Synthesis Post: Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Rape in media is always uneasy ground for content creators. When a rape scene appears in a movie, you have to examine the creator’s intentions; is it for shock value only? Is the creator trying to send a message? Start a discussion? There’s no doubt that discussions need to be started, and oftentimes art is the best catalyst to get the ball rolling.

But what about when a developer takes control away from a player to have the character commit an act of sexual violence? That’s the big issue that started August 15th with Cara Ellison’s hands-on with the Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number demo, where she describes her intense discomfort when confronted with the opening scene from Hotline Miami 2:

I feel resentment. This is what those hordes of gamers who constantly hound the academic Anita Sarkeesian, creator of Tropes vs Women in Video Games barrage her mailbox with. Whelps of wretched stomach lining. This is how they feel when someone points out that games are sexist. ‘This is it,’ I think. ‘I am feeling betrayal. I feel betrayed by something I love. I feel betrayed.

The rest of her hands-on is worth reading, if only for her (admitted by herself) raw, subjective thoughts on the game. You can watch the scene here; don’t worry, it’s not particularly graphic, and even seems fairly harmless at first. In fact, the scene is interrupted quickly by a director yelling, “Cut!”, and it’s revealed that the whole thing is a scene from a film being shot.

The issue became inflamed even further on September 5th, when Rock, Paper Shotgun’s Nathan Grayson picked up an interview with Hotline Miami developer Dennis Wedin.

In the interview, Wedin responds to criticism that his inclusion of a near-rape scene was for shock-value:

We were really sad that some people were so affected by it, because maybe they had been through something like that of their own. Maybe they had a terrible experience of their own that was triggered by the game. That was not intentional at all. We didn’t add the scene just to be controversial. There is a meaning to these two characters. There’s a lot more to them than just this scene.

We removed it for the demo. We’re going to work with it, see if we can fix it. You get a bigger picture when you play the whole game, which is lost in the demo of course.

The entire interview is a great read, and Wedin takes the criticism with what I consider to be grace and an exceptionally rational tone. Frankly, I think we could use more people like him in the industry.

My kneejerk response was something like: “So it’s OK to play a game where we bust skulls and massacre rooms of people, but rape — a fake rape — is an absolute no-no? They do it in movie, so why can’t videogames make a commentary on rape?” And, I went into researching this with the intent to write an article like that. I found plenty of support for that argument, too; it’s definitely a popular argument, and, like all good arguments, contains a bit of truth.

However, I then read this article in Forbes by Eric Kain, and he had this response to that argument:

As Cara notes, “ You liked, as the game says, hurting people. Why do you feel ugly now, for playing a game where your character rapes a woman?”

But it’s the wrong question, and an unnecessary one. Let me explain.

It’s the wrong question because the answer is so obvious.

We’re okay killing rooms full of badguys because if we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.

Hotline Miami was a great example of combat-as-puzzle. You overcome these little moving puzzles by defeating your enemies and moving on to the next mission.

It’s hard because they’ll kill you just as quickly as you’ll kill them. And it’s that challenge that makes it so fun. They could be werewolves or aliens or little gelatinous blobs and they’d still be fun to fight and kill and overcome.

The girl in the scene, on the other hand, is not an obstacle. She won’t rape you if you don’t rape her. Furthermore, rape isn’t even a game mechanic. The scene not only denies the girl agency, it denies player agency as well, wresting the controls away since, you know, there is no button for dropping one’s trousers in the game, let alone pinning someone down.

When people say—and they say this frequently—that rape isn’t worse than murder so why do we freak out about it in a game with all this killing, this is what you can tell them. The killing is mutual, part of the game itself, a kill-or-be-killed equation. Rape is never any of these things.

That’s a pretty long blockquote I have there, but I only include it because I think it’s so eloquent and brilliant. The rest of the piece is just as good, and I implore you to go read the rest. I’m generally a huge opponent of censorship and a huge proponent of creative freedom, but that isn’t what this is about. The developer has every right to keep this scene in the final cut. Is it a commentary on the discord that we as a society have accepted certain things as given in entertainment, but still pull back from others? Sure it is.

Does the game include messages about how women are generally portrayed in media, and how we should be appalled by that, as Wedin claims? Of course it does. But, as Kain says:

It’s not about censorship. It’s not like anyone is saying the developer can’t have this in their game, or that they’re doing it with bad intentions. I think it’s obvious that they’re making a play at social commentary.

It’s just in very poor taste and makes me question my appreciation of the first game and its apparent message.

That’s it. That’s what the whole issue boils down to. It’s in bad taste. It leaves people confused and angry, and doesn’t give any particular commentary on the issue because control is not in the players’ hands. The player comes into the kill-or-be-killed situation ready to go, blood pumping. Then their representation in the digital world takes over and pins the woman down. To put it simply: that’s not cool, and people should come away with a bad taste in their mouths.