I see that LOTR reference :D
"That is not evidence. That is your hypothesis how this works. Exchange SA for murder and apply your hypothesis to all those crime tv shows. Crime is popular entertainment since like forever. So society should have accepted it long ago as socially acceptable. Is this so? No. Hypothesis rejected."
It is not empirical evidence. But I am not using the scientific method here because we are not conducting a scientific experiment, so no, this is not a hypothesis. It is a fundamental point that if you find something truly unacceptable, you will not do it. If someone is disgusted by spiders and finds their presence truly unacceptable, they will never get a pet tarantula, nor will they ever knowingly and willingly touch a spider. If they did so, then they would be accepting the presence of the spider in the very act of getting the pet. The same applies with SA. In the very act of entertaining yourself with a SA game, you are finding its contents (SA) acceptable. This is one main reason why I think itchio's removal of this game was acceptable: to encourage people not to accept SA.
"How it might do so? You play the game and control the events. You are playing. A pretend sitation in a safe environment. You do a bad thing. You might snigger and lough at the absurdity. Or you might feel bad for hurting some imaginary pixels. Either way, you might take away from it, how you would react in a real sitation and then have fun in the unreal situation and fool around. Not unlike some people go over imaginary discussions while in the shower"
Respectfully, I do not think this is how people are playing this game, and that you might be being a little intentionally obtuse. No one is snickering and laughing there way through this game because it is so absurd and amusing. And no on is playing it to try to learn about how they would react in this real life situation. They are playing it to masturbate, to fantasize. How many players of this game do you think are selecting the option to refrain from having forcible sex with the character in the game?
"Care to link me to some data about that? And what kind of desires are we talking about. I am not asserting that clinically insane mass rapists can cure their urges with that. I am merely protesting your assertion that playing such a game creates those urges or creates a demand for more, and the data I saw and my own experiences with games suggest that if any, there is the opposite effect of what you described. I for sure do not feel the urge to murder people. And I find guns abhorent. But willingly engage with them in a (virtual) play situation."
Perhaps I worded my claim a too strongly in my last message. But the whole idea of "blowing off steam" to suppress perversions (his term!) is rooted in Freudian psychology, which has been criticized for years for being pseudoscientific. And, even in Freudian psychology, there are nuances to this idea that phrase "blowing off steam" does not adequately cover. I encourage you to look into the widespread criticisms and nuances of [Freudian psychology catharsis theory] if you are interested in this (in the [] would be a good search term). I won't be dropping a ton of links, but the abstract of this paper might provide a decent starting point: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-26058-001
Additionally, I clarified that playing a game like this would not make all players desire to commit sexual assault. But it has an effect of exacerbating those tastes particularly in those who already show tendencies toward violence.
"Your premise is an already addicted person and you did not demonstrate, you asserted. Also, addicted to what? SA? Playing games?
The connection you try to make, is, that being addicted to a game with fictional content (or playing that game) will leap over to being addicted, or even try out that thing in real life. "
But how do people get addicted to things? Do they just magically wake up addicted to drugs or cigarettes or porn or anything? No, they become addicted by using those things. Have you every heard of an alcoholic who had never had alcohol? The connection I am making is that playing a pornographic game (porn is addictive) that contains sexual assault can lead people to follow that path that most addictions take (needing more to satisfy), and that that pattern, especially for those with other risk factors, can lead them to finding sexual assault acceptable, either by doing it themselves, or by not reacting when they know it has been done by others.
"Murder is also very possible. Or stealing cars like in GTA. Wait, so if SA is happening to furry bunnies, it would be ok? It is a game! People know that they play a game. It is a bit condescending to only allow them to see the difference, if it is about Orcs, but not allow them to see the difference, if it is about regular humans."
You didn't really demonstrate any problem with the point of realism being a factor. Something being more realistic makes it easier to immerse yourself in that fantasy. Being immersed in a fantasy about killing creatures that aren't real is one thing, being immersed in a fantasy about committing SA or a school shooting, like my point was talking about, is far worse.
And no, sexually assaulting furry bunnies is gross and certainly not ok.
"
It is. But saying x10 much is easier as 1.34 / 41.8, and it catches more countries. Actual numbers are here https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rape-statistics-by-country
You can feed a lot of cultural and statistical bias into those numbers to even them out. But if video games about the crimes are relevant here, I would expect the numbers to be a lot closer together, or rather expect the Japanese number to be bigger and not to be x31 smaller. So I either accept that the video games are not relevant here, or I accept that it has the opposite effect of what you claim.
I do not know the situaion in other countries in regards to the availablility of such video games. Are they very popular in Britain maybe, because they have more than double the amount than the US?
"
Anything you feed in is arbitrary though. It's just what you decided to feed in. You can't possibly accurately feed all the factors in. Like I said, what about underreporting? What about the fact that the west is much more open about sex? What about the millions of other factors that determine the results that appear on that website? Did you read the disclaimer on the site you linked to under the heading "The Challenge of Tracking Down Truthful Rape Statistics"? That makes the point I am trying to make pretty well. Given all those factors, it makes sense that the impact of video games would be present but not visible, like a drop of rain in the ocean during a hurricane.
"No. It does not become normal in real life! It becomes a seen thing in such games. It's novelty bonus fades. It contributes less to the entertainment. "
This goes back to what I said before. What you do for entertainment is a part of your "real life", and it affects your perceptions and way of seeing the world. It's not fake, you really did participate in that entertainment. You are not a different person when you are entertaining yourself than you are elsewhere.
"I am awaiting a link to something that would support that connection you try to establish. It did not work for fps games decades ago. And for SA specifically, the data contradicts the assertion. The place where those games are known to be readily available for adults has one of the lowest SA rates on the planet."
I will provide a few resources here, but as I said before, I will not go back and forth playing the statistics game. I do this so you see that there is support for out there for my link between using sexual assault for entertainment and accepting it in real life. Remember that science and statistics cannot tell you if the results of playing this game are good or bad, it can only observe trends based on a limited set of variables. We need to use our logic, common sense, and moral/ethical judgement to decide what to do with the trends that we pull out of them. And, we can notice cause and effect using logic without some kind of scientific experiment.
Nevertheless, here are some studies to show that there is scientific evidence supporting a link between sexualized video games and real-life sexual behavior, which leads naturally into my more specific claim about sexual assault:
- Effects of sexualized video games on online sexual harassment (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ab.21811)
- Playing a Videogame with a Sexualized Female Character Increases Adolescents' Rape Myth Acceptance and Tolerance Toward Sexual Harassment (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/g4h.2014.0055)
- Violence Against Women in Video Games: A Prequel or Sequel to Rape Myth Acceptance?(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260512441078)
So there, you have some links to go through. And I have already addressed your claim about Japan. You cannot possibly accurately account for all the variables in national SA stats, therefore, your claim that the Japanese rape games have no impact (or no impact causing rates of SA to go up) on the SA stats relative to other countries has no compelling evidence to support it.
Again, all these negative impacts of a SA game on the players are only part of the point. The other part is again, that itchio is allowed to, and indeed is right in, removing this game from their site.
One final thought. This is a bit of an emotional argument, but I think it can tell us something. I will assume you are a man. Imagine yourself in this scenario: Imagine you are someone who plays this game. Now, imagine going to a woman close to you, like your mother, or girlfriend, or sister, etc. and trying to explain how you entertain yourself by playing a game where you sexually assault a woman. A woman who, by what I've heard, is your stepmother. Doesn't sound like a pleasant conversation. She would likely feel disrespected, creeped out, disgusted, and, if she cares about you, would likely be quite worried about you. And how would you feel doing it? Would that not be awkward and shameful? I think those natural emotions that every normal person would have should tell us something about how we should perceive a game like this, and whether we should play it.