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Sex in Games Conference Announced
An anonymous reader writes "1UP has a story on the announcement of the first ever Sex in Games Conference. According to the group putting it on, the conference is to 'focus on the design, development, and technology of sex in video games from a national as well as international perspective.' It's a two-day event taking place this June in San Francisco. Some of the lectures are: 'Sex in Games: Where are We Now?', 'The Future of Sex and Technology,' and 'The Making of the SeXbox: Applied Hardware'."
thats a great way to add even more stereotypes to gamers.
I have to admit I was a bit suprised when I heard about this. Given the recent political climate of blaming everything on games and harping about sex in games in particular we get a conference devoted to putting more sex into games, not worryied hand-wringing about what to do to minimize it.
While I'm of the opinion that not much sounds likely to come out of this it could be a good opportunity to develop reasonable, mature games that involve sexuality or sexual themes and how to make that work properly. Sure it's just as likely to focus on bottom-feeding crap, porn, and schlock (I mean, at least Softporn and the other early Leisure Suit Larry games were clever and funny), but the fact that maybe, just maybe, someone will be able to work on implementing sex as a valid part of gaming makes it all worth it.
"...'The Future of Sex and Technology,' and 'The Making of the SeXbox: Applied Hardware'." BSOD will take on a whole new meaning: Ball Scruncher Of Death!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Given what we've already established about the average Slashdot reader, we already know sex and technology don't mix. There certainly is no future in it.
Does anyone have archives of fufme.com? That was some awesome integration of sex and technology.
It's my sex box, and her name is Sony!
This shouldn't come as a surprise really. In many Asian nations there have been adult themed games for years. (Look up H-Games on wiki) Making an organization and conference determining ways tat the American market can do a similar thing seems logical.
My only real concern is, what will this type of thing do to the non pornographic games? This could push it either way. Once something has been deemed pornographic the people purchasing them must be carded for proof of age by current pornography laws, perhaps that will be enough when people see examples of truly adult games. On the other hand once there are a few games out that are deemed pornographic it may give a big enough window to get those video game censorship laws passed.
Funny as it sounds, sex is one area that doesn't stand out on its own in video gaming. Think of the prime gaming demographic of males age 10-30. The nerds have RPGs, the jocks have sports games, the antisocials have violent games, but where are the games specifically marketed to the horndogs? Yeah, hot girls are abundant in video games, but they're the character as part of a larger story, and not primarily the main focus. History has shown us how games built solely around T&A (BMXXX, DOA beach volleyball) don't sell very well, even though all logic says they should. This conference could go a long way into exploring one of the uncracked parts of the teenage psyche. Teenagers want hot girls with large boobies, so why aren't they buying those games?
Perhaps niche peripherals such as these will become popular if supported?
Wasn't it about performing cunnilingus while kneeling on a hardwood floor?
Slashdot | Games Should Be Like Female Orgasms
The latest Slashdot meme.
1. Because if you just need some masturbation material, games offer piss-poor value for the money. For the price of one game, you could get a month's membership at a premium sex site, and the site will have more... ahem... "replay value". And that's already assuming that you're desperate enough to pay for that. There are plenty of sites that can fill your need for porn for no more than your ISP bill. I'd even give you a few links, but I'm sure you can google on your own.
Let me say that I'm not even anti-pornography or anything. But I wouldn't waste my money on a porn game anyway. Unless you're talking the small niche of hentai- or furry-fetishists, there's just nothing in a crude 3D model that doesn't look better on a real woman. And again, you can stare at a photo or movie of the latter for a lot less money, or no money at all.
So, seriously, the mind boggles when I see yet another idiot publisher betting it all on sex appeal, sometimes even at the risk of alienating their core market demographic. WTF is the rationale there? "You know, old chap, I bet noone knows how to find porn on the internet. I bet they're just starving to pay 50$ to see the heroine's pixelated polygonal ass in a thong, because otherwise they wouldn't find any." Stupid.
2. Because you're targetting the wrong demographic. If you want to sell smut to teenagers, you're gonna have to slip it past their parents. Plus, past the government and youth protection organizations and whatever, who _will_ slap it with an Adult Only rating and require some ID.
And past those teenagers themselves who might figure out that smuggling a porn magazine into their room is safer than playing "Mario's Anal Adventures: Peach Takes A Reaming" on the family TV in the living room. Or that quickly going to a web site while mom is out shopping, is safer than having to find a good answer to "oh, you're back from the game shop. Did you buy anything interesting?" or "uh, what's this Bukkake Fantasy 7 entry in the Start menu?"
So it's going for the entirely wrong age segment. The age where they're dumb enough and think with their gonads is the age where they don't also have all that freedom. And later some get a life, and some start at least being able to do the maths I've described at point 1, because it's their money they're blowing for a change.
3. Because appealing to a minority is no longer enough to cover a major game's development. You may still be able to pay for a cheap 2D hentai game out of it, but not for Quake 4.
There's a reason why you keep hearing about trying to appeal to female gamers and casual gamers and even retired senior-citizen gamers nowadays. Because the industry increasingly needs their money to survive.
Back in the days of Pong it didn't really matter. If you sold 1000 copies of a game you've made in a month, you could proclaim it a huge success and had actually made a tidy profit. So an industry which started with a 50-50 gender distribution among gamers, and they knew it, could easily afford to discard half the market, and focus on making whatever the horny immature lonely programmers wanted to code. It turned into an industry by lonely nerds for lonely nerds, but there was no loss in that anyway, since you still easily got the 1000 or even 10,000 buyers you needed in that niche.
But nowadays with game development costs being what they are, that's no longer enough. That's why everyone from Microsoft to Sony to EA suddenly proclaims their undying love and dedication to female gamers and casual gamers. Because having a game like The Sims which sold to a helluva lot of women (and to a helluva lot of casual gamer dads too) is what makes a profit, while being pegged into the hole of games _only_ for horny 16 year olds might as well make you a loss. (Most games nowadays make a loss, and the publisher uses the games who sell well to basically subsidize those who didn't.)
Of course, after a whole generation of "chicks don't play games" mentality and focusing only on horny 16 year old males, noone really knows how to even start about making a game for anyone else. But that's another story for another time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
.. at 'six year old laughing at willy jokes' level.
Sex in games is nothing new. Most games have an objective and a reward and it is very easy to make the objective be to uncover a naked girl and that is also your reward. Cue the sextetris clones. Those generally are boring. There are some intresting variants like a scrolling shooter where you got to shoot the clothing off a girl.
Then there are the games like Leisure suit larry or the japanese story H-games where instead of your goal being to defeat the evil overlord your goal is to get laid.
Again nothing special. Some succeed in being funny or even arrousing and at least it is a welcome change from the usual save the world storyline.
Then of course there are the games that have a lot of vibes that some girls seem to enjoy playing. Women are a large gaming audience and well there might be a market where you have two dual shock controllers and the better you are at the game well the better it is. Women are far more perverted then /. geeks believe. But strictly speaking that doesn't have to be an erotic game itself. Sure a hardcore gore shooter will probably ruin the mood (you never know with some women) but the game action itself does not have to be erotic.
But what about a game that combines it all. A story line with an erotic angle, some erotic imagery and feedback for those of the gaming population for whom a simple rumblepack is enough. Well it would be insanely difficult to produce.
Currently you can have jarring gameplay where your following a story plot only to be suddenly forced to do 20 minutes of leaping and climbing and shooting and getting killed. Worse imagine your almost there and all of sudden you take a wrong turn and your lost and left hanging while trying to figure out where the game wants you to go next. Frustration city!
All kidding aside I do believe there is room for adult games, where adult doesn't have to mean endless sex but where the designer can well go where he couldn't go before. MMO land has plenty of people engaging in cyber sex. Now imagine a MMO game that had instead of the usual airguitar emotes emotes like "kiss" "stroke" and the avatars actually interacted with each other. Would that "sell"?
Yes and no. I don't think it would sell to well if that is all there is but imagine a mature MMORPG (no kiddies allowed) with mature plots, real dead, and adult players that could do more then just exchange rings and blow kisses. I think there is a market for it.
The only problem would be of A keeping the kids out and B that it would have to be a good game on its own.
Because just pure sex games where the gameplay is ruined in favor of the porn just don't sell except to teenage boys. A good erotic game needs to appeal to both sexes. It can be done but not by current companies.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Come to think of it..., no, wrong choice of words. If you think about it, the mere association of "sex" and "San Francisco" is by itself a stereotype, although it may not be about the most prevalent kind of sex found in games.
I'm not sure how fun a "sex" game is...even LLL games got a little old. I can certainly see how sex might become more a part of M-rated games. Boobs in FPS's - hell, there was that shower scene in HL2 if I'm not mistaken. Even if the Hot Coffee content was playable in GTA, I think it was appropriate for that game.
Personally, I'd like to see more "interactive" games like Rez.
In the Euro version of the game "Fahrenheit" (Indigo Prophecy) there were two pretty decent sex scenes. The first would only happen if you played your cards right, and was interactive (sort of). The second one was a major part of the story, and was surprisingly well done. More like a movie. They both advanced the story to a point, and did not seem overly gratuitous.
Clearly I forgot to equip my +5 Codpiece of Karma.
taking place June 8-9, 2006 at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Fransico, Califronia.
Hahahah!
That's brilliant. I hope they picked that on purpose.
Finally a games conference that announces there will be sex!
If only they would give us the name of that conference.
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Interesting approach which shows just "where we are".
If it warrants its own conference, then that's a clear sign that it's not yet anywhere. The problem is that there's no sex in games. Where it appears to be, it's some add-on. Either it's masturbation material, or the sex is just the dressing for some mini-games.
The thing is that it isn't a natural part of any game I know. Just as in the wet dreams of G.W.Bush and many religious-right fanatics, it's been completely removed from (virtual) reality.
Where's the RPG where you can have some casual sex? Blowing a dozen goons away goes without saying, but getting laid even once just doesn't happen in a normal game. Where it happens it is the goal or the entire selling point.
Interestingly, GTA's "hot chocolate" thingy came very close. There you are, and part of the game world is just having some fun with your babe. That's the ticket. And look how they cried and yelled about that being the first sign of armageddon.
I'd love to see more sex in games, and at the same time I hate all the sex-games. I've not yet seen even one that was fun beyond the curiosity new-game-let's-try-it-out stage.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Because you can't play those games using only one hand. The Revolution should change that.
I know the "one-hand-thing" sounds like a joke, but I'm actually pretty serious. If I'm playing games, I don't want to be constantly distracted by naked women. Not because I don't like naked women, but because I can't concentrate on playing the game while there are naked women on the screen. And if I want to see naked women, I don't want to have to play a game in order to see them.
You'll never feel quite as dirty as taking the Avatar to the brothels in the Ultima series.
I for one object to all this sex on my video game systems!
I mean, I keep falling off!