Talk Awkwardly to Me

[Andy Chalk]

Talk Awkwardly to Me

Videogames are ready to take on casual sex. Monogamy? Not so much.

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[headshotcatcher]

The sex scene in Mass Effect was just an awkward scene that made my parents doubt what games I play..

Seriously, I talked to Liara three times before that and then she starts talking about how she feels a connection and blah blah blah and you have sex. Love doesn't work like that Bioware!

 

[HeartAttackBob]

I had my female Shepard go for Liara (that sexy blue octopus-haired alien), and found the experience quite rewarding and realistic.
Realistic, that is, considering I was the elite right hand of a multi-species counsel sent to save the galaxy from an evil race of machines. I also purchased weapons and armor from a floating pink jellyfish.

Maybe it's just that I am the Target Gamer Demographic, but I approve of and enjoyed the portrayal of sex in both The Witcher and Mass Effect. I look forward to seeing new games that portray sex in other ways.

What medium does portray monogamous relationships in a realistic manner? Romance Novels? Lifetime Movies? Reality TV?

Why should games be held to any different standard?

 

[HardRockSamurai]

Surprisingly, I agree.

The approach Mass Effect had to it's sex scene was poorly executed. While the scene itself was very tastefully done, it came to us in one of two fashions. A) Out of nowhere, or B) Expected from the very beginning.

In real life, sex isn't "expected" (unless you're French), and it most certainly doesn't "come out of nowhere" (unless you're Catholic.) Unfortunately, The Witcher's approach to sex (i.e.- you give woman money; woman has sex with you) is much more realistic.

This is going to sound silly, but games should make the player feel like they have to earn sex, since sex doesn't come at the push of a button (unless you're French Catholic.)

 

[HobbesMkii]

The sex in Mass Effect was joke. It was just there so they could sell more copies. I don't think it was really anything more than a clever way to raise sales. The FOX smear campaign, for example. You know what's really effective for causing people to buy games just out of curiosity? Tell them that it's "dangerous" and that they shouldn't buy it. BioWare was launching a new IP, which is always risky, because the game might not be that good. I thought the game was interesting, but not enough to buy a copy rather than borrowing one from my friend. It had repetitive explorations and the cut scenes were ridiculous.

What the sex very carefully achieved was consumer identity with core gamers. When it became an issue of gamers vs. the right-wing media it created a number of things that were very useful in driving sales up. Firstly, they'd penetrated the mainstream media, which meant their profile was up among people who weren't usually going to buy games. Secondly, they'd got it in FOX, and as such, it had been portrayed with an obvious bias (a few seconds of naked derriere =/= pornography, and FOX also ran the game contained sodomy, which it doesn't, because you can't have Male on Male in the game). This bias drove up gamer support for the game. Lastly, the element of "this game has a lot of sex in it" was introduced (this is, of course, a boldface lie, but to the unskeptical consumer, it sounded like they'd let an NC-17 film pick up an R rating). So of course, everyone wanted to go check the thing out, and see for themselves.

I think Andy's right, that the way sex is going to make it into our games in a normal way will be the same way it makes it into all the shows on HBO and Showtime. You don't have to have some contrived "we're in true love, let's bang nasty!" to get it there. You can just go: "These characters like to have sex, because MOST PEOPLE LIKE TO HAVE SEX."

 

[Andy_Panthro]

I played Mass Effect as a proper loner, angry and moody (or Renegade, if you want to use the games parlance) and yet I still got chatted up (badly) by Liara and Ashley. I ended up avoiding any romantic or sexual encounter, due to not liking most of the characters in the game (Garrus and Tali excepted).

However, Bioware did get a few relationships right (in my opinion) in their earlier games, Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights. The characters in the earlier games felt more "real" despite the fact you get to see a portrait picture and a basic character model. I guess it avoided the uncanny valley by having less detail.

The whole "cinematic" idea around the interactions in Mass Effect really didn't work for me at all.

 

[mkg]

Bioware is guilty cause they threw in the cheap little side quest of banging your shipmates to blatantly get kids to want to play the game just that much more, but it is rated mature, so criticising it for that is the same as saying teenage girls in their underwear don't belong in a Jason movie. I think it's just that people who don't play videogames still see it as a children's past time. But the industry doesn't really make too many attempts to market itself to an adult audience beyond the fact that they use adult themes in their games. So really it's just gonna keep going round and round but it doesn't matter, because as long as games make money they won't be going anywhere.

 

[SykoSilver]

Don't criticize a game for not doing something well that the game never intended to do in the first place: I think you two misunderstood the goals of BioWare--the intent wasn't to put sex in the game, the intent was to put romance in the game and not to artificially shy away from the things that entails, like sex.

Also, as far as non-romantic sex, that's actually in the game: depending on your actions, there can be a sex scene with Sha'ira the Asari consort in the Citadel.

Maybe not for humans, but for an alien species that lives hundreds of years longer than most other species and who belong to a culture that encourages its members to breed with other species and avoid purebloods, maybe it does! I mean, doesn't Liara say that Asari often don't form long lasting relationships with their mates because of the difficulties posed by the long Asari lifespan?

I'm a bit skeptical that sex was just the baggage of including romantic relationships.

Sex is not something that writers have to force out in order to exclude. There is arguably an art of implying sex without showing it--something that really developed in film during the days of the Hays Code. Sex is also not necessarily where romantic relationships will go. Believe it or not, sex and love are different things, and it's probably easier to write a relationship without it getting into sex (at least for a long while) than it is to write one with it.

Sex is a hard thing to write, ESPECIALLY in a relationship. Casual sex is easy because you can just throw it in there--like posters have been saying, people are animals and seek sex just for its gratification. But in a relationship, sex is a lot more awkward, because it can transcend its normally physical intentions (not that there's anything wrong with casual sex), possibly risking a negative change in the relationship. Because sex with heart pangs is a lot more intimate, it comes with a load of complications.

For the context of video games, that doesn't just mean that the players need to work harder to earn sex. It means the writers do too. It requires a degree of finesse and build-up that was not present in Mass Effect.

These characters were not only growing closer as companions, but also had job-related reasons NOT to pursue sex. The reason why the sex in Mass Effect feels awkward and fake is because it really wasn't awkward enough. Where were their second thoughts? Why wasn't there at least some adrenaline in breaking the rules? You pick a couple smooth lines and they jump right into it. It skips any opportunities for characterization in preparing for, during, and AFTER the sex. They put casual sex into close relationships and that's where they failed.

So since they didn't put much effort into transforming close relationships into more intimate sexual relationships, I don't think that the goal of doing so was their reason for including sex. I think they included sex because it had titilation factor. This is supported by them only including lesbo sex and not male-male sex (when there could have been a development between male Shepard and Kaidan), and justifying it by saying the (by all appearances and mannerisms) female-only race is really androgynous. Yeah, right. We all know the core audience loves lesbos but hates the gay. That's why what should be an at best interesting and at worst freakish hermy alien species looks anatomically similar to attractive human females.

 

[boholikeu]

I have to agree with the article that so far the Witcher handles sex much better than any other game out there. Sure, he's a womanizer, but at least the "boob card" mechanic perfectly matches his attitude towards women.

Surprisingly, I agree.

The approach Mass Effect had to it's sex scene was poorly executed. While the scene itself was very tastefully done, it came to us in one of two fashions. A) Out of nowhere, or B)Expected from the very beginning.

In real life, sex isn't "expected" (unless you're French), and it most certainly doesn't "come out of nowhere" (unless you're Catholic.) Unfortunately, The Witcher's approach to sex (i.e.- you give woman money; woman has sex with you) is much more realistic.

This is going to sound silly, but games should make the player feel like they have to earn sex, since sex doesn't come at the push of a button (unless you're French Catholic.)

You make some good points, but I think the best way to include sex/relationships realistically is to throw a bit of randomness into the equation. As it is now, relationships in games feel hollow because you are essentially just learning how to "work the system". Dealing with a real human being never works like that because just when you think you've got someone figured out, some new aspect of their personality appears and throws you for a loop.

If american developers want to include sexual relations in their games then they need to start looking at games from across the pond. More specifically the Japanese. Questions of the "why" need to be asked in order to understand.

Seriously? Though Japanese games have sex/relationships in there games a lot more often than Western games, I fail to see how they are any less juvenile.

 

[headshotcatcher]

Seriously, I talked to Liara three times before that and then she starts talking about how she feels a connection and blah blah blah and you have sex. Love doesn't work like that Bioware!

Maybe not for humans, but for an alien species that lives hundreds of years longer than most other species and who belong to a culture that encourages its members to breed with other species and avoid purebloods, maybe it does! I mean, doesn't Liara say that Asari often don't form long lasting relationships with their mates because of the difficulties posed by the long Asari lifespan?

I think the situation was exactly the same for Ashley, only I hadn't talked to her at all.. (But she also did notice there was 'something' between shepard and her

 

[Citrus]

I agreed with this article. In fact, I thought all of the character development in Mass Effect was terribly stilted and clumsy.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Casual sex in any form of fiction dose not require much writing or depth...or effort other than getting past the censors.... relationships on the other hand tend to reuire more work than the average dev is willing to invest in a script or writers......

Now on to Mass effect bashing, the story is neat and so is the fiction however the writing and dialog tended to be simple to the point it hurt itself, the characters were varied and had some depth but their development was poor. IE the game started above average, sunk to average quickly and stayed there. Not saying ME is bad but its less a gem and more a shiny chunk of metal....

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I like your point about it being a logical outcome in the boring swap-in swap-out lifestyle you described. Mass effect just went about it in a weird way, trying to actually incorporate romance into it. Had it just been the result of boredom, where they hook up as a result of just being there, then it would have been a bit more enveloped into how the game runs. It would be interesting to actually see that happen in a game.