RapeLay - Japanese "rape simulator" game

[TonyTheTiger]

There are games like Ethnic Cleansing and stuff, maybe even Postal 2 in the hands of a less kind player, that get into stuff like that. Have those ever been on CNN (several years after it was relevant)?

Ethnic Cleansing was definitely in the news. Whether or not it was several years later is ultimately moot. Just the mere mention of it by the media in an attempt to criticize it brings some measure of success if only because had it not been featured on the news nobody would know about it. I would be asking you what Ethnic Cleansing was had I not remembered hearing about it in the media.

You're right that treading this water again after RapeLay has had it's day already seems suspect. It's possible that the journalists just plain forgot. They caught wind of it from somewhere and didn't realize it was old news.

Rape games in Japan have been around for decades. It's a friggin' GENRE. They publish games and an inordinate amount of manga dedicated to the subject.

What's so damn special about this particular game?

Nothing. Just that it was the one game people picked to raise a stink about. I'm not particularly pleased with the genre as a whole and I think a lot of people would agree. But it's kind of like what happens when 40 cars are driving 80mph. A cop is going to pick one of the pack to pull over. In the case of the media, though, the irony is that the one that gets "pulled over" turns out to be the lucky one that becomes famous/infamous when it hasn't done anything especially noteworthy.

If enough people are turned on by it, then there's a market for it.

Might as well say "there's a market for everything."