp a woman by her legs—one leg each—and then literally tear her apart. This is accomplished by pulling the legs in opposite directions, so that your child and the co-torturer rip the woman in half starting at the vagina. As she writhes and sobs—as pints of blood explode out of her, and as her organs fall to the floor—the tearing continues: it goes up along the spine through her stomach, splitting her ribs at the torso, and finally reaching her head: the skull cracks, and her very face splits in two. Level over.
[The above images are taken from Mortal Kombat. For a video of this torture and murder (with commentary byJon Stewart) see here. If you think this is a “fringe” game played by a dark and soulless sub-population of gamers, think again: it’s among the most popular and successful fighting games ever released, described by the New York Daily News as a “worldwide hit.”]
Which would you choose?
In the U.S., I’m sorry to tell you, you do not have the first option. That is, you may not allow your child to purchase the magazine, because it is legally considered obscene. Hence any shop-owner who took your child’s money, in exchange for the image of a woman with her breast exposed, would be breaking the law. You could buy the magazine yourself, of course, and give it to your child. But the law requires that an adult is the one who makes the decision to purchase.
You do have the second option, however—thanks to the ruling cited above. In fact, not only may you allow your child to purchase the video game, but your child can actually elect to purchase the video game all by himself—whether you wish him to or not. This is key. He may go to a video game store, at any time, with or without your knowledge or consent, and exchange his allowance for the game. He can take it to a friend’s house, put it in the console, and spend hours raping, torturing, and murdering his victims, virtually. You would never have to know.
The State of California decided to legislate against this outcome. There is some straightforward reasoning involved. As it stands, a legislative body is constitutionally allowed to decide that certain media—say, Playboy magazines—are so harmful to minors and young children that they can impose a categorical ban on their sale to anyone under the age of 18. I’m not certain, myself, of the precise type (or degree) of harm that depictions of nudity could cause a 17 year old, or even a 13 year old, as in the scenario I gave above. Maybe such depictions are harmful; maybe they are not. However, I am certain of the following. If it is harmful to view an image like the one I provided in Option #1, then it is a thousand times more harmful, not only to view, but to actively participate in the virtual activities depicted in, the images I showed in Option #2.
If a breast in a magazine is not “protected free speech,” then by what principle or reasoning is Mortal Kombat?
Here is the text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the one that gives a broad right to freedom of speech:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
… Hold on, how exactly does this clause have anything to do with violent video games? You’d be right to wonder. Roughly, the argument goes like this. The line between “speech,” “expression,” “media,” and “entertainment” is a blurry one indeed. One person’s entertainment is another’s propaganda. So “speech” must be taken to include all manner of media, art, and means of communication. Everything from books, to songs, to plays, to movies—and video games as well.
But not all speech is free. There are certain forms of speech that aren’t protected, and therefore can be regulated or banned by legislatures. These include (falsely) shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, obscenity, incitement to violence, and fighting words. The one I want to focus on is “obscenity.”
In U.S. Constitutional law, “obscenity” has a very narrow meaning. It doesn’t apply to just anything a community or a legislature may find offensive or morally corrupting. It applies to sex—and to nudity—only. But why is there a special “loophole” for banning depictions of breasts, when there is no equivalent exception for lifelike depictions of rape, torture, and murder?
Historians can fill me in, but my guess is that it has more to do with America’s puritanical past than with any careful analysis of relevant data—that is, data concerning what sorts of things actually cause harm to vulnerable minorities.
But the data are, ultimately, irrelevant to my argument. This is a good thing for the case I’m trying to make, because there is quite a bit of academic debate about the real-world causal effects of violent video-gaming on aggression, harm, and so on. My point is only this. Whatever possible harm is sufficient to justify the prohibition of selling a Playboy to a child, cannot in a million years be less than the harm caused by violent video games. IfPlayboy harm is sufficiently bad, Mortal Kombat harm is sufficiently bad, too—and then a whole lot more.
At least one Supreme Court Justice seemed to notice this absurdity in the logic of the ruling. Here’s how Steven Breyer put it in his separate, dissenting opinion:
What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her? … What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured and killed — is also topless?
I’m with Breyer. And I’ll make his point even clearer. Scroll up and take another look at those images from Mortal Kombat. These cannot be regulated. They are forms of speech, and they are protected by the US Constitution. But make one change, using your imagination. See the tattered gray top that the woman—the one being dismembered—is just barely wearing? Imagine sliding it over by a few pixels, enough to expose a computer-drawn nipple. Constitutionally, that changes everything. The image is now obscene. Now you can ban it.
Does that seem right to you?
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Post script. Some readers have objected, in private correspondence, that my post is misleading. They say it implies, even though it does not state, that a child can go into ANY video store and freely purchase violent video games, thanks to the ruling in question. They point out that this is not the case. Instead, a consortium of retailers–including Walmart, Best Buy, and other major players making up about 80% of the market–have voluntarily adopted policies which prohibit the sale of mature or adult games to children in their stores. They do this by participating in the Entertainment Software Rating Board scheme.
My response to this is twofold. First, even in the stores with self-imposed policies restricting the sale of extremely violent video games to minors, the actual rate of enforcement of these policies ranges from 65 to 84 percent only. Second, participating retailers make up only 80% of the market, leaving 20% with no such restrictions on sales. Compare this to the ban on selling pornography to minors. In this latter case, all stores, everywhere, are prohibited from selling all “obscene” material to any minor, anywhere. Surely that creates a meaningful difference in access to the two types of material.
Does this mean that kids can’t get their hands on pornography, if they really want it? Or cigarettes, or alcohol, or any other prohibited item? Of course not. Kids will find a way. An all-out ban on sales of violent video games to minors would not result in no minor acquiring such games. Surely some would. But so long as there’s a meaningful difference between the level of access possible with and without a ban, then this “implied” point of my argument would hold.
But then — I didn’t make the argument. My deeper point is not about bans and access issues, but rather about an internal tension in the moral, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of U.S. constitutional law, and the absurdities resulting therefrom. I do not know that I would support a blanket ban on selling violent video games to children. I am not certain that I am in favor of the current, existing ban on sales of Playboy, or the 21-age-limit for sales of alcohol, etc. But I think the point Breyer makes in his dissent reveals a very serious problem in American legal precedent, one which cries out for some hard-nosed thinking. How did this absurdity come about? How might it be addressed? I invite your thoughts.
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Post-post script. A number of readers have asked, in one way or another, whether the scenario I describe in “Option #2″ is an accurate account of what happens in any actual video games, or in Mortal Kombat in particular. The answer is yes and no. I will explain what I mean by re-posting a reader comment, and then responding to it. “Bob” writes:
Such utter Bullshit. This is not even close to what is happening in Mortal Combat 9. There is no raping (there aren’t any rapes in games that I know). There is no urinating on victims. There is no “role-playing of a [sadistic] protagonist. [Yes], you can play like this in some Roleplay games but [it's] your own choice and reflects your own mind. The Fatality where an enemy gets pulled in half “starting at the vagina” as you say it, happens to any enemy no matter [whether they are] Male or Female. [You] just put it out of context.
I agree that there are games that I wouldn’t let kids play but to put it all out of context and basically saying that Video games are all violent and sick is just wrong. Do your Homework next time.
To Bob, and to anyone else with similar concerns, here is my reply.
First, the opening of my post is, as I explicitly described it, a “thought experiment” — based on reality, but at its core a made-up scenario used to make a point. That’s what a thought experiment is. However, the examples I used are not actually fictional. Yes, they don’t all exist in one single game, to my knowledge, but every activity I described is a component of at least one actual video game, all blended together into one narrative, and then illustrated with images from one particular actual video game — Mortal Kombat. The examples I used (raping, urinating, etc.) are taken directly from the Supreme Court ruling, which was based on a review of real, existing, purchaseable-by-children video games. I do see that my post could be taken to imply that Mortal Kombat includes every disturbing act described in Option #2, but I don’t actually state this.
One further comment. The “fatality” that’s shown in the images can indeed be executed on male or female characters. So? I didn’t say that it couldn’t. And if the image I’d included had been of the tearing of a man, I’d have said, “starting at the groin” instead of “starting at the vagina.” In my view, the simulated violent dismembering of a man is no less harmful to children than the violent dismembering of a woman; hence both cases would equally support my stance. Or, if it is less harmful (and I could see certain arguments to that effect) it is certainly not less harmful than the viewing of a breast. That’s the whole point of my article.
If, in course of making that point, I was implicitly unfair to Mortal Kombat—if I made it seem somehow worse than it really is—I can’t say that I’m very sorry. Pulling a woman in half is bad enough. That you can’t, in this very same game, also rape her first (though you can do so in other games), doesn’t do much in the way of redemption. Nor is the fact that you can rip a man in half just the same.
All of that is irrelevant to my argument, anyway. The constitutional absurdity I’ve highlighted poses a problem just so long as there is any game that includes any sort of violence that is more harmful to children than any prohibited depiction of nudity.
I hope this point is, once and for all, clear to my readers.
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Originally published on Brian Earp’s Practical Ethics blog at Oxford University.
About Brian Earp
As far as I’m concerned, nudity is natural, violence? Not so much. In my household…. violent videogames, when played at all, are played after the kid is in bed. And not by me.
Violence is also natural. Unpleasant, tragic yes. But also natural.
One reason that violent games are popular is the entertaiment factor, its entertaining to guide soldiers through the battlefield (Total war serie games, combat mission, Command and conquer ect) and it is entertaining shooting enemy soldiers or terrorists (counterstrike, battlefield 1942, Battleground Europe ect) it gives yuo a chance to be the superhero or the wizard, you always dreamed about and do what you cant do in this world.
There are countless games outhere each with it own theme and mythology. But beside the entertaining factor, violence its also a way how you exorcise it. You exorcise the anxiety sourronding the tragedy creating a parody (games). So from this point of view its good and healthy.
Videogames are a parody of the reality, they mimic the real world in the good and bad way. Inserting fantastic elements and challenges. But sometimes is also a escape from the ‘ boring ‘ everyday rutine, where you access a unique fantasy world. There you are somebody and get chances that you are arent given in the real world.
So the problem may lay in the everyday routine rather than the symptom (games). About people who bring the violence of games in the real world, well thats rare if its there at all. Personally hardly I find any connection (since the first mass murders from deranged people started way BEFORE the coming of the ‘game age’) perhaps the use of games can be a way to release your inner anger; and therefore be somehow therapeutic, just like hitting a punchingbag?
I dont know, but I know that before making any easy statements we need to examine in dept the various sociological and psychological issues connected to this matter. There is no easy answer on this.
I think in light of recent events, we have to take this seriously. The people who make these games have a responsibility, especially when their target audience is a population whose brains have not yet developed the capacity for empathy.
“In light of recent events…” I assume you mean the Aurora shooting? The only actual game I’ve seen that was confirmed as being played by the shooter was Guitar Hero. I understand that it is simply human nature to want to place blame for events like Aurora, but causality is never as simple, binary, or easy as we’d like it.
The people who make game consoles build them with shutdown timers. Consoles also include locking features so that they will only play games of a certain ESRB rating. All games have a content list on the outside telling you what content you may find objectionable. The ESRB even has a smartphone app. What more do you need?
When do our brains develop the capacity for empathy? When I was a little boy, I lived in an apartment complex, and a local cat used to wander around and bump into things, because someone had cut off its whiskers. I cried to my mom about it, because someone had cut the poor cat’s “strings” off. I didn’t know that they were whiskers, but I thought it was a terrible thing for someone to do.
Humanity is violent, and there is no escaping it. I’d say violence perpetrated against software objects is orders of magnitude better than watching gladiators fight to the death in an arena. People have been terrified of outside influences corrupting the youth for so long, that the next moral panic can’t come fast enough. Comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, Beethoven, chess, the waltz, jazz, rock and roll, punk, rap, masturbation, pornography, video games, movies, social-networking, the list goes on and on and on.
I personally am more comfortable exposing my children to nudity than violence. It is not easy, but I work at it, and when my daughter is laying next to me on the couch rubbing her vulva over her clothes, I ignore it. I want her to be comfortable with her body and learn how it responds to stimulation. Conversations about time and place can come when she better understands exactly what she is doing. When my son latches on to his penis when I am changing him, I tell him not right now instead of no. In the bath I let him go to town. I believe that both my children, and their sexual partners down the road will all benefit from this method of parenting.
Since you addressed two of my major concerns in your postscripts, I shall instead skip them and move on to my one remaining concern with your article.
Before I get to that I want to say that I think we both agree that extreme depictions of sex are of course less harmful than depictions of violence, indeed, provided it is safe, sane, consensual, I don’t think it really “harms” any adolescent from age 13 up. Extreme depictions of violence can do actual psychic harm, and not just of the “desensitizing” type. One of the most disturbing things I ever saw was a picture of that man who was the victim of “the cannibal face attack” earlier this year. While I didn’t throw up or have nightmares, I did come close to throwing up. I could imagine some kid having nightmares or other issues from seeing something like that, thus at least some psychic trauma could be assumed from extreme acts of violence.
But then we come to my issue: How do we define violence? How are YOU defining violence? This “fatality” by any scale is an extreme act of violence, but what about shoving or hand to hand non-lethal combat? Should we have scale like we apparently do with sex (in the USA) where the farther it is away from a chaste kiss or two people, missionary, in the dark the more “perverted” and hence vulnerable to our ridiculous “obscenity” laws it is?
Yes,sex in the US is used as a method of shame and legal control in a way that violence is not. That’s “insane” (if I society could said to be a mental condition) and I really wish the neo-puritans and radical feminists who pass/push for most of our sexual laws would knock it off. As much as I am ok with some restrictions on a narrowly defined definition of violence to minors (13 year olds are minors, but NOT strictly speaking children) I very much want to avoid the ambiguity that is often abused in the sex laws.
This isn’t a WOMAN. This is a relatively crude polygonal model wrapped by a set of textures.
A doll. A toy. A mannequin. It is not alive. Kids have been tearing off limbs from toy soldiers for ages, while simulating combat.
This is a very approximate representation of violence and it’s far less impactful than a scene of a similar nature in a movie. It is mostly harmless in it’s context, and never feels anything more than goofy, when you actually play the game in question. It’s over the top. It’s NOT REAL.
Seeing the same thing happen to an actual person would be as horryfying and traumatizing as anyone would expect. The common sentiment is player don’t want more realistic violence in games. Vast majority of consumers would be repulsed by the need to inflict pain on anything resembling a REAL human being.
Do kids also rape them first before doing ?
Pixels on the screen used to take the form of a woman being split in two with gleeful pleasure from the participants that are enjoying the game. Video games are fun because of the excitment they manifest in game players. You can not say that this is just a “relatively crude polygonal model wrapped up by a set of textures” pretending there is no excitment from seing a protrayal of a person being ripped in two..sometimes after the player has even rapped them.
The entertainment is from seeing how creative the animation can get, gamers are not thinking of the polygon models as people, they’re not even thinking of them as characters, since fatalities happen after the gameplay in a round, are identical on every character, and have no impact on the story.
Then I guess that makes protrayal of rape in video games okay SNES.
Although, I don’t exactly call ripping people in two while their guts spill out after you rapped them “creative animation”. And if polygon models are being animated as people, then that is exactly what players are seeing them as. However, I would agree that there is something be disassociated enough for them to enjoy such depictions. I would just argue the general health of such disassociation and gleeful expressions and enjoyment gotten out of raping women and ripping them in half.
The article did warn of the graphic and violent nature. Not being a game player myself, I had no clue the violence went just this far. I’m just in a state of shock to be honest.
If you aren’t familiar with games, you really don’t have a right to tell gamers what they are thinking when they play them. I am extremely sensitive to violence or even raised voices in real life, fictional portrayals are not the same thing.
Again, if pixels on a screen on being animated to look like people, that is what they are being represented as. People. You want to make the point that because it’s an animation, it holds little importance. But it seems to me that animation opens the door to do even more violent and graphic things then one could even produce in real life.
I am sorry but one can’t see the images above and not be affected by what is being seen. Does that mean I think that it’s going to make someone want to rape and kill another person? Maybe not. But there is a barrier being broken down through that imagery that I am not going to pretend I think is healthy. And I don’t need tobe a gamer to come to that conclusion.
You are extremely sensitive to violence or raise voices in real life, and I am extremely sensitive to playing games for fun where one can rape then split someone in half to the point that their organs are spilling out of their bodies. We each got our own things that disturb us I guess.
There are few if any games where you rape and then kill someone, I understand that your exposure to this was through a misleading article, but it isn’t true and you are aware of that now, please stop saying it is. You do not have a right to tell people how they think of or react to things, especially on something you know hardly anything about. If the visual depiction of violence in games bothers you you are free not to play violent games, but do not make hurtful and untrue accusations towards gamers who do play them.
Clearly there are games where you can rape and kill someone. I don’t understand the point in saying “few *if* any…” It’s already been established that this is something that has and can be done in video games.
SNES, I am an intelligent enough person to come to intelligent conclusions on all matters of topics. I don’t need to do cocaine to know it’s not a healthy thing to do. I don’t need to play video games to understand that there is something disturbing in rendering a woman in two after raping her even.
I don’t understand what you find “hurtful” about my comments since I haven’t said anything mean or nasty about people that play video games. I however won’t pretend that such imagery or graphic violence mixed with sex is healthy.
It has not been established, I honestly can not think of a game that lets you rape and kill someone, as I have repeatedly said this article is misleading, as the author admitted but refused to apologize for. Your comments are hurtful because you claim to know I and other gamers are being in some way desensitized by imaginary images. Considering I have had lifelong problems with being overly sensitive to violence and aggression that actually happens, I find it very offensive for someone to insist I’m desensitized to it. Intelligence does not allow someone to come to intelligent conclusions on topics they are not informed about, and you admitted this (misleading and biased) article was the first time you became aware of the video games on the extreme end of the violence spectrum.
There’s only one game I know of where you can rape someone and it’s banned in Australia, no killing in it though.
Question: Is rape worse than violent murder in video games? I can go play battlefield 3 right now and shoot people, run over them with tanks, blow them apart with c4, but I can’t go rape them. Why? What is it about rape that is so special? I can play a game where I can beat someone to death with my fists, but I can’t rape them? Hell even consensual sex is mostly a no no, only times I see anything like that are cutscenes from Mass Effect 3 or something similar. Why can’t I hit E E E E E on the keyboard to simulate pushing my characters penis into even a consenting adult female character’s vagina? I can take a gun out and shoot her but can’t have sex. I especially can’t rape her, rape will get a game banned far easier than any other form of violence. I can drive over 20 people on a sidewalk in GTA but in that game people got upset that you can have sex with hookers, kill them n steal your money back. Do those same people get upset that you can shoot people including cops, hit them at high speed in a car, etc?
I’m desensitized to video game violence, even movie violence doesn’t really make me bat an eyelid, but ANY real violence I react completely different. I can laugh at a funny violent death in a movie but I feel sad as hell for any death in real life. I can laugh at shooting someones arm completely off in Soldier of Fortune, but I’d never ever wanna do it in real life.
Fantasy and reality are 2 very different things. I’m not afraid of the people playing the rape game turning into rapists anymore than I am afraid of people playing shoot-em-ups grabbing a gun n going hunting humans, I am afraid of the people who ACTUALLY do that stuff for real. What people fantasize about, what they play/watch out of morbid curiosity doesn’t bother me, what they actually do to a living human is what bothers me.
If anything we need to remind people that games, movies, etc are just that, fantasy, fiction, representations of real events maybe but still not real portrayals. People can be encouraged to have empathy for real humans whilst playing some of the most violent games, etc. Bullying and abuse causes more violence and follow-on violence to kids than games, movies etc do. I find it extremely hard to believe a child is going to start raping women after seeing it in a game/video, shooting people, etc, especially if they are taught the reality is horrible n wrong. I knew games were fake as a kid, many others know/knew, I was taught violence isn’t acceptable IN REAL LIFE and that is what our kids need. They need to know that the games are fake, so parents….DISCUSS it with them.
I’d also much rather kids see hardcore pornography (hardcore as in explicit detail, not violent porn) before they see hardcore violence (no, I am not advocating kids SHOULD see it but I’d just rather the first before the latter due to the content), especially for the younger. Sex shouldn’t be disturbing for most kids ever but I can see how violence can be extremely disturbing for some. Sex is a normal part of human experience, and a generally good one at that, violence though isn’t at all good and quite frankly I’d rather kids wait till they are old enough to understand the material before they view it (whether that be sex or violence).
I’d say the cutoff for highly violent games would be about 14, any younger and it’s probably too much. 14-18 will most likely find a way to get a hold of the games via piracy, friends, etc. I think the best bet would be to talk to your children about the content, try find non-violent games for them to play but if they do play violent ones I’d suggest talking to them about it and making sure they know it’s only ok in fantasy, never in real life.
@Archy, good points and now I’m thinking about why it doesn’t bother me that my boyfriend occasionally plays videogames (heck I’ve played Grand Theft Auto and run over scads of pedestrians accidentally) but if I found out he played a rape simulator video game, that would probably be a deal breaker. If he wants to kill cartoon creatures violently it seems harmless but wanting to rape cartoon women I’d wonder about his mental state. However, I think I’d have the same reaction to, say, a game where you sadistically torture helpless victims as opposed to simply fighting enemies in a game or even running over bystanders indiscriminately. There is something that seems worse about it, at least if that’s a part if the game that someone really focuses on, or especially if someone buys a game specifically so they can fantasize about raping or torturing. Yes it is just a fantasy but I would wonder why that fantasy is so appealing to them and what that says about their psychological health. I would wonder if that’s a person I should be in a relationship with. In fact there are aspects of GTA I don’t like such as beating people up and taking their money, although that is not a major part if the game and the violence is pretty unrealistic.
(Same with porn. I don’t care if my BF watches porn — he likes the mainstream, horny girls with big boobs variety — but if he watched violent porn I’d have many qualms about it and wonder what it says about his character.)
(trigger warning for violence)
I played some ultra violent games in my time, soldier of fortune let you shoot off the limbs n head so a bloody stump is left. It was funny, fun at the time I guess because it’s just so surreal, shocking, out there. It lets you try something for curiosity’s sake, lets you be a real badass, if you’re angry you can take it out on fake characters. I guess it’s a bit similar to why some may watch Dexter, or Saw. Rape seems different but I guess that is just how it’s seen socially, if you could rape in GTA I doubt I’d try it because it just feels so icky but quite frankly can I really judge people that would do it? It’s no different then me mowing down pedestrians, shooting civilians, it’s violence.
Would it be a deal breaker if a game had all types of violence including rape, and he did it once or twice in the game? I think it’d be important to know if he’s doing it simply to play out a “fucked up fantasy bad guy” vs actually enjoying it. I’d say it can be similar to how I enjoy my war games, hell I have probably 1million kills by now over my entire gaming history of first person shooters (millions more in the real time strategies), but I have zero interest in killing someone in real life.
So I do wonder should we judge someone playing a game of rape worse than someone playing a violent game? Because Mortal Kombat is just as violent as a game entirely devoted to rape, you beat people up and can choose to kill them in some very creative ways to say the least. GTA has so much random violence that the only way it’s acceptable is that we assume most people can separate fantasy from reality. In the fantasy land of gaming I am a tyrant, I am a savior, I am a mass murderer ultra-violent gang warlord, I am a protector fighting terrorism, fighting against foreign invading armies, a street racing hoon, a man with multiple gf’s, but in reality I am just me…A man who hates REAL violence (at least offensive violence, defensive is necessary at times), a man who hopes no one is abused, raped, etc. But if you judge me by what games I play then you may think me a monster.
There are certain things, images, I simply don’t need in my head. There are times, like this one, where you accidently stumble across something you weren’t expecting. But for the most part, I try to steer myself clear of imagery that is going to imprint pictures or ideas in my head. Do I do this because I think it’s going to turn me into a monster? No. I do it because I think it’s important to be mindful of the things I entertain myself with. I don’t think fantasy is harmless all the time. And I don’t think the idea of “fantasy” should be repeatedly used to justify anything under the sun the human mind may come up with. The human mind can be pretty evil after all.
In general, I hate graphic violent depictions in media. It’s the reason I avoid certain things. I don’t watch horror movies. I don’t click on the youtube clip that the media is highlighting of some awful crime. I don’t need to see or hear about everything in the world. It does not add value to my life. I don’t need to fantasize about raping men and cutting off their penises. I don’t think most men would even want to be with a woman that had that in her “fantasy” box. I doubt there is even any video game where you could do such a thing to a man while raping woman appears to be more common place.
There is a point where it becomes too much. The fantasy argument only goes so far in my book. And sometimes it’s used way too much to over justify anything. Once an image is your head, it’s in your head. I don’t care if seeing rape in a video games doesn’t *make* or turn people into rapists. It can’t be good for people either. I do think it contributes to desentizlation. There is probably a scale where people fall in different places. A spectrum of personal truths about how people are influenced by what they put themselves in. Naturally, some people aren’t going to go all raping and killing on people from a video game. But that doesn’t mean that just because they don’t go to that extreme, that getting pleasure from depictions of those things is great either. Doesn’t mean they are monsters or horrible people. I just can’t claim that I could be with a guy that knowingly took pleasure from such things. I can’t say for certain that it’s a “healthy” outlet or that because it’s “fantasy” it’s okay to think about raping and destroying a person by ripping them in two.
“I doubt there is even any video game where you could do such a thing to a man while raping woman appears to be more common place. ”
There is only one game I know of that has rape, Raplay, which is banned in most countries that I know of. If that is more commonplace to you then so be it but don’t act like it’s normal or common.
There is nothing wrong with desensitization of FICTIONAL experiences as long as people remain empathic with real ones. Some jobs actually require desensitization of real events to become more effective and not get your mind blown, eg paramedic.
And yet the game talked about in the article you can rape and rip someone in two………So now you know of two games. And am I mistaken but can’t you also do something like that in Grand Theft Auto? Or you can have sex with a prostitute and get points for running them over afterward? I might be a little foggy on those details.
I do think there is something off with desensitization even in fictional experiences. I don’t believe all fantasy is simply “harmless” because it’s “fantasy”.
These things actually leads to the breaking down of society in my opinion. And I think it happens so slowly and nefariciously that people mistakeningly belive it’s “harmless” when it really does shift things.
I only use this example because it’s such an easy one. If you watched Good Morning America 10 years ago you would see actual news. When you watch Good Morning America now, it’s all about pop culture and celebrities. To me, it shows me how much culture has changed where people use to actually want real news now only want fluff and junk. Culture is ever changing and evolving and that’s based on the information we consume.
There are jobs that do require desensitization to deal with real events, but playing video games isn’t one of them. And I doubt playing a video game is going to help a paramedic help a real human being, even if they are use to seeing blood and gore in “fantasy”.
I’m sorry but I do think these things shape people. I don’t think it makes everyone killers and awful people but I do think it puts us in places we have no place going. What more can you do to someone after you ripped them in two? How far will the gore go? How far will the mixture of sex and violence go? If the envelop is always being pushed, it’s not going to stop once it hits a certain point. How healthy can that possibly be?
I think there is this hugely wrong misconception people have that their physical actions are the only thing they need to have control over and they don’t need to have any control over what is going on inside them, in their minds. But our minds make us who we are just as much as our physical actions do. Does this mean I never have bad thoughts? No. But I try to limit my exposure to things I know rewire my brain and make things like the gore shown above more familiar.
I haven’t played the latest Mortal Kombat but I have never heard of a rape scene in it. I can imagine it’d cause a massive shitstorm but I can’t find any mention of it outside this article unless I am missing something?
In GTA you can have sex with hookers in your car, and they get out n walk away. You can kill them n steal their money (including your money dollar for dollar + whatever they had I think) but I don’t believe there are any acheivements for that, or extra points….just money, but you can kill anyone n steal cash from them.
“But I try to limit my exposure to things I know rewire my brain and make things like the gore shown above more familiar.”
What I believe is there is a reason people like gore, etc. For example, in my depression I was EXTREMELY angry, hated everyone, laughed at 9/11 (cue the hate), I was so bitter n angry I saught out the violent, gorey material. These days I’m much happier, I still play some extremely violent games but to me they are nothing, sometimes funny but mostly it’s just a way to unleash a bit of anger or a way to roleplay a bad guy. The reason I play violent games now though is mostly because the game itself is fun, atm I play Battlefield 3 which is violent but I play it because I love the team element, I like to play G.I Joe without joining the military for real, love shooting someone from 1000yards away. None of that is at all appealing in real life though. I seek fun these days mostly, but before I would seek more of the gorey/sick games, the gorier the better, the more shocking the better but I was a hateful lil shit back then and I was lashing out.
So I believe the most important thing isn’t how gorey or violent the media is, but how the mind takes it, WHY the mind wants to see it, is a person just trying to find the most shocking thing ever? are they just morbidly curious (I was very morbidly curious but I’m generally curious about everything), do they want to inflict pain on people for real or just unleash their anger in a game?
I’ve seen all kinds of violence in movies, games, etc, it doesn’t bother me much now but I wouldn’t want kids to see it. I only watch it because I know I can handle it, I know it’s fake, I know the reality is terrible and I make sure to let others know to never do that stuff in real life. If you wanna be violent, do it in a game, leave real people alone.
Is it healthy to watch violent fictional material? In my view, it can be. Depends on why they’re watching it, how they handle it, etc. I’m not afraid of people who play GTA, MK, Soldier of Fortune (one of the goriest games I’ve seen due to dismembering), God of War (don’t let your kids play that), Dante’s Inferno (Definitely don’t let your kids play that). I’m afraid of people who want to inflict real pain, people who actually get off from violence, people that think real violence is ok.
How far will it go? I think it’ll always reach a limit for most people, anything to do with kids is generally off limits, rape is usually seen as taboo, but the gore you see in games and movies actually becomes silly after a while instead of freaky or scary. Hell the most common reason I laugh at violence in games n movies is because it’s just so out there, so silly, so stupid. But I laugh at dark humor, it was a coping mechanism in my darkest times and I still try to laugh at whatever I can because thinking of the reality is depressing as hell.
I can watch or play some quite violent movies n games but still love, care, respect, feel for my fellow human. It doesn’t affect my empathy at all, a person dying violently in a horror movie doesn’t do much to me but bring on a drama movie where someone dies violently or calm and I may be balling my eyes out. It doesn’t harm my empathy at all.
I never liked the violent sex though, I like my porn and sex to be fun, no pain, pure pleasure. Bondage even turns me off. Rape scenes in movies do freak me out and literally make me want to protect the victim, and I think that is because they hit the reality nerve. I won’t bat an eyelid at shooting someone in GTA but gimme a movie where someone gets raped and that will really mess my feelings up, I hate seeing them and usually skip past it.
There is no rape in Mortal Kombat, I have played it and know that for a fact. There is no rape in Grand Theft Auto, at least none your character does or that you see happen. Erin, I have said again and again that this article is misleading and that you can NOT do the elaborate scenario he described in Mortal Kombat, I am getting very frustrated that you continue to ignore that and repeat the article’s claims as fact.
There are movies that feature nudity, violence, and even sexual violence (I spit on your grave, Last House on the Left). There are movies that depict torture (Devil’s Rejects, Hostel). People are attracted to the movies for the sex and violence. I don’t doubt that there is a segment of the market that is attracted to the video games because of the sexual depictions or the violence. The game manufacturers probably push the envelope because people want more. The movies that have the sex and the violence though are restricted as it should be. The games should be also. I’m sure we’ll disagree, but adults who wish to consume this material should have access to it.
Video games are just as restricted as movies in the United States, the law the supreme court struck down would have made them more restricted.
Also I agree that the inconsistency of a ruling like this is ridiculous, but my thoughts would be to make the pornography less restricted than making the violent games more restricted.
Put porn magazines in opaque packaging with a list of content, and let people make their own decisions. I read a great story in a book once. An eleven-year-old boy asked for a Playboy, and his parents discussed it and got one for him. A few weeks later, mom or dad asked him what his thoughts were on the Playboy, and the boy said that he wasn’t really interested, that he thought that he was too young to really understand it. The exposure wasn’t damaging, the parents were involved, it was a teachable moment that the parents jumped on, and the boy handled it with great maturity.
In the UK, the child wouldn’t be allowed to purchase either as the ratings on the games are legally enforceable. Personally I agree with that, I don’t see any problem with a parent deciding if their child can choose to play the game (although I’m not entirely convinced it’s a good thing for a child to be playing Mortal Combat); however I don’t think children should be allowed to buy it.
Not entirely sure why there’s a major problem with breasts though, in the UK I doubt it would be that hard for a child to get a copy of the Sun or Star (Newspapers which feature topless women) so maybe it’s just different over here.
I have been reading this site for some time, I have seen things I was both encouraged and angered by, but I have never felt compelled to comment before. This has gone too far, this article is hateful, it is ignorant, it is cruel. It is dehumanizing towards gamers, the implication that you are “dark and soulless” for playing a certain game is hideous. Gamers do not play games for the depiction of violence, Mortal Kombat (a reboot that is actually the ninth in the series) is the most popular in the series because it offers much more depth to the gameplay instead of focusing solely on intentionally over the top fatalities. The supreme court ruling merely treats games the exact same way as movies, books, and all other art forms. What really pushed me over the top and forced me to finally post a comment is the second edit note, where the author actually says he DOESN’T CARE if he unfairly represented the game. That is disgusting, and destroys any possibility of the article being written in good faith. The author and this website owe an apology to all gamers who read this, treating real people like this is what’s dehumanizing and cruel, not polygonal models.
I honestly can not think of any reason why a 13 year old can not see the first image. By the way, I think that PG-13 movies may have images like that and its technically legal for an adult to bring a 13 year old to such a show. The second image is terrible but I don”t know if it was a rape. In Mortal Kombat there is always the option to “Finish” your defeated enemy if you knew how and yes there is a bloody and gorey and almost psycho-sexual dimension to it (think of how Quarentino eroticizes blood in his films) . I recall guiltily enjoying such imagery just as I always found something vaguely pleasurable in the “itchy and scratchy” show.
When I clicked into this article to read it, i was not really prepared for what the subject matter was going to be. I don’t play video games and distrubing to see what kind of “games” one can play in them. I am also disturbed by the idea that raping people in video games is common place before killing them. I don’t even know what to say to this.
I will say that I don’t think kids should have access to such games and I don’t think kids should have legal access to nude pictures of women. While I do think a young boy’s interest in women’s body is totally normal and he shouldn’t be shamed for it, I don’t think he should be encouraged to objectfy women from such an early age. I do think violence is potentially as harmful as sex. But I also think that people are more likely to see sexual things and want to do them themselves then they are to see violent things and want to do them. I think people integrate sexual imagery into their own personal practices more then they may violent ones. I am not certain why that is, but that appears to be the case.
I am just rather horrified that this kind of stuff goes on in games. I don’t even know what to say about that.
It is not common, most people would be hard pressed to name any games where you can rape characters, almost any claims that you rape a character in a specific game are false.
I only found one, Rapelay.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/03/30/japan.video.game.rape/index.html
I was exposed to first Mortal Kombat in my teens back in the early 90s.
It was as cutting edge technically and over the top, as it’s current iteration.
Had a blast with it, never felt violated.
When the movie came out. I was terrified. I was rigorously asking my friends, if anyone rips any body parts off people in it so i could avoid seeing it happening.
Replying here to your last comment in the long series of replies since it reached its max. First of all, it is NOT common to be able to rape women in games, I have asked you repeatedly to stop stating that it is, it’s simply not true. I have not seen evidence that there is a single mainstream (released in stores) game where you can murder and rape a man or woman, so implying there is some sort of double standard in supposedly having one but not the other is even more offensive to gamers. Simply stating “seeing fictional violence makes you desensitized or hurts you in some way” does not make it true, it is not logical (Do you think playing or watching something with lots of magic will diminish someone’s belief that scientific laws are absolute in real life?) and does not match up to the experiences of the millions who regularly see it. Also, video games are not played for their violence, it is a minor element of the tone of a game’s story or graphical style, the core of games is gameplay, which is not affected by violence level. I recommend you look at a text guide for Mortal Kombat, that should give you an idea of the complexity involved (without showing any pictures of violence from it), because stating people play it to fulfill fantasies of killing people is absolutely wrong and extremely offensive.
“First of all, it is NOT common to be able to rape women in games, I have asked you repeatedly to stop stating that it is, ”
I agree, I have never seen a rape scene in a videogame, so if they exist they are whery rare, indeed.
I am also disturbed by the idea that raping people in video games is common place before killing them. I don’t even know what to say to this.
My first question is what games does this happen in and how common is it really.
As explained above there has never been a rape (or any reference to rape) in the MK series, in GTAIII you could engage in prostitution and then kill the prostitute afterwards but that’s murder not rape, in GTA IV there was the infamous “Hot Coffee” deal but again that was consensual sex.
And the game the John D mentions was thoroughly and properly ripped apart by the media and if I’m not mistaken was actually taken off the market and production of copies was halted.
Perhaps this wasn’t the best article to make this point, with it’s woefully inaccurate portrayal of video games and implied hyperbole. However the fact still stands that U.S. law has evolved into a state where governments can only legislate to restrict children’s access to sexual media and not violent media, regardless of how absurdly violent it is. Obscenity as a legal concept has changed over time. I was under the impression it could be applied to various subjects, but apparently it only applies to sex.
U.S.A. culture is far more afraid of sex than violence, and over the course of the 20th century this fear has been enshrined into law. Fear isn’t rational, and law based on that fear may attempt to be logical, but it will still create a break from commonsense. Hence you can rip somebody in half, starting at the crotch, just as long as you don’t rip the clothing on their crotch.
This fear of sex is far greater in the U.S. than other countries, which do in fact allow for an exposed nipple without causing a panic. Meanwhile many countries regulate violence more heavily. I would call it puritanical, except the puritans didn’t lose their heads over sex quite the same way modern people did. They had strict rules that forbade anything outside of marriage, but at least they knew what those rules were, and didn’t shame married couples for what they did behind closed doors (that came from the Victorians, whose main sexual focus was hypocrisy).
One possible justification is that even a child would now never to attempt ripping their peers in two, it being such a rare and absurd thing in the real world, but most “children” nearing adulthood do in fact engage in sex, a fact that continues to terrify their parents, despite being normal and unavoidable. Just look at the existence of statutory rape as a crime. The law claims a 15 year old cannot give consent the same way an unconscious person cannot give consent. It’s not frequently enforced, but it’s on the books everywhere, and will easily land you on the sex offender list for life. The sex offender registry is it’s own debate, but also illustrates how people consider sex scary, (i.e. that sex crimes are worse than regular crimes, note that public urination gets you onto the list as easily as non-statutory child rape). U.S.A. produces most of the world’s porn but also the one most likely to have a moral panic about it.
“Perhaps this wasn’t the best article to make this point, with it’s woefully inaccurate portrayal of video games and implied hyperbole.”
That wasn’t comparing sex to violence, it was comparing sex to sexual violence, in a game that doesn’t exist! Context much? If I suddenly stitched together all the nastiest scenes together from a bunch of required reading and then put it above a Robert Mapplethorpe photo, I doubt well-read academics would take the implication seriously. Also, you’re implying that the game TARGETS WOMEN SPECIFICALLY when THAT’S NOT THE WAY FIGHTING GAMES WORK! In tournament mode, at least, you have to fight everyone, and I doubt ethicists would be pleased with a game that excluded female characters.
If you go into in-depth criticism of a book, people expect yo to read the book! Why is a video game any different?
And yes, “RapeLay” and “Custer’s Revenge” probably do fall under obscenity law, not because you’re torturing a fellow human being, but because, technically, they’re sex simulators. There’s an entire episode of the AVGN (I’ll let you look up who that is) dealing with pornographic video games on the Atari where it says “Custer’s Revenge” was considered obscene, but so were all the games that featured consensual sex.
I know our society is all too eager to conflate sex and violence whenever they can, but it seems to be happening more in the “thought experiments” of media watchdogs and social critics more than anywhere else.
@Archy, the reason a “rape game” would be a deal breaker for me is that it seems too sick . It crosses the line for me. how about this hypothetical example – a videogame for pedophiles that lets the player have sex with cartoon children. No actual children are harmed. But I think if someone really enjoys that game, well, you know where I’m going . I just don’t think I’d want to be in a relationship with someone with those proclivities, even if they never intended to act it out.
Really graphic videogame violence bothers me too but most people who play videogames seem to enjoy it because of the challenge of learning to
play and increasing their skill level. It’s not about the violence per se. A game that lets you rape seems to cross a line though.
I believe I understand your feeling on it. If a game was mostly about a challenge, let’s say it’s about dating and most of the sexual encounters were consenting but you had the option of raping one and your bf chose to do that in the game, would that be a deal breaker?
If your bf is playing a game rescuing hostages but one time he decides to shoot the hostages, would that be a dealbreaker?
I still find it strange that violence, murder is seen as ok but rape would be a dealbreaker. Do you believe he would be more likely to rape someone, than to punch them in a fighting game, or murder them? Or maybe is it more that you fear it’s more likely you will be raped than beaten or murdered, I guess it would hit closer to your fears? I think maybe there is an element that killing n being violent are just part of the game, and something someone knows isn’t a real desire in the person playing the game but rape is extremely rare in games so it isn’t normalized (as violence in games is), and is seen as sick. I do wonder if the people playing the first violent games were seen as sick?
There shouldn’t be much difference in sickness between beating someone to death, shooting them, or raping because all are violent and all are pretty f’d up in real life. But not many bat n eyelid when I go on shooting sprees in games, hell I could kill things even in kids games n not many people seemed to care. But rape still seems to be crossing the line…it’s not like the victims of shooters consent to the violence yet the former is most likely to get a game banned. In fact you can kill all day long in battlefield 3, etc, I have a few thousand kills but if that game had a single rape scene it’d be banned straight away.
Which will keep the 13-year old occupied longer?
But all kidding aside, exposure to sex is much better for kids than exposure to violence. For adults too.
Sure violence is everywhere, it does not make it acceptable. By nature of choice its disturbing to think we would choose to permit children (yes still children) to engage in any activity that promotes such extreme violence and total disregard for human life. In my view nudity will at some point be appropriate, such violence as depicted in these games will never be.