I was taking a look at Maid: the Roleplaying Game the other day and this weird thought ocurred to me..

Have we stop to think that, maybe, our "mass-murder-simulators" games may look so weird and disgusting for them as their "teenage sexual abuse" ones tend to look for us ? Or maybe, even regardless of audiences, mass-murder-sims and teenage-abuse-sims shouldnt be put in the same sack ?

I mean, yeah, a game where youre a fucking maid trying to appease your master (sexually even) sounds weird. But how about a game that simulates the killing of a human being and expects you do it tens or even hundreds of times during the course of a character life ? Shouldnt it be equally bizarre ? And if your valid argument for playing it is: "Im a grown up adult, I can deal with fictional mass-murdering", shouldnt "Im a grown up adult, I can deal with fictional teenage sexual sim" be equally as valid ?

Shit, Im confused.

Thoughts ?

Traditional 'western' RPGs arose from wargaming, where strangely enough, people die and you kill people.

I couldn't even begin (nor really want to) to fathom where games like Maid arose from.

Great trolling topic though.

Quote from: silva;664969I was taking a look at Maid: the Roleplaying Game the other day and this weird thought ocurred to me..

Have we stop to think that, maybe, our "mass-murder-simulators" games may look so weird and disgusting for them as their "teenage sexual abuse" ones tend to look for us ? Or maybe, even regardless of audiences, mass-murder-sims and teenage-abuse-sims shouldnt be put in the same sack ?

I mean, yeah, a game where youre a fucking maid trying to appease your master (sexually even) sounds weird. But how about a game that simulates the killing of a human being and expects you do it tens or even hundreds of times during the course of a character life ? Shouldnt it be equally bizarre ? And if your valid argument for playing it is: "Im a grown up adult, I can deal with fictional mass-murdering", shouldnt "Im a grown up adult, I can deal with fictional teenage sexual sim" be equally as valid ?

Shit, Im confused.

Thoughts ?

That's an interesting point, though I think its more complicated than that.  My own experience with RPGs in Japan, as well as video and arcade games there in the 80s is that playing a treasure taking killer isn't all that strange.

I have read the debates here, and the amusing article over on SomethingAwful. If you watch enough non-porno anime, it isn't hard to get the trope of the situation in Maid. From what I have read, the presentation of that in the game is very unfortunate and sexuality never needed to be a part of it.

Watch Spirited Away or Howl's Moving Castle for example - nothing sexual there really. There isn't a sexually menacing master. However you can see depictions of cruel co-workers who try to put the target into a compromising position, and that does seem to be a part of the genre.

While I think I understand what got you thinking about the comparison, I fail to see the equivalence.

The "Euro TV has boobs, but American TV has murders" comparison has a tendency to stop at pedophilia and tentacle rape and all of that.

Besides, even if one were to concede the idea that "the Japanese definition of what's okay and what's deviant is different than a Western one", so what?

Bah, deconstruction bullshit.

You do have a point

Interesting here, is that Maid and similar is "Fancservivice" drawn to the extreme, while masslaughter of alienized and demonized beings, humanoid or not, may be seen as "minionthinking" drawn to the extreme.

Since sex is still a taboo subject, more or less, in several part of "the west", while violence is an ok subject in comparison, it do seem like one rape, or act of paedophilia, is worse than massmurder, officcially.

However, it isn't.
I may agree that one actual paedophilian rape is worse than one murder, but i'm not sure how much more.
However, lets get back to the extremes en masse, again:
A lot here would not agree with me, but to me, saying "all beings of this kind is either self-serving, anti-civilization, or even downright EVIL!!!!" is food for genocide, an excuse to kill those beings whenever they are encountered, because they will attack you, or have already attacked you.
And the regular excuse?
It is fiction.
In that made-up world, all those beings ARE EVIL!

But then, the same or similar can be said about MAID!
It is fiction, no real girls are getting hurt in the process, and if they are, they knew what they signed up for when they became maids, and is thereby protected from any real trauma that may come from getting raped.
Besides, they probably like it in a masochistic way, more ore less, or just gets what were coming to them.
And, if anyone say that it is repulsive thinking ....
Hey, it is fiction, those are the ways in that made-up existance.

Personally, i do not like the "It is fiction"-excuse.
No matter whether it is to accept paedophilian rape, or to accept genocide.
Those excuses may have their place, though ...but.
Those extreme cases isn't needed.
Why have all orcs be evil?
It sufficces very well with just having the ones guarding the evil sorceror be evil.
"What? No more burning and pillaging of orc villages?"
Do you really need to do that?
And it is easy to tweak MAID so it becomes more naughy but less gruesome, too, like disallowing too young maids, replace rapes with "cover in guck", and so on.

MAID has another thing that talks against it here in the west, too, though:
The Rules System.
However, that wasn't really what was questioned here, so i just leave that part relatively unadressed.

Closing this thread due to nature of topic.