As an interesting parallel to this debate, I refer you to the case of American Psycho. It was initially dropped by its publisher because of its content; there were pushes to ban it across the world; it was even accused of inciting murders!

After all this, argument from journalists and academics about its satirical nature and the availability of multiple readings, it was finally published. A really fascinating debate.

I'm all for having open debates about games at textual-artistic levels. Slowly and surely more and more bloggers are becoming involved. Plus the internet is the ideal forum for this.

All the best & keep up the comments!

The comments about art offsetting the content is crucial — perhaps a further question is how might games offset their content?

That said, the upshot is, it all depends on how you "read" the text.

I am quite bothered by the fact that I have been unable to experience such "games" myself… titles like Rapelay and Stockholm (the latter of which is apparently not a game at all, but a photo essay). These things have been attacked by progressive bloggers and essentially banned for sale in the United States. What am I — as well as the average public — supposed to make of that? There's a forbidden fruit scenario, definitely. There's also me wondering what I missed as a critic that caused such an uproar.

We don't have these dialogues about Painting anymore. Marcel Duchamp became R. Mutt and the world was changed. What will it take for interactive media to ascend to the same level? Right now I'm left with a few games that I'm told are "bad," yet I can't experience them for myself and form an opinion. That is unacceptable.

Obviously I knew in writing the post there would be some discussion, as it is subject fraught with extreme opinions.
I do agree the art (or rather "Art") angle is one that muddied the waters, and I possibly shouldn't have gone there, but that said, it is something I feel strongly about and is also possibly the only true absolutist stance I take in the entire post.

As for the rest, it is an editorial, my personal feelings on the matter; yes, I am against censorship, but also, I am highly uncomfortable about the more extreme elements of sub-culture and in the end I merely express a sigh of relief that a self-governing body has come to the same conclusion as I, thus avoiding the whole nasty censorship issue (for now).

Opponents to this development should remember that it is a Japanese body, for the Japanese industry, made up of Japanese developers who have decided this, so any argument that attacks the imposition of Western values on Japanese society should remember that attacking the decision of the EOCS is actually that, not the support of it.

That is all, really. I'm glad this is all leading to lively debate, and, for that matter, more eloquent debate than one would expect from the subject matter.
Keep up the great work!

I agree—postmodernism can only rationalize the debate if you subscribe to it. If you don't, it is illogical. Frankly, I don't find it adequate either. I do find it interesting, though, how transcendent frames like postmodernism apply. If it was wasn't for pomo academics and critics, American Psycho might not be available to us.

But yeah, as I said. It is just a game. It's abstracted from participants IRL ("pixels and code", as you put it). Plus, as mentioned in the article, the media is not an insidious force. Such games won't make people rape.

Also, I agree with you on censorship and how Rapelay shouldn't impact on censorial reasoning.

The fact is we are not talking about people raping young girls but its representation without actual human involvement. Rapelay and its ilk is just pixels and code, whatever the emotional response it illicits in observers.

However applicable a postmodernist approach may be, it should not be used as a reason to accept or refute an experience's existance. Taken to its logical extreme, it could be used to ban everything – if a generally acceptable perspective can be used to defend an explicit product, an explicit perspective could be used to assault it. The observer will take what they wish and we should not second guess that.

Censorship is people saying 'I find this so distasteful I would never wish to experience it and everyone else should do to'. It denies the possibility of other people being capable of self-censorship or simply sharing a dislike of the subject matter and how it is presented.

In short, whatever we may personally think of Rapelay, it shouldn't be up to us to deny other reasoning adults access to a legitamate and above all legal product.

I hope that all made sense and didn't ramble too far.