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Why Do Videogames Struggle With Sex?
brumgrunt writes "Why do videogames still treat sex in such a two dimensional way? Why do they snigger at it, or treat it as a reward? Den Of Geek has been taking a look." I always figured it was some combination of games being made by our inner adolescent, marketed to the outer ones, and getting banned whenever they take sex seriously.
In videogames, even ones that handle the subject deftly, sex is almost always a reward. Take the Mass Effect series, for example. Here, you can indulge in interspecies sexual relations, if you see fit, but to get to the point where a character is willing to bump uglies with you, you have to have followed the correct series of dialogue prompts. There's a veneer of freedom, but the relationship you're creating with the character you want to sleep with is a shallow one. Fail to perform one action, or choose incorrectly on one dialogue tree, and they'll lose interest in you. Sex becomes an achievement, a notch on the bedpost of your high score table, instead of being the physical expression of an emotional connection between two consenting individuals.
Not just with video games, but in general Well, it looks like the author thinks sex must only be some kind of expression of true love. What he is writing here is directly what happens in real life - you choose your words or actions badly and even one bad choice ends up to you not having sex with the girl. This seems to be more of a problem with the way US thinks about sex, while we here in Europe can just have it casually and not make a big deal out of it. Sure it might be shallow relationship, but so what, sex is fun, feels good and there really isn't any reason not to enjoy it.
I wonder why religions even have made sex to look like a bad thing. When you ask about it from someone who believes in god, the only responses usually are something like "because god said so", "that's just how it is" or "it's a special thing between a man and a woman". No actual answer. Sure, sex feels great with a person you love. But so does many other things, and you can also just have sex that feels physically great with no bigger emotions. It's nice to be close to someone, feel their skin and feel how you're inside them. Be it with love or not.
I always figured that videogames treat sex two dimensionally because much of video games cater to fantasy escapism as its main draw. It's really no different from any other fantasy escapism outlet. If you look at high fantasy books of the last couple of decades, you'll see the exact same amount of treatment of sex and impossibly proportioned women. Same thing with comic books. On the women's side, it's no different from romance novels (with the impossibly built shirtless men on the covers), soap operas (although to a lesser degree) and all sorts of other similar stuff. They appeal to the idea in us of the quick cathartic thrill that we can fantasize ourselves into, and very few people fantasize about marriage, children and getting a mortgage.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
or treat it as a reward?
Because that's how evolution works.
This video is about the best description of the problem I've seen. If you can't read the fine article, watch the fine video.
enough said.
there isn't much more can be done..... But on a serious note. Games still live in a 2D space. I'm not talking about 3D type games but the environment. It isn't real. Our minds know it and there is little anyone can do to get past the fact that it's not real.
Do not want you to know there's this much better game in town :p
it's not like video games treat murder or money or physics or politics with reverence, respect, or precision either. why should a game be expected to treat sex as somehow immune from gamification? if it's included, it *should* be simplified in function and integrated into the gaming framework, just like every other complex human thing that gets reduced to either a goal, task, tool, or reward in a game.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Fahrenheit. (aka Indigo Prophecy)
Sex was in the game... but not really as a reward... just part of the narrative.
Because any game that treats sex "properly" is going to end up with an AO rating in the US because of the absurd level of puritanical outrage about boobies, which means Walmart and the like won't stock it, so it won't sell as many copies and most publishers won't want to touch it.
Personally, I'd welcome deeper relationship modelling in games, especially RPGs, but I know it's unlikely to happen as long as people are so scared of AO ratings and their impact on US sales. A simple solution is to stick it on the PC, slap an 18 rating on it and sell it primarily in the UK/Europe; job done.
... and created this nice presentation that's worth watching : http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2505-Sex-in-Games
some were rumored to have been seen flying out windows with rats in their mouths & flames coming out of their butts. told you?
Because too few people know how to use sex as a higher, richer form of communication and spiritual growth, and probably because most videogamers' (and I'm sorry if I'm making too bold of a generalization) association with sex is getting caught in the basement jerking off... Why else would one "snigger"?..
Society is too 'particular' about sex. The GTA hot coffee mod is a perfect example. How dare they put sex into that game! I want to shoot prostitutes, hijack cars, murder policeman and whack civilians with a baseball bat. For some reason even the largest amount of violence is less likely to cause controversy than a sex scene.
Now, a game usually has something which makes it fun, the main part of the game. That part is treated with the most 'respect' in a way. If its a FPS its about saving the world through shooting people or whatever. If its a city simulator then its about economics or whatever. I mean you don't hear complaints about how Mass Effect doesn't simulate a space economy well enough - because that's not the main point of the game, its a sub thing.
If you wanted a game that was all about sex, I'm sure they exist, but they'd be 'adult' games, or so heavily rated 18+ that nobody can really get to them easily (see Paragraph 1). And even then, do you think there is enough of an audience who wants to play a game who's main gameplay involves having a realistic relationship with someone? Nope.
Until photo realistic graphics and realistic movement comes of age not to mention other forms of user "input" then sex in a videogame will remain funny rather than erotic.
Dragonage has been thankfully different in this regard.
They weren't really "rewards" and you could have same-sex interaction (although it wasn't with Alistair...).
And since they've committed to continue this practice I'll definitely be getting Dragon Age 2, not just for the sex but because sexual encounters certainly adds another level to video games which make them feel mature if done correctly imo.
Balance will be restored to Sex and Video Games with the upcoming release of Duke Nukem Forever.
Honestly, games treat pretty much everything in a two-dimensional way. Every system is a dramatic simplification. Every mechanic is there to make the game fun. You don't see a whole hell of a lot of depth or complexity to any of it.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I suppose the game developers are "thinking of the children" in a very perverse sense. When your typical audience is in his teens / early college years -- of course the women with unrealistic proportions are going to be more appealing. The buyers are making their purchases partly based on their hormones at that age.
.... there is no substitute.....
An Entertainment Software Association report in 2009 showed that the average age of a videogame player is 35, ...
Because people who spend all that time in front of video games (and the internet for that matter) are socially backwards, awkward, and usually lack social skills.
Because in order to treat sex realistically, and not as a reward at the end of a dialog tree, you would need an AI capable or responding in a realistic manner to social interactions, and we are quite simply not at that level yet.
Technoli
Because your cultural/religious repressions are making you all crazy. What makes you think that sexual deprivation is any less harmful than sleep or sensory deprivation? You should learn to let the kids play with themselves if you don't want to raise a psychopath.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
'Why do videogameswe still treat sex in such a two dimensional way? Why do theywe snigger at it, or treat it as a reward?'
Seriously? The question is why (modern) video games can't handle sex in a mature way?
We're a culture dominated by immature views of sex. We live in a culture where we are surrounded by mixed messages, inconsistencies, and stereotypes. Where whatever sex I'm interested in is fine and normal, but whatever sex you want is deviant and wrong. A society that has never successfully grasped with the Virgin/Whore dichotomy. A culture where the dominant view is that women are not supposed to want sex and men aren't supposed to want anything but.
Is there really any question as to why Video Games can't handle sex in a mature way, when we handle sexual issues in the the rest of our lives in such an immature manner?
I am amused that this is posted today. Today is Mardi Gras; a day that has come to be a celebration of excesses. Take a look at the behavior in New Orleans tonight differs from the typical behavior of the residents in Baton Rouge for the other 364 days of the year. Take a look at how celebrations of diversity and sexuality, like NY or SF Pride, differ from the typical views of sex espoused by ministers and preachers every Sunday morning. Consider the language we use with regards to sex -- "Walk of Shame", "Booty Call".
Video Games treat sex pretty much like how sex is treated in every other aspect of this society -- poorly.
Just like with comics and animation, the west (or more specifically, North America) has this decades-long issue where it is automatically assumed that videogames are children's entertainment.
Other parts of the world, like Japan, and parts of Europe, have gotten over this and accept that those forms of entertainment can be for mature adults, so their games, comics, and animation can be a bit more risqué.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Just technologically, sex is arguably pretty tricky. You can do plain porn easily enough(especially if you just use stills and video shot with real people); but simulating complex character interactions or in-engine naked-bodies-and-fluids without falling into the horrors of the uncanny valley is quite difficult. Thus, games tend either to ignore the subject, or just toss in some pin-ups at reward points.
Then, of course, you have the US market's rather curious stance toward sex vs. violence. Violence may well get you rated M; but M is hardly the kiss of death. Sex will probably get you AO, which is.(Even if the selling point of the violence is realistic depictions of human suffering and death, and the game is all about tasteful loving relationships or something; but so it goes...) Even as the market of adult videogamers expands, you still can't get a mass-market game out the door if it won't be at least tacitly accepted by the households of millions of 14 year olds(because who else is going to scream "FAGGOT HACKER!!@!!" into the microphone all night on XBL?)
Finally, there is the matter of competition and competitive advantage: For things like violence and empire building, most people either have no options, or only options that are actually pretty costly, and thus not competitors as entertainment(Well, let's see... I could download America's Army or I could join America's Army...). There is some competition from film; but that is about it. For things like sex, a decent percentage of gamers old enough to be interested in a serious in-game depiction are substantially more interested in real life. Failing that(because of technological limitations, as described above) the conventional pornography industry is arguably pretty superior to the video game industry in terms of efficiently titillating depictions, and the film and novel industries are substantially ahead if you want deep characters and romance and things.
Goregasm: The Legend of the Dong-Slayer - it sold 61m copies. The ultimate melding of violence and porn. If an egomaniac can pull it off, surely the big wigs can too.
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/24/30-rock-tracy-jordans-porno-video-game-sells-61m-units/
The author is seriusly asking why we can't have video games that will let him have meaning full sex?
Seriusly Its a video game, go out and talk to girls, maybe someday you will experiance this new "sex" thing.
...with his nubby joystick.
Why post anonymously? It's not like a slashdot author couldn't look at the apache logs for your IP... Hell, they probably have it built in to their admin interface.
There's no place like
You're assuming they care enough to do so.
PROTIP: They don't.
The rules of what you can and can't do in a medium that the rest of the media mistakenly believes is solely for children prevent it.
It's that simple.
From what I've seen on my friend's PC, this is another article that needs the tag "except in Japan".
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Fixed it for you
Why videogames "struggle" with sex?
Because the games are written by nerds, who don't get any, so have nothing to compare with real life. Just my guess. :)
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Mortal Online (MMORPG) has broached the content of full frontal nudity. There is no actual interaction between players but I don't see that the graphics have detracted from the gameplay at all.
So where games today can make people play for hours on end to get virtual goods, where gamers get the sense of achievement by killing virtual monsters in a virtual world for virtual rewards (while playing real money), you DONT want to use sex as a reward? Especially sex/romantic relations with characters you have quite likely developed some sort of emotional attachment to? You want to just.. give away this ace up a designers sleeve? WHY!
You really want "Sex as notch on the bedpost", look no further than that game. You actually collect an "achievement card" for every woman Geralt sleeps with in that game. Still though, Geralt's cavalier attitude fits the character, and the writing does convey that some of these "conquests" do develop some genuine affection for him. I guess it's not the French doing the whole juxtaposition of romance and ironic detachment anymore, it's the Czechs...
Probably for the same reasons that video-gamers struggle with sex. It has something to do with the intersection of infrequency and awkwardness.
http://www.gamegavel.com/reviews/2011/02/24/sex-and-videogames/
Way to steal an article I wrote months upon months ago. I originally posted that in the summer on our community blogs, and then again on the 24th of Feb of this year. Not only is this guy late to the party, he has stolen huge elements of my original article. And to add insult to injury, I attempted to submit this to slashdot all that long ago. Jerks.
Why do videogames still treat sex in such a two dimensional way? Why do they snigger at it, or treat it as a reward?
I believe that's one-dimensional - love-it <--> hate-it are just opposite directions along a single axis.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
So, video games cannot duplicate or replace the actual living of one's own real life . . . and this is a bad thing, exactly why?
The average game player is 34 years old and has been playing games for 12 years. At least according to the ESA. http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp
And killing enemies is a metaphor for domination sex.
I tried arguing this point in a Modern Warfare multiplayer game once... and *they* called me gay.
still pretty funny
Boring article, boring convo. Who cares. Play games, kill shit, shut up.
You never see Dr. Freeman stopping to eat or rest up, either. I'd rather continue shooting zombies than watch two poorly modeled assemblies of triangles pumping each other.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Maybe it is because gamers for the most part are teenagers? Seriously, is anyone at all surprised that teens either treat sex as a reward and make jokes of it?
I'm not much older either and from my life experiences I can say that treating sex maturely and fully appreciating the non-sexual aspects of relationships takes time.
We are starting to see games being made for older demographics due to aging gamers so I suspect more adult oriented games will be produced that can handle sex in a more mature fashion.
Religion made pre-marital sex a no-no because before effective contraceptives lots of anonymous sex really was a bad thing. In 1532 if a woman was pregnant and she wasn't sure who the father was, well, there was a pretty good chance that if she survived the childbirth she and the child would starve to death over the winter.
The reason that they still make an issue of it is also simple, it takes a really long time for religions to adjust their policies.
There is no conspiracy against fun here, this is a relic public health policy that most religions are going to take a while to do away with. Not because they hate fun, but because they're religions.
Some games try to model a believable pseudo-reality to varying degrees of detail, some don't. I don't see a reason to get hung up on it, or single out sex in particular.
In Dwarf Fortress, if a couple of my dwarves become romantically entangled, they might get married, and they might have a baby (which means I get a new dwarf, who has very strong social ties to at least two of my older dwarfs). In Joust, my jouster never seems to have any sex at all (which is really odd since I assume he's competed in a lot of tourneys, and part of the point of that is to impress the ladies). Whoever wrote Joust was clearly sexually repressed.
In SMAC, if you have enough food coming in to support it, the base populations abstractly grow, and you know what that's a crude model of, don't you? Why was Brian Reynolds too scared to show it? Prude!!
In Joust, my jouster does a lot of killing, up close and personal. In SMAC, I sometimes nerve-gas opponents' cities (usually during heavy sun spot activity when communications are blacked out), killing thousands of innocent civilians (and while it irreparably harms some diplomatic relations, my soldiers don't get PTSD from doing it). In Pac Man, my dot-eater never kills anyone (who's alive).
In Joust, is killing the reward -- the very goal itself, satiation of bloodlust -- or is it just a path to victory (elimination of threats to the peace)? Is it to be enjoyed, or a necessary evil? Who watches the Jouster to make sure he's only killing the right people?
Why does the best Facebook game ever, Click the Cow, struggle so much with sex and violence? That game has no killing at all; I don't think the cows even have genitalia (oh please! stop living in denial!). Not to mention that Click the Cow (just like Joust) seems to shy away from, awkwardly dancing around, all questions concerning political representation, never approaches the topic of when to use marjoram instead of basil, avoids the topic of how to train your dog to not growl at visitors, and utterly ignores whether or not the Core i5 is a better deal than the Phenom II. OTOH, Click the Cow does acknowledge that there are different breeds of cows, but the way it handles these different breeds is so shallow, so wrong, so missing the point. Some are for dairy, some for meat, some are wild natural breeds; Click the Cow throws them altogether! Why does a game about cows, struggle so?
What "struggle"?
Most games DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH SEX as part of their mechanics. What "struggle" could there be, especially when Japan has an entire SUB-GENRE where getting to that act or even PERFORMING it is a mechanic?
But what can one expect from the uneducated who constantly pose non-problems, that have been exposed time immemorial, out of their own wretched ignorance? There is a certain shame in having donkeys and asses lead men onto lines of questioning.
Sure, sex is often two-dimensional in games. Sure, women are commonly objectified. But games are not particularly guilty of this compared to other media. And games objectify men a lot too, giving them Adonis good looks and excellent physiques. And finally, I disagree with some of the examples he highlighted. Is sex a reward in Mass Effect? Maybe if you're a cynic, but that wasn't the only level on which it worked for me. I felt really attached to the characters at the time and that part at the end, with Liara in my party (after romancing her) where no one is sure if Shepard survived, and she looks down, distraught, shaking her head, was a moment made more meaningful by the relationship they had previously forged.
they might get some sex.
Just like video gamers.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Protestant lawmakers.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
In MGS3, the love making scene at the end with EVA and Naked Snake in front of the fire place was pretty decent. It was very much a throwback to Bond-era movie making. It wasn't ridiculous, it was also pretty tasteful.
Sometimes games get sex right. MGS4's Naomi/Otacon scene was a little ridiculous... But given where the bar is, it wasn't bad.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I wonder why religions even have made sex to look like a bad thing
Mostly out of control. But beware that some more ancient religion were not so bad on sex. Some even had temple prostitution and similar.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It is suggested in this article that games are different than other media for two reasons:
1) Interactivity
2) Sexual maturity
I'll certainly give him (1), but point (2) is debatable. In fact, society in general has a damned immature perspective on sexuality. It's something which is kept behind closed doors (which is fine) but that we're compelled to talk about, hint at, and pump our own egos over.
In the article, the author says "First up, lock up your daughters, sons and dependants, because we're going to talk about sex." I realise that this was a facetious comment, but the mere fact that it made sense points to society's prevailing view of sex.
Let's restrict ourselves to the entertainment media. How many TV shows tackle sex in a mature, sophisticated, and nuanced manner versus the number that treat it as a shallow subject for adolescent sniggering? Movies might be better, but not by a lot--especially in Hollywood. We can't show naked but non-penetrative sex on screen without it (a) being labelled as softcore porn, and (b) getting an NC-17 (or whatever) rating. (Aside: We can show explicit, violent, bloody dismembering with only an R rating, though.)
Music? Worse again.
Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, there are more bright spots in the other media than in gaming, but how many video games are released per year, vs. hours of TV, movies, music, or...anything? Comparatively few, I'd wager.
Add in the uncomfortable aspect of interactivity (and the ludicrous awkwardness of a keyboard or game controller as a sex controller), and it's a steep hill to climb, which doesn't really have a lot to do with anything particular to the industry.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I don't see anything wrong with it in general, but how can it be the same for a 13 y/o (or worse a 13 y/o girl), and a 35 y/o married man with 4 kids? That's just ridiculous. I know games have ratings but doesn't magically make the understanding equal.
We haven't yet made virtual sex with computer-controlled characters, as a form of sexual activity, very interesting. People have cybersex all the time, but they tend to do it because there's another person in the other end and who responds in a reasonably human-like manner. Sex games and minigames tend to be rubbish, because... well, if you want porn, you know where to get it easier.
As a result, if you want to make a serious game, game devs have to make sex a part of story - it's much easier for people to make a mental connection with fictional characters that way. And, frankly, if you present sex as part of a story, the sex acts themselves suddenly become a rather irrelevant part of the story. (I've read a few good novels, for example, with great sex scenes - just 2 chapters of lead-up and 2 lines of the dirty parts.)
Simply put: It's easier to make fascinating drama than to come up with some interesting, new and fresh ways to say "and then they had sex". Because it's been done to death. It's hard to think of ways to make sex itself interesting.
That said, I see no reason to shy away from sex in any forms of art. It's entirely possible to put sex in most forms of art tastefully and interestingly enough - video games should be no exception. People just should figure out how to do it interestingly.
Sure, sex is often two-dimensional in games.
Especially the ones implemented in Flash.
You mean they makers of the Wii are never going to have a game that makes me shout out their console's name?
in keeping with the theme of replying to the first post in hopes of getting your post seen and voted up,
a more interesting question is "why do videogamers struggle with sex"?
Either they
a. can't find it, or
b. find it, but don't know what to do with themselves, and so it's very awkward.
Not to mention, B is enough reason to scare them away from attempting to A.
Take a look at the Mass Effect games. The first one wasn't a very big project compared to the second one. ME2 was an immensely hyped sequel due to the surprise popularity of the first one. They both had sexual aspects, but the second was definitely much more of a teenage-boy-pleasing game. The three female squad members in ME1 wear armor on combat missions. Makes sense considering they're usually getting shot at, dodging bone-breaking biotics, and possibly performing EVA in a vacuum. Mass Effect 2, however, has the majority of the female characters prancing around in either skin-tight body suits, epic v-necks, or next to nothing. Yeah I had a good laugh when you're wearing full armor complete with oxygen helmet and Miranda's out of proportion body is still squeezing into that flimsy spandex with a little rebreather mask. I mean come on, you could at least be a little discrete with the fan-service. My point is I find it unfortunate that such a popular game and sequel to a great game could be so misogynist. It really degraded my game experience.
The point about religions getting so excited about sex is that 3000 years ago societies depended on population - their human capital - for their economic and military strength. Therefore the goal was to have as many people as possible. Not exactly the same as having as many babies as possible - infant mortality was high. Sex had to be within marriage, which meant a publicly known monogamous relationship, so that there was a reliable determination of paternity to identify which adults could be imposed upon to raise the child.
Thus, male homosexuality was considered anti-social, as it was an abrogation of a man's duty to the community to produce offspring. (Female homosexuality didn't matter as long as the woman still wanted children.)
There's nothing wrong with viewing sex as something spiritual, for those that choose to view it that way. But there is something very wrong with applying values that only made sense before there was reliable contraception, paternity testing, and prevention of sexual transmission of disease. Even worse, people will tout religious 'values' having no clue whatsoever what it is that they are actually 'valuing' or why. If a 'value' is something they've internalized and have no conscious understanding of, rational discussion is not possible.
Now, from the perspective of biology and evolutionary psychology, you can be very sure there are associations between sex and the brain's reward mechanisms.
I am SO disappointed in the lack of Leisure Suit Larry references in this thread! "Hey everyone, this weirdo wants a libbed, colored, rough-cut, plaid, peppermint condom!"
Imagine for a moment a world without hypothetical situations...
Seriously, when does a video game deal with *any* topic other than in a superficial way? What part of 'game' is confusing people?
SEX IS A REWARD! When you have spent a few years begging and sitting and rolling over for it, you'll understand.
Movies also suffer from this. You can kill graphically 80,000 people but god forbid there is some breasts, vaginas, penises or butts onscreen. Its a problem with media today not videogames.
A: Something about penetrating an uncanny valley?
"Why Do Videogames Struggle With Sex?"
Software development is about experience. Just look at the creative/development folks that build video games... nuff said.
(i.e. not that they don't get some, but they all act like kids).
This has to be the lamest /. topic ever.
I mean EVER. Who would ever waste their time even THINKING about video games and sex at the same time then thinking it would make a good article to post?
Then again I just posted about it.
Damn me !
Back to the video games.
Because they are programmed by nerds who struggle with sex.
I happen to agree with you, except I'm pretty sure the GTA series took plenty of criticism for the acts of violence depicted in it too. It wasn't a case of everyone being pretty much fine with the game, except for the "hot coffee" mod leaking out.
But ultimately? I think we collectively grasp somewhere deep in our subconscious the concept that violence is a practically inescapable part of interacting with others in daily life, even as little kids. While we don't want to condone or encourage it? We have a pretty good understanding that little Johnny is going to encounter some violence first-hand, by the time he's in grade-school. There has always been the "school bully" who threatens to beat someone up over their lunch money, or the kids who decide to "meet in the parking lot after school" to settle some argument with their fists. On the other hand? Sex is something we really have been able to keep a lid on with kids. Children don't even have the hormones flowing yet in their bodies to really "get" the appeal of it. And if you expect to keep your own sexual relations private matters, it's just easier and better for you if you don't have a kid who is all "enlightened" on exactly what you've got going on at night, since kids LOVE to tell everyone else about whatever they know.
So in that sense? Sure, there are valid reasons why we're more ok with kids playing a violent video game than a sex-laden one.
Video games are primarily aimed at kids whether they're rated mature or not. The publishers and developers are more concerned about profits and selling to as many people as possible and that means not doing something that will stop parents from buying games for their teenage sons.
1) Anytime a video game even casually mentions sexuality, it has to spend the rest of it's viable life avoiding getting banned.
He mentions Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee, but fails to point out that it required a fanpatch to use, (as in, was NOT available in the game as it was released), and still got the game banned. I seem to remember a scandal with someone prominent resigning...
Is there any real incentive to deal with sex in any way more then saucy implication?, no, because you risk getting banned... like another game he mentions, Mass Effect, it's brief, non-visible sex-scene, equivalent to what you might normally find in a movie, caused mass hysteria about what it was doing to our children.
2) Half of the guys in fighting games are shirtless. Shirts don't get much skimpier then not actually wearing one. Most male characters are just as out-of-proportion with testosterone poisonening. Of course, female characters are typically lighter then male characters, which means, guess what?, LESS ARMOUR.
3) Guess what happened when Fallout 3 had powered armour that covered up the feminine physique? WOMEN PROTESTED. The best explanation I've heard of is who would woman want to play?, sexy-asskicking-adventure-girl? or a frumpy librarian?
Yeah, it's Lara Croft.
WoW sometimes gave female characters the option of dressing up sexily. For the approriate levels, they were far more common then their rarity should have provided. Women were actually looking for the mail bikinis.
4) While no one can doubt that some games have taken the jiggle factor WAY TOO FAR, unlike TV and movies, it doesn't actually require anyone to get breast enlargement. All of those big-breasted bimboes running around in movies?, yeah, they've actually had surgery to get that way. Video Games don't. And with all the big-breasted women running around in tv and movies and comic books and billboards, you can't single out video games as the one cause to rule them all.
5) While Dragon Age and Mass Effect might break a relationship with one wrong dialog choice, AT LEAST THEY ARE TRYING. Modeling a relationship is a very complex thing, (many, many games have been created for that sole purpose). Sure it needs to mature, but how many games actually give you romantic choices based on your in-game interactions? Not that many. If we villainize the ones who make the attempt, then it will never get better.
They are a niche, but Japan treats them really fricking seriously. (There was a rare scandal recently when even these sexually jaded japanese found some train rape game a bit too much to bear, but rape is a common theme in their sex anime and games.)
Japanese "eroge"and western "dating sims" are all about serious sex and little else. You just won't see them on the shelves in the USA and they are probably the first you even hear of them on /., and also are serious enough that you won't see me posting while logged in. Furthermore, there are hello kitty vibrators, xboxes that were sold with sexy fullsize pillows protraying anime characters, and the whole infatuation that japan has with [more] shamelessly exploiting women thru the dressup/cosplay fetish in their non-game adverts, magazines, coffee shops, autoshows (cat girls)/ things.
Here is a google link for a few Wikipedia articles on Dating sims
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=opera&hs=9M3&rls=en&q=japanese+sex+simulators&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
Newgrounds has a few, and most others you can get on the chan boards. In our Western defense, I'll say I did see American made dating sims with actors and the same multiple choice scoring back in 1995.
L R L R L L UP DN L1 R2 L2 R1 X X X doesn't do it for me.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
"Why do videogames still treat sex in such a two dimensional way? Why do they snigger at it, or treat it as a reward? Den Of Geek has been taking a look."
I always figured it was some combination of games being made by our inner adolescent, marketed to the outer ones, and getting banned whenever they take sex seriously.
Any computer software is an extension of its developers. The programmers either think of sex that way, or think that representing it that way will appeal to the audience.
The article is silly though. The author keeps complaining that sex is a deep and meaningful connection between two human beings. Well, if you are playing a single player game, there is no other person to connect with. People do seem happy with the sex in multiplayer games, like Second Life, though.
Try a Japanese dating sim some time. They are generally role playing games about relationships, family, and sex. Lots of sex. Graphic sex. Sex in every possible variation and combination. And they are marketed to teenagers, who are interested in learning about, you guessed it, sex. What a concept.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
If it's anything like the other interfaces of Slashdot, half of them are broken and the other half aren't working*.
* yes, 100%
As long as television shows like Friends, Everyone Loathes Raymond The Simpsons and countless other modern TV shows continue to present the man of the household as a clumsy childlike idiot with a very freudian relationship with their wives, frequently 'begging' for sex in some kind of way, then we're going to continue to have fucked up impressions of it.
and yes, some people do get some of their mannerisms and behaviour from television.
Stop and take a look at society, it's not just games which can't handle sex very well, most of society can't.
we don't know your gender and we don't know the gender of C'Thul'Hu, yet I still think that anyone who *could* "octopus" you in any way imaginable is just not right... All the sushi bars I've been in are stocked with calimari that wiggles on it's way down, and they even have a dish/fetish where you swallow a live un-beacked octopus that meets an untimely death no-doubt clinging to your intestinal walls praying it would return to planet-Earth as a parasitic intestinal worm that you ingest from a river while you were lost and thirsty in a nature hike.
Seriously, being "octopussed" is depicted in japanese art to women/geisha (gays-huh?) so maybe you should come out of the closet on your attraction to a creature with 8 tentacles where should be tendons and shoulders to the body of a man? All octopuddies look like Creationism having it's revenge.
Spot on, if you actually go and read a bunch of religious texts you'll see that the basic rules make a fair amount of sense in this context. Including for example the "Don't work your ass of every single day, you need a day to rest every few days or you'll kill yourself" one.
When a society is starting out, and the people in charge are simply there because of them being the smart people (teacher and/or healer being tribal leader) and there's no police force, army or judiciary, and you haven't invented chemistry and physics yet so your understanding of the planet is limited to observation on a human scale then keeping the population in check needs a different system.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
It's interesting the kinds of interactions that take place in a virtual game environment like the World of Warcraft, where things can progress without the constraints of consequences. When the death, money and biology are fake, people tend, I think, to be more violent, more generous and, yes, more sexual.
If Blizzard actually took pains to represent human sexual interaction with any degree of visual realism, people would probably never leave their homes.
I have huge issues with the way women are portrayed personality-wise in all relevant media. However, compared to books, television, and common societal views, games are far from the most serious offender. There's a good number of strong female characters in video games who can kick ass just as well as, if not better than, the male characters. Furthermore, romance and childrearing are generally not the top priorities of these women. Sex objects or not, these things alone set them above the majority of female characters in all media.
On the other side of things, as a lesbian, I'm pretty okay with the way video games handle sex and sexuality. Sex sells, after all, and games are supposed to be fun. As an adolescent, I wouldn't have enjoyed Sudeki half as much if I hadn't been so enthralled with watching Buki's ass as she ran. Now, as a marginally more mature adult, the modded addition of large breasts and sexier clothing to TES4 makes an already awesome game even more entertaining. It would be a great game no matter what the women looked like, but the 10-15% fun factor added by sex appeal really makes a difference.
I would love it if media would stop portraying all women as stereotypes who are vulnerable deep down and in need of a man to protect them, obsessed with romance and fashion and cute things. But please don't take away our sexy ladies. The sexy ladies make awesome things even more awesome, and lame things somewhat tolerable.
"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in another sense."