Sex in Games Thread

**Carlos** · 02-13-2006, 12:39 PM

This is a thread about sex in games...

So, if you want to share something about the topic, have at it, I'll start:

1UP's article about Sex in games

The most I disagree with is the one on God of War:

"With topless female characters in plentiful supply and a sex minigame not unlike GTA's notorious Hot Coffee (though, without actually showing anything), God of War has created none of the controversy you might expect from the current hysterical atmosphere surrounding games and sex. Perhaps graphical quality is the key to acceptance of sexual themes in games."

The reason it hasn't gotten the media attention is because of the fact that it isn't as established as GTA is....its not even known. And, a sony label is not to be trashed on, from what I think. Its media bias. That's it.

**GrandpaT** · 02-13-2006, 01:58 PM

I think you're partially right, Carlos - in my opinion, no one talks about God of War's nudity because it's not as well known. For better or worse (worse, in my opinion), the GTA series is the flagship line of the video game industry right now. No current series of games is more widely known among the non-gaming world than GTA. Many folks don't know much about what happens in the GTA games, though, so they are shocked to learn that there are naughty things there. Seems kind of stupid to me - the title alone tells you that it's a game about committing crimes! Oh, well.

At first, I thought that they had left some games off of the list, like Singles, which is apparently a horrible game that includes lots of nudity and boring sex, but then I realized that they were just making a home console list. Anything that was just on PCs was not considered.

**Anarchey** · 02-13-2006, 11:48 PM

I see it as any other form of entertainment or art (like movies). When it first comes out, everyone is trying to make money, or even make a good story that people will remember (Mario, Zelda, Halo) Then, as time goes on, people want to push the envelope and they bring in nudity, violence, and other things. Eventually there will be full porn games, and there will be really good artistic games. The media and everything else will weigh in and it will all be forgotten before long.

**GrandpaT** · 02-14-2006, 01:39 PM

I totally agree with part of what you're saying there: people want to push the envelope. Those people get jobs at Rockstar. Just kidding, really.

Well, I'd say that there already are full porn games and really good artistic games. We don't get porn games on home consoles here in the US (don't know about Japan), but they're out there for the PC. The tamer porn games would be things like the Playboy game and Singles, but I just saw an article recently that talked about Jenna Jameson making a game, and I always thought she was a full-on porn star, so I assume that her game will be a full-on porn game. The thing is that those games will never be mainstream, just like regular porn isn't mainstream. I don't mean that hardly anyone watches porn, I just mean that you won't really be seeing those games at the game store, because game stores sell to a different target audience. I bet if you went to an "adult" video place, you'd probably find some right now. And in classic games, who could ever miss the blatant porn references in Pac Man! (j/k again, although I must admit that I almost said "Asteroids" or "Space Invaders," which might have made the joke both a lot funnier and a lot dirtier than I meant it to be. Wow - these parentheses are like getting the director's commentary on my lame forum post!)

On the other hand, you do find some artistic games at the local game store. The thing with them is that, like arthouse films, they have a small audience. There are some good art movies out there, but 99% of art movies don't appeal to 99% of the people. Anyone play Ico (it's on PS2)? I own it and have played some of it, and can testify that it's very much like an art film. Pretty, thoughtful, etc., but not really what 99% of gamers are looking for. I wasn't even able to keep my attention on it long enough to finish. You have to go SOOOO far between saves that it just wasn't worth the aggravation.

Some of the "adventure" games (games like Monkey Island and Syberia) fall into the artistic category, too (IMHO). To look at an old example, Myst is very much an artsy kind of game. You move around looking at fairly static, but beautiful terrain. You never have any combat. There's very little dialogue. Etc. It's probably the best-selling artsy game there ever has been, or ever will be, because it somehow appealed to a lot of people who played games as well as plenty of people who don't normally play games. A really new example is Electroplankton, on the Nintendo DS. There's no score and no real goal to most of that game. You just play with sound. It's very artsy, and probably will never sell very many copies.

Actually, now that I think about it, there are other games that are kind of on the edge of being artsy. I'm thinking of games like Animal Crossing, and Nintendogs. Like Electroplankton, these are also games where there's no real goal, and no high scores. Well, I guess Nintendogs does keep track of the best you've done in each contest, and you get "trainer points" for doing things, but it's not really in the same spirit as a conventional high score. In both cases, you are simply a caretaker, playing the game as you see fit, and taking care of (or neglecting) your charges (town or dogs) as well or as poorly as you want. There's never an end to either game, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, this has gone on far longer than I ever thought it would, or wanted it to. One last word on the subject of artsy stuff and video games. If you are into both of those things, I'd recommend the book Lucky Wander Boy. It's about video games, but it is extremely artsy.