For clarity:

This thread is not about whether or not you think people should play shooters if they have been traumatized by violence. If you manage to read the thread before posting an essay on why you want to be able to say whatever you want, you will realize that your arguments don't even make sense given the context it was brought up in. Even if they did, your arguments are still invalid. To avoid debating this tangent, I won't explain how.

This thread is not about your opinion of our government. Our government does not have anything to do with people who have been raped not being able to play online games competitively (or at all, for that matter) due to the constant use of the word "rape" in gaming culture. If you think having a corrupt government is an excuse to be immoral, you will find that every nation in the history of the world might as well have embraced lawlessness. Thank God they did not.

This thread does not pertain to your rights. The 1st amendment has nothing to do with unrestricted hate speech in online gaming. Saying "you just got raped" is hate speech. It degrades people who have really been raped. It's akin to saying "you just got gassed and thrown in the oven" every time you beat someone in a video game. Countless women and children have been victimized by rape. Some will be today. Many of them commit suicide as a result, and have throughout all of history. This is a serious issue whether or not your desensitized ego believes it.

This thread is not about whether or not your exceptional minds believe those women and children should be playing video games as therapy.

This thread IS about the right of those people who were raped to play video games without being mentally assaulted. The fact that video games ARE very therapeutic is more important than any other function video games serve.

Your 1st amendment rights do not prevent gaming companies from limiting your hate speech. There is not a lawyer in the world who would argue otherwise and expect to win a lawsuit.

It is my very strong opinion that they should indeed restrict your hate speech. It is also my opinion that it is in the interest of their own profits to do so. I have already made a strong case for this, and no clear and concise response has been made to the contrary.

It is amazing that I still generally find my work at temp services that are hiring people to do mindless labor jobs. Talk about marketing. Mixing advertising with clinical evaluation is the single best marketing strategy since chemical enhancement. How no one has implemented this strategy, not even once, I have absolutely no idea. If it worked for artery clogging bacon and eggs, it can surely work for video games - even (and in some cases especially) violent ones. Even better: there would be no need to put a spin on it. Video games truly are extremely therapeutic for people who have been traumatized.

Do any of you have any *logical* arguments against this? Of course not. There are none.

Shooters work well for this purpose. The gun range is better tho, when I can afford to go (which is rare). A lot of combat vets use the gun range for PTSD from war.

Yes instead of using a shrink to deal with my experiences with gun violence (among other things you probably never had to deal with) I used video games. But in the context I am using this, I am saying that someone else who chooses to use video games as a theraputic tool who had been literally raped and possibly infected with HIV would be unable to thanks to people like you.

What is truly hilarious is that you would never talk to me like that in real life. I didn't spend my youth preparing myself to work for a corporation. I spent most of it avoiding getting shot or caged. But thanks for your input, you have been truly *indispensable* in proving my points, and I didn't even have to hire a professional in Perception Management, drone.

Regardless of your inability to follow the logic behind my comment (being that people like him are in online video games), you proved my point. The moderators were there to deal with him and the problem was resolved. His second post just showed what narcissism and psychopathy look like (literal psychopathy - being unable to understand what it is like to be in the next person's shoes). More validation added to my point.

So it is your opinion that rape victims should just mute everyone in every lobby they join? In reality, many of them just stop playing games online. Or kills themselves. Or go find drugs. Before the industrial age and the controlled substances act - people just smoked opium (which as we know, is a bad plan).

I could imagine, it would have been very difficult for me if I had no way to escape what I had been through. In fact, I would argue that it would have been worse for society than it would have been for me. Of course, this was all before I read a Gospel for myself.

IMO, dark souls is too easy. This generation of gamers is soft. I get so bored playing games these days....

A game is not truly worthy of respect unless most people can not beat it without cheating.

To make the situation even worse - most games don't have a difficulty setting that is actually hard.

Games these days are about psychologically manipulating players into feeling good, instead of making actually good games with good gameplay.

I think I'm going to play some original X COM tomorrow. The only way I can have fun these days playing against the computer is to play games from pre-2000

You think Dark Souls is hard? LOL I don't know anyone who failed to beat that game.

I am not worried about people misusing words. Misusing a word is like saying "your" when you should have said "you're" instead. The things people say online are different from real life. In real life, there are repercussions. Being fired, arrested, beat up, or even potentially shot tends to deter people from saying things that are said online.

This is different because I view video games as one of the most valuable therapeutic tools, and I believe that this function of online gaming is more important than any other function it has. So yes, it does matter. I disagree.

I think trollop_scat is a perfect example of WHY something must be done. He makes jokes about getting raped and getting AIDS, not caring at all that some people really DO get raped and get HIV and then turn to video games for therapy.

I myself use video games for therapy. It works better than any shrink on the planet, if you don't have to deal with people who have evil hearts and seek to be predatory towards others. In fact, I don't even use shrinks to deal with the traumas I have experienced (I have never been raped, but have been shot at and lost friends while I was young, including my best friend growing up. I have also never seen a therapist for any of this, and video games were always my main way to escape thinking about things). What I find interesting is that people who have had to deal with real life situations dealing with the more extreme forms of violence and evil on a regular basis are actually less likely to act like him - on average.

Sometimes, what someone says online can be what sets someone who has experienced things like this over the edge. Sometimes it leads to suicide, or leads to the person using drugs to numb the pain. They are, after all, playing the games to escape the evil they have had to deal with. Not to be reminded of it every time someone scores a point or w/e in the game.

I think people who say things like that should be banned from "clean" servers after a warning. Many parents don't let their kids play video games online simply because of stuff like this, and all in all I believe if companies start banning people who are over the top with their trash talk (thoroughly disregarding the reality of being a human in a world like this one) - the gaming industry will make much more money. Simple put a warning box at the log in and put it in the EULA that you will be banned from both competitive and "clean" servers if you engage in the behavior.

Not only that, but it would generate jobs. There would be a need for people who can monitor the recordings and address reported issues. More profit + job creation + online video games being accessible to people who were raped for therapy = WIN for everyone except the most evil of people.

People talk about freedom - well these companies are free to generate jobs, make more money, and make their product a viable therapeutic tool. It is only logical. This would certainly guarantee, from what I have experienced, many shrinks would be willing to recommend online gaming to their patients if the environment that permeates them were "cleaner." Video games have been indispensable in my own healing, and certainly in that of many others who would prefer not to speak about it.

Thank you for your input.

I was looking to address the issue of the word "rape" among many gamers and how it has affected the gaming industry. People tried to turn it into a thread about everything BUT that, but I think most of them are trying to justify their own evil actions in an attempt to avoid holding THEMSELVES accountable for what they have done and how it may have affected people.

@SoNin360:

1. People should not be forced to be unable to communicate with their teammates because they have been raped in the past.

2. Many people use video games for therapy. They are a challenge, they are fun, they help you to heal by giving your mind something to focus on other than what you have been through (such as being raped).

Why don't you care?

Straight up that's foolishness.

This is something that originated and is perpetuated in video game culture among competitive gamers. The kids pick it up and now it's in every last game.

Oh, and I noticed how people started comparing it to calling people a "***" for no reason or telling them to "kill yourself." While I agree that those things are wrong, this specific issue is an issue that pertains directly to video game culture. It is a detriment to the community. How can therapist recommend online gaming as therapy for rape victims given the current state of the culture?