So again the whole Rapelay issue was brought up by CNN, and maybe it's what I'm currently playing which is giving me some sort of different perspective on the whole thing.  Why?  Because I'm playing Bayonetta, that's why. 
 
I know, what does Bayonetta, which while sexual wouldn't be catagorized as an H-game, have to do with Rapelay which has quickly become, through no fault or ability to profit of it's own, the poster child for the genre?  It's a game of "six degrees of seperation" but it ties in tighter than I'd wish it did. 
 
In my list of PS3 games that I own, I put that Bayonetta felt like a 70s Grindhouse/Sexplotation film.  It was kinda tongue in cheek, hyper violent, and leeringly sexual but in an endearing sort of way.  The more I played it, the more I wanted to push through, master the techniques, and try to figure out more of what in the world was going on in the story.   It handles it's sexual content with a wink and a nod, and a lollipop planted firmly in cheek. If it wanted to it could shock and horrify, but instead does a nice job of walking the line between having the sexual content and relying on it.  In the end, Bayonetta's a blast because it's a twitchy action game with nice graphics, interesting visuals, and a story too convoluted to be threatening.
 
Shortly after I started playing Bayonetta, a report on CNN brought Rapelay back up again.  Months after the original reports on the game, a game that in 2009 was so 2006 to people who peruse Hentai games, it was back in the news again.   Rapelay has a catchy name that just rolls off the tongue into the ears of easily terrified people.  It's the new black sheep, being discussed in lengthy detail by people who probably have never played it.   And honestly, I haven't played it either since I'm not going to "steal" a torrent of the game, don't want to purchase the game, and I don't have interest to spend time with the game when better games sit waiting for me to play them.
 
"How easy is it for kids to get their hands on this game?", the CNN "reporter" asked.   The question that I wondered is, "Why would kids want to play a game in a language they can't understand when an easier to understand option is available to them?"  There's explicit sexual material all over the internet, so why wouldn't they go to something easier to get their hands on and operate if they're going to explore that.   And if rape is such a big deal, then it leads to this question that was only there because of Bayonetta's sexplotation/grindhouse links being freshly planted in my mind. 
 
"Why were people not this ticked off over 'The Last House on the Left' when it was released last year?"  
 
"The Last House on the Left" was released last year and includes a brutal rape scene which sets up the revenge scenario.  Rapelay also ends (if you let it end) with a revenge scenario for those you torment sexually.  The newly released version of the movie is a toned down version of the original 1972 film, which originally pushed the limits of the MPAA after it stopped enforcing the "Hays Code"  to find out exactly what filmmakers could get away without the restrictions which had been in place before.  That film was actually a modified version of a 1960 film called "The Virgin Spring".  The difference is that "The Virgin Spring" won an academy award for best foreign film in 1960.  
 
 "The Last House on the Left" wasn't going to win an academy award, actually it was going to have something else happen to it, strangely enough, in the place where the Rapelay situation began.  Remember, Rapelay was brought to light when a third party reseller tried selling the game on amazon.co.uk and the listing was pulled because it was a violation of Amazon's terms.  So like Rapelay, The Last House on the Left would be stopped from being sold in England, when it would be deemed unfit for distribution, and be caught up as one of the thirty nine films in Britain's "Video Nasties" list. 
 
Now while I'm pulling together what seems like a thin comparison between the film and the game, it's this banning that pulls the situation together.  You can correctly argue that the thing that's different between "The Last House on the Left" and "Rapelay" isn't the story, it's the ratio.  The Last House on the Left is a rape setting up a lengthy revenge scenario.  Rapelay is a lengthy rape scenario setting up a violent end.  The ratio of sex to violence isn't right for these two things to be directly compared with each other.  However, when you look at the rest of the Video Nasties list, it's littered with Italian sexplotation films, generally set in Nazi concentration camps, which have a similar rape-revenge motif and ratio.  Films like "Gestapo's Last Orgy", a better comparison point than "The Last House on the Left", gives a movie with a similar ratio of sexual violence to revenge and proves an important point. 
 
We've gone through this before.  We've seen a burgeoning media form try to push boundries and find out where they are in the public's eye before.  We've seen this with movies, we've seen it with music, and we're seeing it now with video games.   Older forms of media can't grasp what's happening, and are more concerned with the use of the object for shock value and attention, rather than have a true discourse on the invaders at their gates.  There's no reason for CNN, Fox News Network, CNBC, or other news channels to report on games honestly because the time people spend playing those games is less time spent watching their network and generating precious ratings which advertising dollars are based off of.  The pushing of the boundries shocks and horrifies these outlets easily, as Mass Effect proved before Rapelay was ever a glint in the news network's eye.   And they try to scare their viewers into staying with them, where it's safe, and they only show real atrocities instead of pixels being formed into fake ones. 
 
Another argument can be made that video games are interactive while cinema is passive, but both are visual storytelling methods, and it make sense that video games would borrow from cinema.  There's no need to reinvent the wheel, as many good techniques of visual storytelling already exist within cinema, and modifying those methods to interactive entertainment gives a familiar base for video game makers to work from.   Sometimes you get spectacular successes like Uncharted.  Sometimes it's so close and so far away like with Heavy Rain.  Sometimes it's so far away it's worth spending hours watching this very website to experience a beautiful trainwreck, like with Deadly Premonition.  Sometimes you dance on that thin line with a self assured sense of style like Bayonetta.  Sometimes, you cross the line and face consequences, like with Rapelay.  But all of these games are pushing the boundries and expanding video games from being seen as merely being a child's toy, and being accepted as much more.   
 
In the end, Rapelay may become video game's equivolent of Elvis shaking his hips on camera or Wes Craven taking an Oscar winning film and making it uncomfortably graphic, or it might become Body Count's "Copkiller" or "Gestapo's Last Orgy" and be a constant source of shame.  Whichever it is, the one thing it won't be, is alone as parallels to other media will always be there, if you just look long enough for the lines to blur a little bit.

So again the whole Rapelay issue was brought up by CNN, and maybe it's what I'm currently playing which is giving me some sort of different perspective on the whole thing.  Why?  Because I'm playing Bayonetta, that's why. 
 
I know, what does Bayonetta, which while sexual wouldn't be catagorized as an H-game, have to do with Rapelay which has quickly become, through no fault or ability to profit of it's own, the poster child for the genre?  It's a game of "six degrees of seperation" but it ties in tighter than I'd wish it did. 
 
In my list of PS3 games that I own, I put that Bayonetta felt like a 70s Grindhouse/Sexplotation film.  It was kinda tongue in cheek, hyper violent, and leeringly sexual but in an endearing sort of way.  The more I played it, the more I wanted to push through, master the techniques, and try to figure out more of what in the world was going on in the story.   It handles it's sexual content with a wink and a nod, and a lollipop planted firmly in cheek. If it wanted to it could shock and horrify, but instead does a nice job of walking the line between having the sexual content and relying on it.  In the end, Bayonetta's a blast because it's a twitchy action game with nice graphics, interesting visuals, and a story too convoluted to be threatening.
 
Shortly after I started playing Bayonetta, a report on CNN brought Rapelay back up again.  Months after the original reports on the game, a game that in 2009 was so 2006 to people who peruse Hentai games, it was back in the news again.   Rapelay has a catchy name that just rolls off the tongue into the ears of easily terrified people.  It's the new black sheep, being discussed in lengthy detail by people who probably have never played it.   And honestly, I haven't played it either since I'm not going to "steal" a torrent of the game, don't want to purchase the game, and I don't have interest to spend time with the game when better games sit waiting for me to play them.
 
"How easy is it for kids to get their hands on this game?", the CNN "reporter" asked.   The question that I wondered is, "Why would kids want to play a game in a language they can't understand when an easier to understand option is available to them?"  There's explicit sexual material all over the internet, so why wouldn't they go to something easier to get their hands on and operate if they're going to explore that.   And if rape is such a big deal, then it leads to this question that was only there because of Bayonetta's sexplotation/grindhouse links being freshly planted in my mind. 
 
"Why were people not this ticked off over 'The Last House on the Left' when it was released last year?"  
 
"The Last House on the Left" was released last year and includes a brutal rape scene which sets up the revenge scenario.  Rapelay also ends (if you let it end) with a revenge scenario for those you torment sexually.  The newly released version of the movie is a toned down version of the original 1972 film, which originally pushed the limits of the MPAA after it stopped enforcing the "Hays Code"  to find out exactly what filmmakers could get away without the restrictions which had been in place before.  That film was actually a modified version of a 1960 film called "The Virgin Spring".  The difference is that "The Virgin Spring" won an academy award for best foreign film in 1960.  
 
 "The Last House on the Left" wasn't going to win an academy award, actually it was going to have something else happen to it, strangely enough, in the place where the Rapelay situation began.  Remember, Rapelay was brought to light when a third party reseller tried selling the game on amazon.co.uk and the listing was pulled because it was a violation of Amazon's terms.  So like Rapelay, The Last House on the Left would be stopped from being sold in England, when it would be deemed unfit for distribution, and be caught up as one of the thirty nine films in Britain's "Video Nasties" list. 
 
Now while I'm pulling together what seems like a thin comparison between the film and the game, it's this banning that pulls the situation together.  You can correctly argue that the thing that's different between "The Last House on the Left" and "Rapelay" isn't the story, it's the ratio.  The Last House on the Left is a rape setting up a lengthy revenge scenario.  Rapelay is a lengthy rape scenario setting up a violent end.  The ratio of sex to violence isn't right for these two things to be directly compared with each other.  However, when you look at the rest of the Video Nasties list, it's littered with Italian sexplotation films, generally set in Nazi concentration camps, which have a similar rape-revenge motif and ratio.  Films like "Gestapo's Last Orgy", a better comparison point than "The Last House on the Left", gives a movie with a similar ratio of sexual violence to revenge and proves an important point. 
 
We've gone through this before.  We've seen a burgeoning media form try to push boundries and find out where they are in the public's eye before.  We've seen this with movies, we've seen it with music, and we're seeing it now with video games.   Older forms of media can't grasp what's happening, and are more concerned with the use of the object for shock value and attention, rather than have a true discourse on the invaders at their gates.  There's no reason for CNN, Fox News Network, CNBC, or other news channels to report on games honestly because the time people spend playing those games is less time spent watching their network and generating precious ratings which advertising dollars are based off of.  The pushing of the boundries shocks and horrifies these outlets easily, as Mass Effect proved before Rapelay was ever a glint in the news network's eye.   And they try to scare their viewers into staying with them, where it's safe, and they only show real atrocities instead of pixels being formed into fake ones. 
 
Another argument can be made that video games are interactive while cinema is passive, but both are visual storytelling methods, and it make sense that video games would borrow from cinema.  There's no need to reinvent the wheel, as many good techniques of visual storytelling already exist within cinema, and modifying those methods to interactive entertainment gives a familiar base for video game makers to work from.   Sometimes you get spectacular successes like Uncharted.  Sometimes it's so close and so far away like with Heavy Rain.  Sometimes it's so far away it's worth spending hours watching this very website to experience a beautiful trainwreck, like with Deadly Premonition.  Sometimes you dance on that thin line with a self assured sense of style like Bayonetta.  Sometimes, you cross the line and face consequences, like with Rapelay.  But all of these games are pushing the boundries and expanding video games from being seen as merely being a child's toy, and being accepted as much more.   
 
In the end, Rapelay may become video game's equivolent of Elvis shaking his hips on camera or Wes Craven taking an Oscar winning film and making it uncomfortably graphic, or it might become Body Count's "Copkiller" or "Gestapo's Last Orgy" and be a constant source of shame.  Whichever it is, the one thing it won't be, is alone as parallels to other media will always be there, if you just look long enough for the lines to blur a little bit.

Great read, you made some great points that I hadn't thought about. 

rapelay is no more different than a typical h-game. i should know. i played through it ; ; 
 
great read though 

" However, when you look at the rest of the Video Nasties list, it's littered with Italian sexplotation films, generally set in Nazi concentration camps, which have a similar rape-revenge motif and ratio.  Films like "Gestapo's Last Orgy", a better comparison point than "The Last House on the Left", gives a movie with a similar ratio of sexual violence to revenge and proves an important point. "

The reason why it's different to the way movies and other media portray the same subject matter is the perspective. Now before I say this I'm quite ignorant on the rapelay situation but I gather you play from the perspective of the rapist and are actively encouraged by the game mechanics to do sadistic acts and the in game character is shown to enjoy these. It's a rare thing for movies or TV to glorify rape or other extreme violence towards women and when it does people get just as angry.
 
The main thing that confuses me is why a game like this even exists. Why would anyone possibly want to simulate rape?

Hey look a blog complaining about the exposure of a certain news story that further exposes the news story. Way to go winner.

I tweeted about this, so hopefully I can get read on CNN.  CNN is a joke.
 
 
... except for Anderson Cooper.  That handsome gay man keeps shit real, son.

Solid article for the most part, but "Cop Killer" a source of constant shame? No way, great tune - political anger at some of its finest.

" Hey look a blog complaining about the exposure of a certain news story that further exposes the news story. Way to go winner. "