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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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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
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.
Orgasm's the reward - offspring are the dirty trick.
Balance will be restored to Sex and Video Games with the upcoming release of Duke Nukem Forever.
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 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.
No "kenshin", games comics and animation are seen as childish in Japan too, perhaps even more so. They're just practical about the market for adults doing childish things, and not so repressed about sex as to panic about children being exposed to risque content. But "mature" adults don't do anything "for fun" - you might admit to having a hobby, but only because there's a safe pretense that a hobby can be for self-improvement.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That's illegal in most states.
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.
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.
Seriously, when does a video game deal with *any* topic other than in a superficial way? What part of 'game' is confusing people?