One of the most infamous "banned games" out there, and for very good reasons. Of course, it's not that this is the very first game to include rape, but its shamelessness is what really turned heads, and yeah, the game really is shameless. This game knows what it is, it knows its audience and it knows what it wants to accomplish. It is unabashedly a creepy game for weirdos.

I have no issue with pornographic and/or edgy media in it of itself, even if it's not my thing. This, however, takes it too many steps further. Was it worth the controversy? To a certain extent, I suppose. As far as I'm concerned, media shouldn't be banned, rather we should be asking ourselves how we've allowed these sorts of things to exist in the first place.

There is no "good" scenario. There is no answer as to whether or not this game should exist. Is senselessly murdering other humans alright, but raping a family isn't? Both are disgusting, and yet we've normalized violence to the point where killing others is expected in games. Sure, in many games we kill for the sake of self-defense, but what about when we don't? What about all those random civillians we've blown up in games like GTA for no reason other than for kicks? In the end, there's no true answer. There is no ideal world where we can have our cake and eat it too. We can't have a media landscape free of rape fantasies and unwarranted violence without censorship, yet censorship is what we hate the most, as a violation of our freedom of speech. What even is freedom of speech? How come if I say I wanna bomb the white house on the internet it's alright, but if I say it to the president's face I get sent to the slammer? Neither scenario is alright, yet we have a double-standard for what should and shouldn't be allowed. They say our rights end where the other person's begin, but where do the other person's rights begin? What constitutes as going "too far"?

There is no answer. There is no winning. This game is a testament to the subjective nature of "freedom of speech" and what we dictate as being or not being alright. I'm a romanticist, I believe in the beauty of the world and the goodness of its people, but I also recognize that the world I believe in doesn't exist. There is no world where everybody can love and respect one another, while retaining their freedom of speech. There can never be a world like that. All we can do is dream.