Will Sex In Games Ever Be Sexy?

The Guardian Gamesblog has an editorial up discussing the pitiful state that sexuality is in when it comes to games. Titles like "Singles: Flirt up your Life" and "The Guy Game" are not sexy...they're just embarrassing. From the article: "Historically, you can understand the reasons behind the industry's adolescent handling of adult themes: a younger audience, a male-dominated development environment and, of course, basic pixilated visuals which only ever really allowed a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, 'Confessions of a Bitmapped Bikini Lady' approach to portraying sex."

Comments

You need an audience who knows what good sex is

[EnronHaliburton2004]

In order to have a game which contains good sex, you need to have an audience who knows what good sex is.

Unfortunately, judging by the popular porn promoted by most gamers and netiziens, most people don't have a fucking clue,

It's fine if an 18 year old doesn't know what good sex is, but a 30 year old adult? Give me a fucking break.

99% of porn on the net and on the videos is complete utter crap: Same formula, different girl, staged sex, fake orgasms-- all ending with a goddamn cumshot. Why the hell would you pull out of a great orgasm to cum on the girls face??? BOOOOOORRRRRING!

The audience of this porn obviously doesn't have a fucking clue what 'hot sex' is, and doesn't tire out from bad crap porn.

Re:You need an audience who knows what good sex is

[JAHA]

Why the hell would you pull out of a great orgasm to cum on the girls face??? BOOOOOORRRRRING!

Umm...maybe because porn is a visual medium and you can't SEE someone having a great orgasm. Porn is not an instructional video. It's a way to excite you VISUALLY. This is the same reason you see flicking tongue's in porn during oral sex. Anybody with real experience knows that doesn't really work. But, apparently, it's visually enticing.

I'm not trying to argue that porn is amazing. But you don't seem to have a clue about how to make it better.

Re:You need an audience who knows what good sex is

[AstrumPreliator]

I agree with most of what you said, but I'd like to point out that sex isn't purely physical. It isn't about the number of positions you are in during a session nor the amount of foreplay you do or how many different places you can stimulate at once. Don't get me wrong they're a part of the equation, but you need a bit more for great sex. You need an emotional and spiritual connection of some sort.

In response to your second to last paragraph, every man and woman is different. Get over being embarrassed in the bedroom and communicate with eachother. Everyone has a fetish or two and you can get pretty turned on fulfilling your partner's desires and I know they will enjoy it.

Besides, porn is just visual stimuli.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

[Blakey Rat]

They need to go play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The writing in that game was excellent, including the sex scene.

Re:Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

[snorklewacker]

The bath scene. Hardly a sex scene ... it was all "off camera". Very PG. However, what was there was done exquisitely and tastefully, which was the thrust (ahem) of the article. I'm quite sure the artistic and writing talent behind that game could have gone on to show an even more erotic scene, but that would get the "AO" label slapped on it, Wal-Mart wouldn't carry it, and the console makers wouldn't publish it. Welcome to the repression of the "free" market.

Not that I think it would have been entirely appropriate to put such a scene in that particular game, but sheesh, I'm 32 years old, I think I could handle it. Games are still for kids. Come to think of it, just about every mass-marketed entertainment out there is -- if not for actual children, then ones that are mentally.

Sex vs. Sexual tension

[Daetrin]

Although there is some overlap and some exceptions, generally you have the straight (so to speak) approach to sex taken by porn and anything else intended as a masturbation fantasy, which is the kind of thing that is generally pretty embaressing in any other context. Those who are trying to include sex in a work they consider to have artistic merit usually focus on sexual tension rather than directly on the sex itself.

Stories about sexual tension usually have a lot more depth and layers of meaning to them than stories about sex alone. You can even have very sexy stories that don't actually have any explicit sex at all. More commonly an "artistic" story will have a lot of sexual tension followed by a little bit of sex, as opposed to porn which has a little (if any) sexual tension up front followed by a lot of sex.

There's also always the "less is more" philosophy. It's often the stories with the least actual sex in them, and sometimes the least sexual tension, at least as intended by the author, that ends up with hordes of obsessed fans writing slash about them.

So i expect the sex in video games will be sexy as soon as the developers and/or marketing departments realize it isn't about sex and body parts but about well developed characters and the social interactions between them which create sexual tension.