Simple loophole: make the same games, just slip a scene in where the girl says she wants you to do it and will play it like she doesn't.

Problem solved! Not real rape.

While I think this is bad since it is unnecessary censorship like Brad said. It is at the same time kinda good press wise for Japan as a country viewed by outsiders.

I really don't like rape games, but it still is something that has happened for so long and could be making many people become unemployed and shouldn't be banned, maybe more regulated, but not banned outright.

big turn around from the "hooray Rapelay is getting taken off store shelves" article. Now its a freedom of speech thing.

@mana: I think he like it being taken off since it really shouldn't be sold in retail stores. But he is mad because it is something that is alright to sell online. Having an all out ban is somewhat overdoing it.

I know another loophole, it's called ANIME & MANGA.....Crap, I hope I didn't give them any ideas.

Well, gotta think of the IMAGINARY, NON-EXISTENT, FAKE people.

[quote]@mana: I think he like it being taken off since it really shouldn't be sold in retail stores. But he is mad because it is something that is alright to sell online. Having an all out ban is somewhat overdoing it.[/quote]
Isn't that just censorship on a small scale? If its ok for consenting adults to buy it, why not make it available for them?

@clevetheripper: Forget my old comment, I think I was high when I wrote it because it doesn't make sense now that I re-read it. What I should have said is that he is fine with it being sold online and all, but not in retail stores. Though, the all out ban is angering him since it is over censorship.

This is a shocker. And wrong while I don't support rape its is after all fictitious games how about all those rape scenario porns gonna ban those as well?

good decision!!!

Another victory for America.

But your forgetting a large important part...

How are they going to say hello in Japan now?

@Teradoc:
Good old sexual harassment, obviously.

Next are the games where you can shoot people in the head, decapitate and maul their bodies and torture them, right?

Censorship is a bad thing! I personally don't see why you would play a GAME like this and enjoy it, but if you want, then I guess go ahead and play, cause it's still a GAME.

Same bullshit as with the guy who is going to get jailtime for importing manga.

After reading some of the comments on Zepy, I felt that I had to post here.

And, noting the large wave of disapproval of the ban, I felt like being the advocatus diaboliis and putting my two cents worth.

~

You see, that's just the thing: it's the moral offensibility of the act.

I find it offensive partly based on what I believe. I accept the idea of parallel universes, that they readily exist, and, in another dimension, all the events that have transpired in our fiction as being individual real to that particular dimension. To put it simply, even if it's not 'real' in 'this' reality, it is happening in some other, alternate reality. Of course, one could argue that we can't really come into contact with alternate universes, but I'm of the opinion that fiction is by one means we can do it.

Which goes on to simulation. I'm still an avid player of Simcity 2000 (amongst other games, not to mention I like a certain eroge and, while I admit the game is nothing like building a real city, or actual city planing, I don't deny that I do enjoy the thought of creating new cities in the actual world. If the option had been available to me, I would have readily excercised it.

And, that's thing I find funny with the argument that 'anything that happens in a simulation is not real'. Maybe it isn't, but that does't seem to discourage militaries of some coutries to do research in making wargame simulations, in both FPS and RTS. I don't deny that there is the average, casual player that may play classic Championship manager and Half-Life for the pure sake of fun, but, I don't think this doesn't translate to eroge completely. ( The people who buy eroge aren't a huge majority in Japan, and the people who have such games outside of Japan aren't like evrybody else)

Perhaps I am speaking from a certain standpoint. I mean, I enjoy ren'ai and galge type of eroges, the more 'romantic' ones with their simulations of mushy dialogue that lead up to various positions, or the moe action-packed shenanigans of the Alicesoft and so on, and I don't deny that I like the idea of simulating a real relationship. And, while I am in one myself, I still enjoy the process of simulating it, because the feelings of consensual love is what I like to simulate.

But forced sexual advances on a weaker party just doesn't cut it for me. And, as I mentioend earlier, how many people actually do play the game purely for the 'entertainment' of it ? I don't doubt that I'm wrong: I've seen some people treat such games as though it's just another game for them to complete, find every route, unlock ever scene, including the one where the guy gets thrown on the rail track, or there is the gae's one happy, consensual ending and so on.

I'm not saying that rape should be removed 'entirely' from eroge. The issues of rape have been explored in eroge that have not been focused on it, I still remember playing D.O's Crescendo, when the protagonist came to terms with the repercussions of his action that he had commited three years earlier (whch was, yes, rape) I'm not aying that 'rape' like the 'r-word' that games shouldn't explore, but I feel that the negative repercussions of such acts should be uphed as opposed to simulations and bonuses of forced sexual advance.

So, in a way, I do support the ban. I know I'm a minorty around here, but that's how I feel.

If this were a perfect world in which rape and other acts of horrific violence didn't exist and happen every day, I'd say this is bad and we shouldn't censor games that feature rape. But this is a world in which rape is real, where women live in fear and men commit the most terrifying acts of violence imaginable to women - and it's not taken seriously by society at large.

Sure, no one comes out and says 'rape is a-ok' - but when such a small number of rape cases are ever solved, less prosecuted? When the headlines surrounding domestic violence (such as the Chris Brown/Rhianna incident) focus on what the woman 'did' to 'make' the man hit her? When women are considered sexual objects that only exist to be 'conquered'? This is not a society in which we should be playing rape "games".

I don't believe that video games in which there is violence are to blame for violence in real life. But when a person is surrounded by the message (in society at large and via video games) that women want to be raped, that it is the woman's fault she is raped, that women who wear revealing clothing are 'asking for it' - we should NOT be adding flames to the fire that already exists by making it 'ok' to rape an albeit fictional, 2d woman.

So no, as much as I don't like content restrictions placed on games - I agree with this decision. Games that feature rape as a main plot device should not be available, online or in stores.

Take rape out of H-games, and there's nothing left at all. It's all fantasy, so what's the harm? There's no way hentai increases actual sex crimes. It's just for masturbating.

Anyway, why worry? This is the Internet--there's no way to stop people from making anything and getting it out there, whether officially licensed or not.

So say hello to more freeware doujin H-games. User-generated content, open source code, and no cost. Regulation is useless when the Net's around. Whee!

Freedom of Speech exists to protect the speech/expressions we DON'T necessarily want to hear or see.

This kind of thing is just going to encourage other nut jobs like Jack Thompson (for example) to keep lobbying to censor media that they don't personally agree with.

I can't speak for anyone else on this site, but I don't like being told what sort of entertainment I can or cannot buy, see, read, hear, play or otherwise experience by anybody anywhere.

There need to be an update.

http://zepy.momotato.com/2009/05/28/rape-games-not-really-banned-and-i-hate-tbs/

http://kotaku.com/5272475/and-now-rape-games-are-not-banned-in-japan

The bad about it:

(1) This was the work of the Komeito party, who made a baseless allegation that an 'increase' sex crimes were related to eroge, when the rate of sexual offences is relatively low in Japan

(2) TBS did the report, and they've been famous for other things.

and....

(3) The games aren't really banned.

Ah well.... guess I'm still in the minority :P

>Nihon Freak : I do hope you know that there's a lot of eroge out there that has no rape in them.

^ Are you talking about dating sims? If they don't have porn, then they're not eroge. They're just long, boring text-based choose your own adventure stories with anime pictures.

I have seen a game that had some characters who had consensual sex, but the other 3/4 of the characters all got raped. One of the Bible Black spinoffs also has one consensual lesbian scene, but it's with dark magic, so it might not count.

I have as yet encountered exactly one hentai that doesn't have rape- Futari H, because it's about a married couple. Oh wait--yes it does have rape, in the fantasy sequences. So, no. Still haven't seen anything without it.

The usual "consensual" plot device in H-games is the characters get drunk and the girls get raped. And then there's the magical orgasm or pleasure spell/talisman/curse/salve/etc, that makes the victim enjoy it. When you think of Bible Black, for instance, the characters want to do it, but they're technically victims under a spell, so I don't count it as consensual. Or there's a demon or tentacle monster, dominatrix, etc. But rape is at the heart of all hentai. I have yet to see a hentai of any kind without the girl saying "Noooo!" all the time. "Iiiieeeee!" and "Ikuuuu!" are the two main lines of all hentai, as the girl being raped magically begins to like it and cums all over the place.

I'm not convinced.

In reply to the firat paragraph.... yeah. I presume you haven't played Nexton's ~One~ or KEY's Kanon. Which are long, boring text-based choose your own adventure stories with anime pictures [u]WITH[/u] porn(h-scenes) in them.(One or two scenes, that is)

But yes, I like it, since I don't find them boring, and it's usually fun to see the different possible story options a particular path can take.

And no, I never, or would want, played Bible Black. It's just not my kind of thing.

Well, there's something wrong with using that statistic about how the numbers of rape in Japan are low. Those are referring to rape CASES, not rapes, which is totally different in Japan's case. There was a documentary about how rape victims in Japan really have nowhere to turn to because there's no 24 hour call center or anything to help victims report it. They are pretty much left on their own and rapists can pretty much get away with it. Even if they do report it, the investigation done by the police is so haphazard and lacking effort that the women don't want to go through with it because they have to RE-ENACT it.

HOWEVER, I don't really support the censorship of speech. If someone wants to animate women getting raped, I don't think the law should stop them. I am against them being made because I think it's wrong, but I really don't think the law has any business banning that, and I don't think games like these cause people to become rapists.

And my morals are my own, they don't have to be everyone else's. That's why I think the law should stay out of this, because that's what the law is trying to do with censorship: make everyone have the same morals, which is bullshit.