Gender of who is murdered has a lot to do with it too. I don't think you'll find a video game where you predominantly kill women. The most infamous scene of murder in video games is the Call of Duty mission "No Russian" where you optionally commit terrorism at an airport. If you pay attention you'll notice they kill much more men than women, and made sure that despite pleasant weather none of the women were wearing dresses or skirts. Murder of men is a lot more digestible.
This genuinely baffles me. Who cares! It's a video game. It's pixels on a screen. True crime podcasts and movies are a-okay but when its a video game that's where the line is drawn?
I suspect all new frontiers are like this. There was probably a similar outcry over violence in films. And maybe violence in fictional books too. Both long lost from living memory.
It does feel different in a video game, because you're the one pulling the trigger. I played that CoD mission when the game came out, and I felt a bit sick in my stomach playing that mission out. But I'd probably have exactly the same feeling from violence in films if I wasn't so desensitised to it after growing up watching american movies and tv shows.
The people who care signed their names[1]. It's not a secret or anything.
Most of the signatories are associated with Australian anti sex trafficking and exploitation groups, although there are several UK signatories and a couple Americans.
A publication[2] by one of the signatories connects the dots. It's driven by the core idea:
"Pornography Use Shapes and Changes Sexual Tastes"[3] which is supported by "In a survey of men involved in online sexual activities, 47% reported being involved in practice or seeing pornography which previously was not interesting to or even disgusted them."[4]
I'm trying to steelman when I say I believe that the authors would agree that this also applies to games with sexual content.
To address your comment specifically, while I see the appeal of consistent moral framework. I personally believe that moral frameworks trade consistency for completeness and rarely accomplish either. You have to assume the value-perspective of the other in order to understand why consistency might take a back seat to some other value we could only speculate on.
It really should be obvious that the natural objection to "if they banned this then why not X" is "they haven't gotten around to it yet" and that the reason they can be more successful is also that they have put their money where their mouth is and also named themselves, something a counter petition will probably struggle with.
1) Why haven't they banned porn game X when they banned porn game Y? -> it's just a matter of time, they've already established that they can pressure to get game x banned, they'll get to game y eventually - also, note that it should be obvious it's much easier to rally support to ban "niche incest/non-con game X" than to rally support to ban "borderline mainstream harem game Y". This is what I was referring to specifically.
2) Why haven't they banned all porn games then they banned porn game X? -> it takes a lot more effort to move the needle here. It's not for lack of trying or lack of will, it's that it's obviously much harder to get traction when you've expanded now to an entire category that includes borderline mainstream titles that will finally get defenders willing to put in the same effort as them.
3) Why haven't they banned GTA when they've banned porn game X? -> First, they've tried!. 2nd, again, same principle -> activists aren't stupid, they know they can win the battle one game at a time, and that they can't win it in one gigantic decisive swoop (conveniently enough though, you can leverage this as well to ensure you have a nice long runway to continue to do your activism and keep it as a wedge issue to push at for a nice long time)
4) Why not ban true crime podcasts when they've banned porn game X? -> see again, look, many. many people listen to true crime podcasts, and many people have also objected to them as exploitative. but why does porn game x get banned and true crime podcast Z not? because, well, duh, again, the amount of effort needed to move the needle on something many people enjoy is that much more! i don't think they don't want to, mind you, but again, it's going to take a lot more effort to get to true crime podcasts when they have a thousand other porn game XYZ's they can to work on
And lets not pretend people aren't also trying to get books banned, again, it's being done at a more selective pace, book by book, not category by category. Why is <random niche hentai> banned and not <50 shades of grey>? well, who is published by a mainstream big publishier and who is published by a niche publisher that doesn;t want to get the whole hammer on them?
I'm still looking at the thread and see people bringing up other titles that haven't been banned as if that's a gotcha and it just baffles me. Like what do they think the activists would respond if they were called out on it?
"Oh we don't care about that we only had a grudge on this game in particular"
Or more likely
"Thank you for bringing this title to our attention, we will certainly try to have it taken down as well as it too is against the values we are fighting for"
Well this is exactly how it should work for any cause.
Perhaps there was a misunderstanding. I'm saying the fact that they've succeeded in getting some games removed while others of the same type still exist or that other similar things still exist is not because they are morally inconsistent but because they can't do this all at once
There are still taboos even for pixels on a screen, even for video games. It's a good thing. There should be.
Perhaps you're just saying that you're mostly comfortable with the depiction of some forms of violence in some contexts. But what about other scenarios though? Would you feel the same about a game where the player runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves? It's just pixels!
What if it's a story but with very detailed descriptions? What if that short story is adapted into a video game but it's only a text adventure? What if we add artwork to it, but it's just pixel art? etc etc.
The ability and the freedom to explore the darkest parts of our psyche in a safe, controlled, and fictitious environment IS important. Even if we find certain aspects or fetishes repugnant and distasteful.
I find the idea that payment processors have enough power to dictate the morality of a game market concerning. Given the number of other NSFW fetishistic stuff that is still being permitted on Steam I don't buy the "chargeback" rational AT ALL.
>But what about other scenarios though? Would you feel the same about a game where the player runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves?
Yes and yes. We have worse stuff in literature already.
> Would you feel the same about a game where the player runs around raping women, or capturing and lynching escaped slaves? It's just pixels!
Yeah. Same thing. Should be ignored. If someone feels an urge to run around raping women and lynching slaves, I'd much rather they were sitting around at home playing videogames than doing anything else in their spare time. What do you want them to be doing, the traditional creep move of figuring out how to get into positions of power and influence?
In addition taxpayers shouldn't be footing the bill in the war on pixels; if the banks are taking a firm moral stand then clearly the government is involved and that means they're probably spending money on expunging victimless non-crimes which is a low.
What do you think is occurring when a player defeats one of the other cultures in Civilization by conquering their last city or conducts orbital bombardment on a enemy planet in Master of Orion until the population is zero? That's genocide as gameplay.
I disagree. there shouldnt be any taboos for pixels on a screen
i mean, i can understand a child porn game would be disallowed but we already have anime games where characters that look like children are nearly naked
GTA, Elder Scrolls and Fallout series all allow for violence against women and not just the mutual violence of combat or whatever. One small example in one game from a long-ass time ago isn't really a broader trend (not to say that society at large doesn't view violence against men and women differently in different contexts)
Then you have an open world game where you can do all sorts of insane stuff, but everyone loses their shit specifically over feeding suffragettes to alligators.
