Okay, quick question - what game did you played - not including some odd Japanese erogames - a regular, western game, that would have a fairly obvious mentions of rape, or characters that were obvious victims of one. There are a bunch of games I never played and even more I've never heard about, so I might not have the almighty perspective on it, but I don't think it happens often.
Sometimes you have those scenes like in Episode 2 of Star Wars, when Anakin finds his mother tied in a tent. We never learn why Sandpeople kidnapped her or why they kept her. I'd imagine feeding extra useless mouth in a community that lives in the middle of a desert planet isn't really practical. Remember, Sandpeople never asked for ransom, late-middle age woman wasn't really a perfect workslave either, not in the conditions they kept her in anyway... What would Sandpeople do with a slave anyway? Sell it? Then you keep the slave healthy, and don't beat her to death.
So an adult viewer can connect the dots and come to a conclusion she was being useful in some way after all..
But we never have it really said in the movie.
(wait, was Palpatine controlling the Sandpeople into kidnapping Anakin's mother, so he could find her and kill the Sandpeople? I'm so confused...)
We have a scene in Dead Island where protagonists find a girl scared out of her mind, and the two female characters throw the other two male heroes out of the room, and you get a vibe the girl went though some non-consensual sex before. I guess there are some "almost obvious" scenes in games implying rape - but it isn't really topic games are saturated with. Not even close to the level of other crimes we see in games. Hell, in like half the games out there you're a murderer. A cold-blooded killer that takes lives of countless enemies and goes on. So what? They are orcs/mutants/aliens/bandits/german soldiers/police officers/shop owners.
In games like Total War series any Paradox games or.. pretty much any RTS out there, you send countless soldiers to their death, sometimes with no chance of surviving. It's a statistic you look at at the end of the fight. You killed so many enemies, lost so many of your own troops. Click. Okay, lets see the economic report now.
If you tried to apply a modern humanitarian standards to games you play, you couldn't really play most of them.
But okay, we're not crazy - we know this isn't reality, the brutal murders are just a fantasy, and while (unlike in movies) you are the one that deals death, it is as unreal to your brain as any movie where protagonists kills dozens of "bad guys".
So, if it's all imaginary, what stops us from utilizing rape as an element of videogames. It's not that it's to sexually-charged. Sexually-charged games are everywhere. You don't really have to show naked bodyparts to transmit a clear message to the player.
Rape is a powerful and impossible to pass by event in any story. It's a perfect tool to really get a player involved. Especially if we know the female character. Imagine, game like... Final Fantasy 7 (I know, I bring it out too often...) [SPOILER ALERT!]* What if, instead of killing Aeris, Sephiroth would rape her? A pretty little flower-girl, violated by the power-mad main-bad-guy. It would totally had sense, since Aeris was an Ancient after all...
Would that make you hate Sephiroth more, or would just put him in completely different light?
We're use to dealing with death, rape.. not so much.
you know, everyone dies eventually, thankfully not everyone is getting raped...
How about the recent Tomb Raider game where we have rape attempt. What if it was successful? How would you feel playing a rape victim? Having to experience the even though protagonist's eyes?
That's important part of the story, you know - familiarity with participants. Any old-school beat'em up can have in the intro information about protagonist's wife being raped and killed, so he goes out on a revenge rampage. It doesn't really bring the story home - knowing the victim, having her to be someone we know before the rape and then after. See how she changed, how she looks at you differently.
How heart-breaking and involving would that be?
To be honest, I think I'd have to put the game away for a moment and take a walk after having such an emotional jolt deliver to my brain.
But isn't that good? Isn't involving us in the story, make us feel the most a goal of modern games?
Times of Contra or Mario Brothers-thin storylines is less and less present in games. We have the epic storylines, fully-voiced with graphics getting better and better - all to give us immersion factor.
Does gaming, as a medium, grew up enough to handle so heavy topics as rape? Unlike movies, that were from day one everyones-thing, Games grew out of kids/family entertainment. That's why people got shocked when this - use-to-be-safe realm got invaded by Quakes and Mortal Kombats... games hit puberty then. But did they really matured by now?
Yes and no, I guess. Sexuality in videogames is often treated as a marketing plot. You get armour bikinis, and generally underdressed females in many games. I realized it for the first time in 2002 (I was 17), when one of the promotional graphics for Neverwinter Nights was Aribeth de Tylmarande, paladin of Tyr, posing in a really strange heavy armour, that left top of her chest really unprotected. Unless you count distraction as a form of protecting oneself...
Games before that time did similar ways of "selling themselves", but it's the rise of 3D games that let us see the female characters in their revealing outfits.
Wait.. Actually, I think it was Tomb Raider, first game where the not-so-subtle sexuality of main heroine was triangle deep on the screen. Still, you get my point...
Sex Sells - so sexy characters are everywhere. But we often don't consider them any more real, than the people we kill in games. They are the eye-candies. Involving them in a brutal and traumatizing rape would shatter the illusion of easy-going that they emanate with.
It takes some guts to produce a game that can touch a player like this. And it takes some to play a game like this and involve oneself in what's happening.
*yes, I'm doing spoiler alert for a game that is out for 15 years..
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