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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.
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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
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.....
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
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/
...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
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.
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!
Probably for the same reasons that video-gamers struggle with sex. It has something to do with the intersection of infrequency and awkwardness.
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.
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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.
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!
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.
No, most of the guys at my video games company are married and the rest have long term girlfriends. That means that we aren't getting any but know very well what we are missing out on. Since game development is considered a good career where I am, the wives and girlfriends of our team tend to be quite comely, but to a woman they all work 9-6 office jobs. Holding a beautiful, slender, naked women against your body every single night but only getting to enjoy her on Saturday and once on Sunday morning because at other times she is too tired will drive you far more insane and desperate than virginity ever could.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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/
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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.
For years, the average gamer has been in his/her 30s. Your mindset that "it's mostly for kids" is part of the problem being discussed. It's not a new trend either--many of the very earliest games were mostly for adults.
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.
Maybe it is because gamers for the most part are teenagers?
Maybe it is because that is widely believed despite being completely counter to reality. According to the ESA, the average age of videogame players is 34 and only 20% are under 18.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
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 situation in which, as evidenced by the demographics, is where many video gamers find themselves. Which also lends credibility to the choice of dev's to have the "fanservice" girls in the game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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