Zhirek: No.
You're wrong and you're contradicting yourself.
Hear me out please, as I have done with your post.
In your post you say the following
1. I find the rape game despicable
2. I find the manhunt game not despicable
3. the Idea of the first and second game don't seem to differ in terms of despicableness
(I was assuming that you meant by snuff movie the game manhunt, I haven't played that game and don't have an opinion on it)
Logic and emotions are not mutually exclusive, but if you try to mix them you have to use a certain set values to take emotions into equation.
In this case you have to establish what is the range of things which are (considered) good and what is the range of things which are (considered) bad and what range are the things which are (considered) indifferent or acceptable at this moment in time.
If you don't do that then you're simply changing opinions and not using logic to find things out.
So in this case I simply used the set values present in most of the western world for this time period to try to persuade you that raping a child and pulling someone's head off are logically two different things.
Now if we were to live in ancient Rome then I guess you are right because both thing were probably considered equal fun to the Romans.
EDIT:
cut the other reply to another post
I wasn't contradicting myself, I was actually pointing out that emotional responses aren't necessarily logical. I'm desensitised enough to violence in computer games to gleefully tear apart victims in Manhunt with it having no affect on me other than to perhaps relieve a bit of stress. If I were to play that rape game, I expect (though I don't know for certain) that I'd find it distasteful and, perhaps even a little disturbing.
So, the facts as they stand, I find violence less disturbing than rape in computer games. That's my emotional response, that doesn't make it a *logical* response. You said logic and emotion aren't mutually exclusive, this is true, but emotion is not always borne of logic. In this day and age, I think it makes sense to analyse our emotional responses and try to make logical sense of them before we make decisions that affect our/other lives.
With regards to western societies attitudes (sorry to go back to it), no doubt if on an episode of Heroes, while a cheerleader is having her exposed brain fiddled with by some psychopath she says "LET ME GO YOU F**KING FREAK" I've no doubt a lot of audiences would be absolutely appalled. By the swearing. The implication that swearing is more offensive than violence is pretty ridiculous, but that's the way it is (or at least that's the way the FCC sees it).
To make a point out of this rambling post, I think that if you're willing to analyse your emotional responses you'll see that they're not always logically sound. This rape game, while pretty disturbing, can't logically be called much worse than something like Manhunt or GTA. Manhunt for it's explicitly brutal violence, and GTA for wholesale slaughter of masses of innocent people.
Besides at the end of the day, it's fake. Plus there's quite a few people out there (men *and* women) who have rape fantasies. For them, this game could well be a harmless indulgence. Before anyone starts throwing around accusations, that's not me - anything even vaguely non-consensual looking and it's an insta-flop™ for me.
Also, I don't like the suggestion that this could lead others to actually commit rape. If you entertain that idea, you logically have to entertain the idea that obsessive playing of GTA is going to lead you to car-jack and shoot people for no reason other than they'll drop spinning wads of glowing green cash.