Videogame Sex
- Thread starter John Scott Tynes
- Start date
Wow, only 64 comments? I had expected at least the same amount as a regular Zero Punctuation.
I like your article, especially your framework: it's simple, it's clean, and it covers the truth. I don't agree with your main point about narrative sexscenes, though. In a Biowaregame sex is, as the names says, part of the narrative. It has the same use as a sexscene in a movie (if not porn, that is): generating emotions, or making you more engaged in the story. Making it interactive doesn't change that. The fun and awesomeness that can make sex a reward isn't there when 'having' sex in a game (or movie): no fysical pleasure, no body to toy with, no magnificent orgasm. Therefore, a sexscene in a game can't be used as a reward, even if your avatar humps on the rhythm of your button-pressing. Having ingame sex has the same effect on you as sex in a movie where it is used as part of the story: maybe it's enjoyable to watch, but it won't feel like a reward.
I like your article, especially your framework: it's simple, it's clean, and it covers the truth. I don't agree with your main point about narrative sexscenes, though. In a Biowaregame sex is, as the names says, part of the narrative. It has the same use as a sexscene in a movie (if not porn, that is): generating emotions, or making you more engaged in the story. Making it interactive doesn't change that. The fun and awesomeness that can make sex a reward isn't there when 'having' sex in a game (or movie): no fysical pleasure, no body to toy with, no magnificent orgasm. Therefore, a sexscene in a game can't be used as a reward, even if your avatar humps on the rhythm of your button-pressing. Having ingame sex has the same effect on you as sex in a movie where it is used as part of the story: maybe it's enjoyable to watch, but it won't feel like a reward.
The problem with the conclusions of this article can be pointed at in the author's own statements about sex:
"Sex is joy, sex is life, sex is fun."
Yesss it is, but it is also, as the author points out, messy and weird and most of all, human, which means that sex is part of a very broad range of experiences, not all of which are fun, lively, or joyful. So no matter what is done, someone is going to ***** that it isn't 'real' enough or 'fun' enough or 'nobody would use a sailor's hitch in a scene like that'.
And my response is; who cares? You don't have to enjoy it and you don't have to play it. There's more than enough modes of entertainment out there for everyone. If sex in a game is something you have to 'endure' then chin up; just like the real thing, it won't last long.
/chuckles
"Sex is joy, sex is life, sex is fun."
Yesss it is, but it is also, as the author points out, messy and weird and most of all, human, which means that sex is part of a very broad range of experiences, not all of which are fun, lively, or joyful. So no matter what is done, someone is going to ***** that it isn't 'real' enough or 'fun' enough or 'nobody would use a sailor's hitch in a scene like that'.
And my response is; who cares? You don't have to enjoy it and you don't have to play it. There's more than enough modes of entertainment out there for everyone. If sex in a game is something you have to 'endure' then chin up; just like the real thing, it won't last long.
/chuckles
Personally, I've always found that games and sex are two things that are better off separate. Sex in games tends to be used by offering porn as a reward for the player jumping through hoops. Then the player gets tired of doing that, boots up his browser, and gets all the porn s/he can stomach without the boring, uninspired gameplay. We can see in the existing examples that sex as a reward in video games is not only not new, it's just a bad idea, as it seems to encourage developers to think they can get away with less. Sex sells, though, so we'll undoubtedly continue to see it used.
Your average modern Japanese dating sim reflects the state of the art in that they have become simple stories whose multiple paths will usually lead to some girl getting naked. They're less game and more multiple choice sexual fiction with pictures. They're not for me because I'm a gamer, not a porno fan. I want to be challenged, not seduced. If I want to ogle nudity, there's far easier ways. I probably won't drop a dime on a sex game, ever.
I prefer Bioware's approach, not because it's merely scant titillation instead of outright smut, but rather because they seem to be using sex as a part of the human condition to enhance the plot impact without interfering with the gameplay in anyway. Though it's non-interactive, Shephard can get it on, and since s/he no doubt develops strong bonds with his/her companions in arms, why not? The story would quite possibly seem less significant if s/he didn't. There's an option of having lesbian sex with a blue-skinned alien, you say? Well, I guess somebody has to see if that results in terrible biological consequence. Onward, Spectre, in the name of science!
Perhaps trying to keep sex out of games entirely would be impossible given the collective imagination of the gaming public. Neither Pokemon [http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs19/f/2007/301/0/a/Lopunny_Safe_version_by_extvia.jpg], Sonic the Hedgehog [http://nancher.deviantart.com/art/Vanilla-the-rabbit-8D-80610355], nor Mario [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=247] characters have been spared risque creative reinterpretation. Those links lead to tamer examples - they get far more explicit. It seems incredibly deviant to pervert such obviously sexless icons, but is it? Deep down, it's the core of the videogame sex paradigm. You want video games to tell the whole story, to not omit the things whose omission requires a suspension of disbelief. Living things have sex, this game depicts fictional accounts of living things, it's patronizing, perhaps even jarring, to pretend they wouldn't.
However, just how gritty can things get when we try to compensate for what video games don't show? I still eagerly await the version of Animal Crossing where a bit of innocent digging in the back yard of a neighbor turns up the corpse of their abusive husband, missing since 3 weeks ago, apparently strangled with fishing line. How do we handle a game of Sims 3 where there's something genuinely wrong with our sims, just as there may be something wrong with any of us, and the whole game takes an element of the genuinely tragic as our godlike perspective allows us to see their collective struggle with things far beyond the ken of a bladder meter?
If we intend to play and enjoy games as innocent diversions, a line of inquiry that tries to get them to tell the whole story can only push them into something that defeats our original purpose for them.
Your average modern Japanese dating sim reflects the state of the art in that they have become simple stories whose multiple paths will usually lead to some girl getting naked. They're less game and more multiple choice sexual fiction with pictures. They're not for me because I'm a gamer, not a porno fan. I want to be challenged, not seduced. If I want to ogle nudity, there's far easier ways. I probably won't drop a dime on a sex game, ever.
I prefer Bioware's approach, not because it's merely scant titillation instead of outright smut, but rather because they seem to be using sex as a part of the human condition to enhance the plot impact without interfering with the gameplay in anyway. Though it's non-interactive, Shephard can get it on, and since s/he no doubt develops strong bonds with his/her companions in arms, why not? The story would quite possibly seem less significant if s/he didn't. There's an option of having lesbian sex with a blue-skinned alien, you say? Well, I guess somebody has to see if that results in terrible biological consequence. Onward, Spectre, in the name of science!
Perhaps trying to keep sex out of games entirely would be impossible given the collective imagination of the gaming public. Neither Pokemon [http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs19/f/2007/301/0/a/Lopunny_Safe_version_by_extvia.jpg], Sonic the Hedgehog [http://nancher.deviantart.com/art/Vanilla-the-rabbit-8D-80610355], nor Mario [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=247] characters have been spared risque creative reinterpretation. Those links lead to tamer examples - they get far more explicit. It seems incredibly deviant to pervert such obviously sexless icons, but is it? Deep down, it's the core of the videogame sex paradigm. You want video games to tell the whole story, to not omit the things whose omission requires a suspension of disbelief. Living things have sex, this game depicts fictional accounts of living things, it's patronizing, perhaps even jarring, to pretend they wouldn't.
However, just how gritty can things get when we try to compensate for what video games don't show? I still eagerly await the version of Animal Crossing where a bit of innocent digging in the back yard of a neighbor turns up the corpse of their abusive husband, missing since 3 weeks ago, apparently strangled with fishing line. How do we handle a game of Sims 3 where there's something genuinely wrong with our sims, just as there may be something wrong with any of us, and the whole game takes an element of the genuinely tragic as our godlike perspective allows us to see their collective struggle with things far beyond the ken of a bladder meter?
If we intend to play and enjoy games as innocent diversions, a line of inquiry that tries to get them to tell the whole story can only push them into something that defeats our original purpose for them.
This is so right.copycatalyst said:
I find it bizarre that after sketching a very interesting matrix with which to describe sex in games, the author takes off on a bizarre tangent, pointing at bits of the chart and ranting that "everything here, here, and here is STUPID!" Pointing out that titillation can be used in a reward schedule is correct and obvious; suggesting that that's the ONLY way to incorporate sex in games is just ridiculous.
As another poster noted, the Witcher was blatant about its use of titillating content as a reward for completing certain sidequests. They didn't point out that its use of pinup trading cards was a good way to create the atmosphere appropriate to that game world: sex as a commodity, traded in exchange for other goods and services. Emotional connections were ignored, contributing to the idea of your character as a drifter with no meaningful relationships except to his work. That's an appropriate and even important part of the fiction.
However, to suggest that this would fit just as well into the Half-life 2 story is preposterous. The game carefully limits the number of other characters you interact meaningfully with, fostering a sense of a real relationship with each one, as well as existing relationships between NPCs that are entertaining to observe. To have carefully drawn characters like Barney, Kleiner, Eli, and Breen inhabit your world, but then reduce love interest Alyx to "CONGRATS YOU GET TITS" would flat-out break the story.
I vividly remember a particular moment in the combine tower, when you've been running and gunning together for a while. You climb onto an elevator she has hacked open, knowing you're about to separate. As a glass door slides shut between you, she places her palm against it, her tough demeanor slipping for a moment as she quietly asks you to be careful. Before you have time to react or even process this, the platform drops, dragging her away from you. This is a memorable, genuinely emotional moment that always leaves me thinking, "Alright, combine. You just TRY to keep me from getting back to her." You really think that scene can be replaced with jiggle physics?
As far as I'm concerned, there is no "wrong" way to incorporate sex into games. There may be a way that you personally like better, but to dismiss people who approach it a different way is just an attempt to ghettoize gaming narrative. Games can tell whatever stories they want.
Anyone remember how there was eventually sex involved in the Baldurs Gate II romances if you didn't screw them up? That's one of the only occasions when the build up and romance hasn't seemed arbitrary in a game, mostly because of good writing (and bad graphics).
I wouldn't care one way or the other if games had more sex or less, even though most love in videogames stalls at the chaste idealized phase with only about 6 or 7 mainstream titles going further than that.
I suppose that if I took sex more seriously than I take violence, that might be different. Asexuality and prudishness don't necessarily go hand in hand.
Turning living things into non-living things ought to be more personal than casual ('protected', of course) sex. One can evetually forget a bad sexual encounter but nothing lets one forget having one's skull crushed (except, you know, the death thing).
I also have no more connection to a character killing something than I would said character having carnal relations with another mass of polygons or sprites. In video land, neither has any real benefit or consequence outside of what the programmers and the audience puts into it. If I don't kill the Covenant/Reapers/Lord of Darkness, I can always reload and try again. If I don't, I will just go do something else. Just the same, noone gets AIDS/pregnant no matter how many men you pack into the sex scene. It's all just hittng buttons (or waggling Wii-motes and nunchuks)and acting out a fantasy.
That said, still, sex in games should probably be focused more upon what is not possible in reality just as the violence usually tends to be. (Yes, that includes things that the violence is normally focused on such as Vampires,Aliens and thing like the PokeGirl in the picture in a previous post.)
It should also be fairly optional like much of the violence is in the best RPGs.
Most of all, I'd like both sex and violence, extreme opposites with are strangely coupled all too often heedless of the volatile results of such a combination, to be handled either with more grace or find the humor innate in sexuality itself.
Before all of that, though, maybe the Titilation model could use some thwarting by being as irreverent about the female form as game makers already are with the male form. You can't string a donkey along if he gets the carrot before plowing the fields.
Thinking of carrots, the audience saw Arnold Schwartzenegger naked at the beginning of The Terminator, so it isn't as if androphile in the audience had to hope for some tacked on love scene to catch a glimpse of his rump.
With that taken away, folks can just focus on delivering good gameplay experiences or doing something else for a living.
Leave nothing of them up to the imagination except for what their guts look like, the opposite of how the more violent games are now. We know what the Locust's innards look like, but we don't know their males from their females? That right there is humorous in itself!
I suppose that if I took sex more seriously than I take violence, that might be different. Asexuality and prudishness don't necessarily go hand in hand.
Turning living things into non-living things ought to be more personal than casual ('protected', of course) sex. One can evetually forget a bad sexual encounter but nothing lets one forget having one's skull crushed (except, you know, the death thing).
I also have no more connection to a character killing something than I would said character having carnal relations with another mass of polygons or sprites. In video land, neither has any real benefit or consequence outside of what the programmers and the audience puts into it. If I don't kill the Covenant/Reapers/Lord of Darkness, I can always reload and try again. If I don't, I will just go do something else. Just the same, noone gets AIDS/pregnant no matter how many men you pack into the sex scene. It's all just hittng buttons (or waggling Wii-motes and nunchuks)and acting out a fantasy.
That said, still, sex in games should probably be focused more upon what is not possible in reality just as the violence usually tends to be. (Yes, that includes things that the violence is normally focused on such as Vampires,Aliens and thing like the PokeGirl in the picture in a previous post.)
It should also be fairly optional like much of the violence is in the best RPGs.
Most of all, I'd like both sex and violence, extreme opposites with are strangely coupled all too often heedless of the volatile results of such a combination, to be handled either with more grace or find the humor innate in sexuality itself.
Before all of that, though, maybe the Titilation model could use some thwarting by being as irreverent about the female form as game makers already are with the male form. You can't string a donkey along if he gets the carrot before plowing the fields.
Thinking of carrots, the audience saw Arnold Schwartzenegger naked at the beginning of The Terminator, so it isn't as if androphile in the audience had to hope for some tacked on love scene to catch a glimpse of his rump.
With that taken away, folks can just focus on delivering good gameplay experiences or doing something else for a living.
Leave nothing of them up to the imagination except for what their guts look like, the opposite of how the more violent games are now. We know what the Locust's innards look like, but we don't know their males from their females? That right there is humorous in itself!
Anyone played "7 Sins"? This game had sex as both part of the gameplay (as the main character had to seduce both man and woman in order to suceed in life) and as a reward too, because when you beat the game, you would be rewarded with an epilogue, never-ending stage with all the woman of the game, where you could have sex or make them pose for pictures as much as you wanted. There was no frontal nudity on the game, just some see-through bras.
And the cartoony models were nice, too ...
And the cartoony models were nice, too ...
While I think sex in games is a great topic, the conclusion the article comes to is pretty stupid, if you ask me. We don't need porn to make games fun and worthwhile. We play them because we want, not because we get rewards. Heck, if that was true we'd never play games, we'd just go to school, study, and work. Besides, not everyone sees sex as an inncentive.
My opinion is that sex should be used the same way it is in any media, as a point in the story. We ARE a media, after all. Saying it's not about the story... books started with 'just the story'. Are movies 'just moving pictures'? No, they have story! They have depth! I don't see any reason a game can't be meaningful, instead of mindless. Sex is meaningful, and should be treated that way.
Not to say sex can't be a 'reward' sort of thing. I'm saying that there are different demographics that games cover. I, for one, would not play a game that has sex a reward. I would, however, be happy to play a game with sex in it. The writer who wrote this article seems to forget that opinions differ about sex. Heck, those conservatives who went after Mass Effect? I bet some of them play innocent games like Mario and Zelda. Would you use sex as a reward in a family game? Of course not!
Considering very little thought obviously went into this article, I'm going to stop ranting and just say I'm umimpressed and you get the unimpressed face.
:|
My opinion is that sex should be used the same way it is in any media, as a point in the story. We ARE a media, after all. Saying it's not about the story... books started with 'just the story'. Are movies 'just moving pictures'? No, they have story! They have depth! I don't see any reason a game can't be meaningful, instead of mindless. Sex is meaningful, and should be treated that way.
Not to say sex can't be a 'reward' sort of thing. I'm saying that there are different demographics that games cover. I, for one, would not play a game that has sex a reward. I would, however, be happy to play a game with sex in it. The writer who wrote this article seems to forget that opinions differ about sex. Heck, those conservatives who went after Mass Effect? I bet some of them play innocent games like Mario and Zelda. Would you use sex as a reward in a family game? Of course not!
Considering very little thought obviously went into this article, I'm going to stop ranting and just say I'm umimpressed and you get the unimpressed face.
:|
Worked for Conan. -_^Altorin said:
Laughed my way all the way through the article; mostly because I was picturing the puritain uprisings.
In some games, where sex is utilized in the narrative, live Dragon Age, it's quite nice! And of what I've seen, is less explicit than whats seen on American prime time television.
Then take Fallout 3; a very mature title, on par with DA:O. Its idea of sex is paying a girl money (totally against narrative) to lay down next to her. The length of time you lay next to her is totally up to you. You could keep on laying until the bomb goes off (figuratively speaking), or it could be a "quicky." This irks me.
Then there's Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, which is eye rollingly awful, and meant entirely for a heavy breathing teen audience. This brand of sex (never played, but I don't imagine there was any sex in the game) is what I would imagine an interactive playboy magazine is like. Pretty women to look at, learn about, and you can argue you play for the quality beach sports/articles.
To me, sex in games is fine. I'd rather have the full gambit of sex options if it were allowed of me. And I'll enjoy it as long as it's a part of the narrative.
Then take Fallout 3; a very mature title, on par with DA:O. Its idea of sex is paying a girl money (totally against narrative) to lay down next to her. The length of time you lay next to her is totally up to you. You could keep on laying until the bomb goes off (figuratively speaking), or it could be a "quicky." This irks me.
Then there's Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, which is eye rollingly awful, and meant entirely for a heavy breathing teen audience. This brand of sex (never played, but I don't imagine there was any sex in the game) is what I would imagine an interactive playboy magazine is like. Pretty women to look at, learn about, and you can argue you play for the quality beach sports/articles.
To me, sex in games is fine. I'd rather have the full gambit of sex options if it were allowed of me. And I'll enjoy it as long as it's a part of the narrative.
