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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."
A distinct lack of discussion here. This could even be the first post.
Well written dialogue can be very successful at drawing the user in and creating a suspension of disbelief. It can overcome cartoony or 3d polygonal looking graphics and having to use a keyboard and mouse.
Example
Man: "I put on my robe and wizard hat....uh oh going limp!"
Woman: "HAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!"
Well joystick waggling games went out of fashion in the days of the zx specturm and commodore 64.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Lotsa sex in Second Life. Basically there is financial competition to produce the sexiest clothing, poses, "accessories", and animations. Since you can make anything, there are some pretty advanced genitalia out there. Second Life allows you to tack anything anywhere on your avatar, including the Barbie- and Ken-like flat nether regions.
Not that I get involved in such things.
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.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
From the post at the bottom of the article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley really made me think about the kind of characters that can make it work for me. Probably one of the best scenes I can remember from the games I've played is from Max Payne 2, there's a sex scene with Max and Mona that's told using the panel-and-narrator style and that did more for me than anything in GTA or Mafia or Bloodlines.
The same can be said for films, for example when I watched the Incredibles I WANTED them to succeed, but I couldn't care less about the Final Fantasy characters even after 2 hours. Final Flight of the Osiris could be another good example, if I think about how much I enjoyed seeing naked cg swordfighting compared to seeing cg sentinels taking down a hovercraft. It was a cool fight at the start, don't get me wrong, but when I watch that short all I really wanna see is the chase.
I guess the key to making it real enough for our minds to believe in it, is to keep it from being TOO real. Strange thought.
A discussion about sex on Slashdot? I guess you missed the title of website.
But anyway, my thoughts...
Sex is a very visceral and a very physically intimate thing. While emotions have been conveyed well before in video games, for the most part it isn't conveyed as well in movies or books for example. This is because of the whole thing about video games being interactive art. I don't doubt a sex scene could be good in a video game. I've had a couple ideas myself. Let's take for granted that we're able to make models and graphics that are exciting sexually. Not too hard right? *smirk* And let's say everything else(music, audio, etc.) isn't done bad either. That still leave one big thing: the game has to be *fun* to interactive with.
Good ideas are there, the problem is the examples given in story caption; they're bad games. The people who make these games are appealing to lowest common denominator. They're making for these "sexy" games for cheap as possible, using the idea that people will play through a mediocre game on the chance of seeing (.)(.). You need someone with talent, or at least someone who has good ideas, and the knowledge how to implement those ideas well. But at the end of the day, it will always cheaper to make some 3D models with big (.)(.) and make a "mash X to make the girl orgasm" game than to hire someone with the talent, inspiration, and drive to push for an innovative way to have sex in the game.
Not that I can blame them. But personally I'd rather be playing with some real (.)(.) than playing with my joystick...Life is a far better video game when comes to sex.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
They need to go play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The writing in that game was excellent, including the sex scene.
Comment of the year
I can't mod the parent post up, so I'll expand on his comment a little bit.
Hgames (hentai games), are a huge industry in Japan. The range of sexual themes covered by these games is extremely diverse... everything from the standard smut, to bondage, bestiality, scat/piss, big-breasts (big as in beach-ball big.. there's a name for this fetish, I don't know what it is), and rape.
The article author doesn't know what he's talking about. This industry has been vibrant and successful in japan for a long time. The games aren't coy about their subject matter, either. They're unapologetically explicit.
-Laxitive
(and before I submit: this is a pre-emptive stfu to anybody thinking of making some cheesy joke about my handle... er.. nickname).
I played it . . . but they showed nothing, so some cinema sequences were better. (Saving the Oracle, nudge, nudge ;))
Anyway, they don't want to make the sex too real in videogames otherwise the anti-VG crowd will scream about the sex AND the violence and how we're sending society into the shitter. Now, not only will school shootings end up the fault of violent videogames, but teenage pregnancy will be blamed on sexy videogames.
Sex is awesome. So are videogames. But let's keep them separate for a while longer.
With so many ppl on
The one game I can name in this genre that was any good was Michael Ninn's Latex: The Game.
It was interesting... sort of a dumbed-down (but not completely trivial) combination of Myst, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and a porn flick (it included FMV clips from the porn movie, Michael Ninn's Latex).
What was cool about it was that it immersed you in a surreal world, inside the mind of a lunatic. There was an otherworldly quality to it that by far exceeded what one would expect from a game based on a porn flick.
I count it as the only truly sexy (and not braindead) "adult" game.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
The brain is the largest erogenous organ in the body. And thats both literal and figurative, given most human brains weighs in at several pounds. The developers, if they're so keen on using interactive media as a conduit for the sex industry, have to realize that games appeal to our brains first.
Unless its the rez vibrator pack. That thing appeals to a different organ entirely.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You consider hentai games to be "sexy" and mature?
Golly. That stuff is more puerile than any USA porn ever could be.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I think a lot of people are confusing the idea of a simple sex/porn videogame with the idea of an actual legitimate game trying to deal with sexuality in an interesting/appropriate/mature manner. People have pointed out that google image search is easier than trying to play a porn game, or that porn itself doesn't deal with sex appropriately anyways; but the point of the article (albeit not a particularly profound one) was that a game like GTA, an M-rated RPG, or whatever hypothetical game you could think of, could potentially deal with relationships and sexual themes in such a way that would lend to the realism, interactivity and emotional aspect of the game.
I hate to give it any credit, because the game bugs the hell out of me (try being a game tester at EA for a little while), but the Sims 2 is a good example of a game where you feel like the characters are somewhat emotionally bonded with each other, and can feel jealousy when a Sim flirts with another Sim that they were fond of, and that sort of thing. The whole thing is kind of forced, with point values for how much of a friend someone is, etc., but it gets the job done. The "sex" (making woohoo) is done in a cartoony, pg-13 kind of way, but it fits the game well and isnt just a tacked on feature. Plus, it wouldnt be a reach to remove the pixel blurring and a few tweaks to make it a little more mature-themed.
Now if you built an actual game around that, instead of an eating/shitting/sleeping simulator, I might actually go buy it. Not that the Sims isnt already the most popular game in the universe.
The uncanny valley is bogus. It was research done for robot appearances that culminated in very life-like manequins. Yes, with better graphics poorly designed models, textures, and lighting can combine to make one scarey looking face. However, I don't think this "uncanny valley" is as uncrossable with todays graphics as is purported.
When I played Half-Life 2 on my medium-low end PC, the human characters were pretty dang believable at times. Of course Valve paid great attention to facial expressions, just like the Golum character played by Andy Serkis in LotR. This contrasts with the characters in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (those models could only smile with their lips and scowl with their eyebrows - they didn't utilize the entire face in a natural manner).
With films on the big screen, we usually spot out CGI elements, but when the entire film is CGI we just take it all in (much more immersive).
For games to deal with sex in a mature way, game developers need to realize that less is more. If you show everything it is no longer sexy, only stimulating. It stops being eroticism, and becomes porn. There is a reason that today's most artsy, cutting edge directors aren't doing porn films. There is a reason that Victoria's Secret keeps making money when you can get naked for free!
I am surprised by how many comments were basically suggesting "make Porn Game 346." There are plenty of those in Japan. I think the only way they could deal with sex in a mature way would be either to just use cutscenes that portray it in a artistic way. Or make a minigame out of it without showing everything. I haven't seen that part of God of War, but I am sure there are numerous tasteful ways of some kind of minigame that wouldn't deaden the emotional response. No matter how sex is portrayed it would have to be done in such a way that your girlfriend could be in the room and she would think it was romantic.
They'll never see you coming!
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
They're about as sexy and mature as porn is, which makes sense, because they're porn games.
-Laxitive
Dammit, hit submit before I finished saying what I wanted to say.
What the hell is "that stuff" supposed to be?
There are a lot of pretty good natured h-games. Of course, if you've only kept your eye out for the disturbing stuff, then I think that says more about you than it does about h-games.
-Laxitive
"Will ? games ever be ?y ?" is a bad analogy, it's like saying "Will violent games ever be lethal?", or "Will sport games ever be equivalent to excersize?" (I'm not talking about excersize machines). The real question here is "Will dating games get me laid?"
Does anyone remember a "game" called MacPlaymate?
It was a game with a naked woman and a number of "toys" with a self evident objective. This was all the rage at our University Macintosh lab for about 2 days, and then never to be seen again.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Maybe there is something wrong with me but I find this game a bit titillating. I still haven't been able to win, but I'll keep trying.
Orgasm girl
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
The game was meant to include male nudity (you know, the way it actually WAS in Greek mythology) but Sony chickened out and made them cut it. Even worse, SCEE competely chickened out and decided not to publish it at all because it hurts their "family friendly image".
I remember when another, then #1 console company made a similar decision regarding a game called Mortal Kombat, they got branded as "teh kiddy".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I think one of the problems of sex in video games is the uncanny valley. The beach volley games like DOA look kinda spooky in my opinion, and not really sexy. Feel the Magic XX/XY worked around this problem successfully by having a very stylized female. Basically, they leave it to your imagination, and it works. Opening her top actually is kinda sexy.
Still, I think in many games, sex simply has no place. Mario and Peach would be very uncomfortable, and having the Halo guy get it on would really pull you out of the game.
Either way, sex can't really be used to sell games (BMX XXX anyone?), because you don't have to play games to see nude people. You get that on the Internet for free, without having to play a crappy game. The game needs to be good in the first place to make you play it. Sex can possibly enhance a good game, but it can't make a good game.
Leather goddesses of phobos.
I dunno, I thought the girl-on-girl lesbian action in The Sims 2 was pretty sexy, especially in their bikinis. Not that I'll ever admit to making them do that.
I think that the problem with Sex in videogames is that the storylines and character development are, in general, not mature enough or explored in enough depth to allow for sex in games. Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful of games with storylines, character development, and interaction that would be really deep enough to be able to include sex (off the top of my head: Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII could have gone there if they would have put a bit more into the dynamics between cloud and tifa/aries, Star Ocean 3 could have integrated it well I think with a bit more development).
The problem, I think, is that developers don't see much of a market for storylines that involve such deep running, mature themes. Before sex could be well included in a game, you need to have characters the player cares about, who have history, and who develop a relationship in the game.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Judging from the way "h-games" sell in their home country, Japan, I guess they are the correct way to do it. Games not focusing on sex itself, but building up to it by actually forming relationships and the end of the game being sex.
Business Voyeur
Hmm... it does some tracking (mainly to grab the captcha id, it seems). I'm a little too tired (insufficient caffeine, and up very late last night) to write a Python script to autosend it "captcha farm" on every one...
;-) It could even be customized to work on other farms, too...
That'd be one hell of a script to run 24/7
Perhaps it's the US cultural inhibitions, who knows.
More likely they're either afraid that you're a kid and they'll get arrested, or that they're a kid and mommy or daddy will come home and find out what they've been doing on the computer.
I will likely get flamed for this but "actual real life graphic sex" isn't really all that "sexy" either. The flirting, seduction, and foreplay are truly more "sexy" in every way.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Ha. Second life has nothing to this game. Seriously. It's the first game where the first day I play I get anally attacked multiple times.
http://www.sociolotron.com/
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Idea: type in the wrong word, screw over a spammer, and potentially get a PSP anyway (riiight).
Thanks!
you want a sexy game check out these SCREENSHOTS
Adult Anime is animated sex as well, and that sells and is popular, good storyline or no good storyline.Sex is used in movies quite often, when it would be natural, and in some cases plot specific, for characters to engage in sex. We're not necessarily talking about porn, soft porn, or Basic Instinct here.
:Literature, movies, paintings etc., imho.
The problem is that there is a an aversion by western and specifically American publishers to include any sort of overt sex; and this has to be because they're afraid of the ESRB rating hit, or the backlash from 'activists', it can't be sales since nothing sells more than sex.
The european Gothic II for example,has a 'sex scene' if you decide to use the services of a prostitute.Bad CGI, but it's there, and it fits with that specific game moment.If one were to go by the marketing campaigns,a large part of Sims 2 seems to be getting the characters to 'hook up'.
So sex and sexuality is used to 'market' our games, but they just aren't actually *in* them.
Something like Singles or Playboy Mansion tries to build the game around the sexual premise, but then shows PG13 scenes, so why bother with a game who's main marketing feature seems to be nudity and sex, when there's really no nudity or sex?
I think that the gaming industry needs to grow up and start taking itself as seriously as Hollywood. We know that certain movies aren't for kids, and so too certain games aren't for kids. Mature the stories, mature the plots.
We have enough graphics at this point, time to move on to elements of storytelling, plots and situations that exist naturally in other entertaiment media
-Gel214th
Don't forget that sexy cheer leading leads to AIDS!
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.