Rapey McGee

The Path came out yesterday, to a venerable force of Angry Internet Men, lying in wait. And an equally enthusiastic bulge of fanatics, defending its beauty at every turn. The result is as follows: the internet has exploded.

I must say, I never expected The Path to generate such enormous and heated debate. It's a tiny little indie game from Belgium. And the whole world is going on about it.

Viewpoints seem to range from "ban this sick filth" to "favourite game of the year." In other words: the sort of arguments usually reserved for Rockstar's games. Only this is a weird little piece of art that hardly anyone had heard of until the last couple of weeks. While I disagree vehemently with the former comments, I must commend everyone for paying far more attention to this game than I ever dared hope.

The negative comments seem to be coming from two angles. Firstly, that the game is buggy. Personally, I didn't have any serious problems with it, but there are a number of people for whom the game simply won't work, crashing to desktop as soon as they launch it, even if their system specs are up to scratch. That's poor, I'll have to concede that. Hopefully it'll be patched soon enough.

The second argument is a more intriguing one. A large number of people think this is a game where you get six little girls raped and murdered.

The origin of this is worrying. Alex Lucard of Diehard GameFAN wrote a review of The Path a couple of weeks back. He hated the game. Absolutely hated it. He said it failed as both a piece of art and a videogame. And, in one section of his review, he expressed concerns that some of its themes may spark up the "videogame content" row again. "People are going to assume it's a rape sim, because of its heavy allusions to sexual violence throughout," he said. Or, y'know, I paraphrase. Because I can't be bothered going back and carefully reading it.

Since then, I've seen three people (mis)quoting the review to express their disgust at the "graphic sexual violence" in the game, and another person "agree that the only people who like the game must be paedophiles." I've seen roughly six million more immediately assume it's a game about rape, even though they haven't played it.

This is deeply troubling, and Alex is disappointed - even though I maintain he could have been more careful with the wording of his review. Those misquotes are bizarre - "you never see what happens to these girls," Alex's piece states, "but they appear battered and injured afterwards." The paedophilia comment is awful, and Alex was very quick to put that poster in his place. The "game is about rape" comments are a more difficult prospect.

I think, on two occasions, it's heavily implied. On at least another three, I can't spot any suggestion of it whatsoever. One of the wolves actually is a fucking wolf. Another is a young girl in a red dress, around seven or eight years old by estimate. Another is a spectral being.

Which makes me wonder if people have just looked at, say, Ruby's chapter, and drawn immediate conclusions.

Alex interpreted it all as rape, of course. But he's eloquently explained why this is the case, and happily accepted that it may not be the only, or even intentional, meaning. But that's to me, personally, since the review. I really wish there was more tact put into his original piece. Because it's going to be used as the basis to a lot of awful arguments that we need to stop immediately.

I'd urge people to buy this. It's really, really cheap. $10. You might hate it. You might be repulsed by it. But at least you'll be able to see how plainly obviously it isn't a rape sim. And then maybe we can all be better prepared for the inevitible onslaught of media bollocks.

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UPDATES: Ah! I'm sick and twisted for liking it, according to some chap over at Penny Arcade! Nice to see my work is doing the rounds.