How could Rape Day be made?

Trigger Warning: This article contains references and discussion of sexual assault in video games

In March of this year, it was announced that a game called Rape Day would release on Steam. The game, which would have you play as a ‘serial killer rapist’ during a zombie apocalypse and attack women to advance the plot, was rightly placed under review and it has recently been announced that it will no longer be available.

This is good news for gaming fans and moral human beings everywhere, but it does beg the question of how such a game could ever be made in the first place?

There have unfortunately been instances of sexual assault and rape in video gaming’s history, but they are few and far between. 1982’s Custer’s Revenge saw a crudely rendered General Custer dodging arrows to reach a Native American woman tied to a cactus. If the player reaches the woman, they receive points for having sex with her, its depiction looking obviously non-consensual. RapeLay, a Japanese game released in 2006 has you play as a man who stalks and rapes a family (with an underage daughter). The game flew under the radar on release, as in Japan it broke no laws, but garnered international attention a few years later and was subsequently banned in many countries. Horrifically, a number of people came out in defence of the game, arguing that rape is a lesser crime than murder, yet there are many games in which you kill your enemies.

This abhorrent attitude is shared amongst the game creators too, Rape Day’ s creator said in a Q&A, “murder has been normalised in fiction, while rape has yet to be normalised”. Should it ever be? The player is complicit in the act, and the act is a good thing, because it leads to victory – that the game developers do not see the potential issues with this reasoning is astounding.

The 2013 Tomb Raider reboot came into its own controversy when, in an interview, executive producer Ron Rosenberg said that Lara Croft would almost be sexually assaulted, and have to kill the rapist in response. This would become a “defining moment” and help shape the character. Crystal Dynamics later responded, apologising for any misunderstanding and that sexual assault was “not a theme we cover”.

This instance can be likened to examples such as Game of Thrones, using a character’s rape or nearly-rape as a narrative device have been widely questioned and criticised.

In the UK an estimated 20% of woman and 4% of men have experienced some kind of sexual assault since the age of 16. It is a terrible crime with often life-long consequences to the victims and is a topic to address carefully, if at all, in fiction. If we have video games promoting rape as a good thing, it might not be long before this violence translates into the real-world.

Valve’s approach to censorship has been notoriously lax, outside of illegal content, and this story has provoked calls for more restrictive governmental legislation towards the industry. Some do already take a stand. When it appeared Outlast 2 would feature a scene that involved the protagonist being sexually assaulted, the Australian Classification Board refused to give the game a rating, effectively banning it. The situation was later rectified, developer Red Barrels said in a statement that the content of that scene “was not representative of the final game.”

Censorship is not particularly valued by gamers, but there must be some kind of limit to prevent abhorrent content like this being produced. Unfortunately Valve’s judgement has not reached the Rape Day’ s creator, Desk Plant. Rather than being discouraged, the company is now looking for another platform to host the game. I, for one, hope they fail.

If you have been affected by this article you can find a list of helplines at http://thesurvivorstrust.org/national-helplines/.