ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the pressures brought to bear on national politics and video game classification systems by international markets. It complicates discussions of game classification, production, and consumption within intended and unintended markets. The case study of RapeLay highlights high-stakes conversations concerning the dangers of cultural imperialism when public morals are used to pressure national industries acting in international markets. Corporate, public, and political policies arise in tense dialectic with international actors that must be accounted for when studying video game policy. What the case study of RapeLay helps to highlight is the challenges that game producers face in an age when distribution is more diffuse. No longer do game producers only go through distribution channels that screen and approve materials for sale; they can be picked up by third-party distributors who can go to Japan, buy the games, and put them online in their home countries, or they can distribute ripped games via online websites and bit torrent.
