I have no idea how I came up with today’s topic. I mean genuinely no idea at all. I was actually going to write about something completely different (which is coming next week now), but for some reason the issue of sex in gaming struck me; in particular how immature our industry treats it, and how the industry is treated by the rest of the world because of it.
That’s the big thing about sex, we don’t know how to treat it in games. Very few developers manage to deal with it in any kind of mature way, most people make the immediate leap to slightly creepy dating simulators. I do have to admit I’m guilty of this, my brain immediately jumps to games that you rarely see in bricks and mortar shops in the UK. Next on the list is the old Hot Coffee controversy. Tasteful games like Mass Effect are pretty much last on my personal list when it comes to sex.
Does that say something about me, or does it comment on a larger issue the industry is facing? I mean I’ve played Assassin’s Creed II recently and what I’ve seen of sex in the game so far is reasonably tame and always done tastefully. That’s my most recent experience of sex in gaming, yet it doesn’t spring immediately to mind. I haven’t even played many games that treat the subject distastefully, I never spent any time using the Hot Coffee mod or trying my luck in a dating sim. The closest I’ve ever come is messing about in The Sims, and that’s hardly a perversion.
Of course you have to consider that it’s not just games. Sure they do receive a lot of criticism, but so do other forms of media – films in particular. I’m not even talking about pornographic films, look at Transformers 2. Big block buster film, hugely over sexualised for no real reason. There was no need for the scene with Megan Fox on the bike or to have what felt like twenty minutes of her running in slow motion. They were just intended to sell the film on her sex appeal, but was there any actual need for it?
Was there any real need for the shower scene in the film adaptation of Tomb Raider or any of the thousands of examples throughout film? Not really, it just seems to be lazy studios attempting to use the lowest common denominator to sell the movie. It almost always feels cheap and tacked on and it does little to nothing to actually further the plot. The exact same can be said for games, television, magazines, newspapers and music. Media has become over sexualised simply to sell but it just makes the content look immature and slightly ridiculous in my opinion.
So will games ever overcome this stigma? Well, if other forms of media are anything to go by, probably not. Hopefully it’ll become less widespread, or we’ll at least have more games that attempt to treat it in a mature and serious way; using it to further the plot is always a good start. Maybe I’m wrong though, what do you think? Do most games treat sex in a fairly immature way? Is it just another tool to boost sales? Would content that treats it in a less simple manner improve the industry as a whole? Remember to keep it clean.
Tuffcub
phwoooooooooooooooaaarrrr!!!
Gamoc
I love you, Tuffcub.
gazzagb
There are millions of games that use sex or a female character as an appeal. Look at Tomb Raider. The game would be just as good if it were a male character, but having huge tits bouncing around is brilliant and does add an appeal to the game.
SmokeyPSD
I actually disagree with you on Tomb Raider. It’s the marketing that’s the problem. Not the game itself. Lara is a upper class, well respected, cultured and highly knowledgeable treasure hunter, her attractiveness is that of her personality in the game, much like Indiana.
It’s the marketing that’s the problem, randomly having her sprawled naked, or having her arms lifted up over her head with Duke Nukem holding her breasts, not classy at all.
bunimomike
I found the size of her breasts to be unrealistic and hilarious. Kinda like the same way that I want to point at Jordan (Katie Price) and laugh a lot.
I think they’ve reduced Lara’s assets, as of recent, which strikes me as a good thing. There’s already enough pressure in the media to look impossibly gorgeous.
cc_star
Gaming is very immature when it comes to characters, not just women.
They’re all big-titted eye candy, ridiculous really but I suppose its the same with macho lead male characters.
Uncharted2 had a good go at expanding on the female character and gave them a personality, but whilst core gaming audiences are young males then devs & pubs will release products with stereotypical women in them.
It probably a reflection on society through, like the way anyone who works on TV is generally good looking, even though the roles don’t require it (there are a few exceptions but these are getting fewer all the time)
John Malcolm
Yes, your comment about everyone on TV being good looking, regardless of the role requiring it, is a very good one. Would Heavy Rain have got such sales/publicity if Madison wasn’t such a looker (or took her clothes off, although in a more mature way)?
Unfortunately, we all (almost) DO like eye candy…!
Charmed_Fanatic
I like sex :D
No seriously … i like it in games if it is necessary
BIGAL-1992
I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’m starting to get bored of the usual big tits/bikine wearing only-policy/sexual behaviour of women in Video games. It’s just childish now.
shakengandulf
can i call you big gay al?
BIGAL-1992
No.
colossalblue
I think the way games handle sex and sexuality is very immature. Not just the tongue-in-cheek over the top campness of games like Bayonetta either. The sex in BioWare games often feels a little bit forced rather than a natural progression of the narrative and they’re probably the best at doing it (fnarr).
Ultimately, though, the way sex is portrayed in games is thousands of times more mature than the way the game-buying public react to it. Just surf around a few other gaming websites to see the lists of best boobs in video games, there’s a new one every couple of weeks. Couple that with the massive exposure (pun intended) that these games get via youtube videos, blogger comments, forum posts and mainstream media fury and you can see that adding a little flash of nipple to a game can get you a lot of valuable free marketing.
It comes to something when we can say TSA deals with the issue more maturely than most places. I mean… we’ve got /Tuffcub/ commenting on this stuff…
Tuffcub
*ahem* Obviously 99% of the upskirt shots and huge norks is pointless for me (and 15-20% of gamers across the globe). The only game I can think that was actually ‘sexy’ was Heavy Rain. I dont mean the shower scene, I refer to the nightclub dancing section. It was done tastefully and looked ‘real’ as opposed to that ESRB favourite, “jiggling bosoms”. The sexual elements of Heavy Rain felt a part of the story, rather than dropped in for cheap thrills like the terrible lesbian snogging in God Of War III.
The potrayal of men is just as bad though, find a non-buff male game character. Even when they are meant to be ‘realistic’ they are just riduculously proportioned – Resident Evil 5 I’m looking at you. The sexiest character I’ve seen recently has to be the new Max Payne. At least he looks real, he isnt overly muscled, he hasn’t got perfect blonde hair and he’s got a little beer gut. Id rather shag him than Ryu any day.
There, does that make up for the “Phwooar” comment boss?
aranalas
Infamous handles it really well. Trish is pretty ugly, Cole is… well kind of normal, I can imagine seeing him on the streets. Oh and zeke is … fat.
asoccer
Saw this on facebook (still 7:30am in America lol) and personally it just feels kinda pointless. But with Bigal is saying, I feel that being overly expressed in games more or less now.
CrawFail
Most of the games I’ve played that depict sex don’t do it (ooh err) well. Leisure Suit Larry games for example are a crime against entertainment and is just a sex game for the sake of being a sex game. I was a little confused about the sex scene in Mass Effect as I didn’t spend any real time with the lass I bonked, only talked to her about mission related stuff and treated her like I’d just found a bogey on one of my cigarettes. Their dialogue just before the dirty act was full of love and emotion which totally threw me.
Fahrenheit’s sex scene was also just thrown in for lols, I feel. The fact that they’d know each other for about 20 minutes and declare their love for one another makes it a bit loopy but add to that one of them was on the run from the FBI as well as being ice cold and stinking because he was DEAD(!!!!) makes it more batshit insane than your mate telling you there are pics of your mum naked online… and proceeding to Google them.
I very much doubt the inclusion of sex scenes into games is to boost sales as I’ve not really seen much coverage of those parts of the games in reviews or other media with exception to the Mass Effect 2 stupidness. My personal opinion is that devs put these scenes into their games to try and bring games to a level where film is at, to try and mature them up a bit and to try and give themselves a bit of integrity by showing that they can depict a guy shooting aliens heads off but at the same time is a nice gentle soul and the game is much more than a genocide simulator because the main character has feelings.
I also think we’re seeing a lot more of this in games because the tech allows it to happen with much more realism now, the difference between Nude Raider and Heavy Rain is a pretty big one, but the differences in their approach haven’t really changed. Nude Raider, although a hack, was there just because.. just like God of War’s sex mini games, like Heavy Rains INSANELY unnecessary sex scene (My son is going to be dead in 6 hours… but first….*bowchikkawowow*) are there just because not because they serve a purpose.
bunimomike
I can’t take your reply seriously. You have camel-toe!
CrawFail
I guess it does totally neuter the effect. I’m developing some censoring stickers you can place on your monitor over the offending Grav.
bunimomike
*laughs out loud* Credit given, avoiding all the utter shite you and I spout on here we were both simultaneously (and independently) replying with a serious reply. You make some damn fine points – like nipples through a tee shirt! :-P
Nah, really. There’s probably no need for 95% of the overly sexual nature in video gaming. I’d like to think that when the film industry was in its infancy, it was in the same situation. Whereas, now, we see possibly overtly sexual tones in only the blockbusters and sensationalist films which shows that a good portion of the industry has matured.
The games industry will follow suit. We just need to keep an eye on the Japanese as they’re as mad as a box of frogs!
CrawFail
We obviously both take our sex very seriously :) Not our sex.. but our sex.. you get me.
I hope games don’t start crowbarring sex into EVERY game like it is in films these days. Although sex games using Move and Kinect will add a whole new meaning to the word ‘waggle’.
bunimomike
We’re in an industry that is loaded with geeks and people who stay at home playing games. Ok, that’s more historical but it’s still very much there. You might find that developers are the last people on Earth to be coding a sensitive sex scene (or something similar) into a game.
Uncharted 2 handled emotions and relationships pretty damned well. Actually, better than some films and that’s saying something.
Developers are still getting to grips with avoiding mitten hands and decent lip sync. How the hell they’re supposed to portray feeling, touch, intimacy, is laughable at best, sadly.
God knows the sex scene in Dragon Age Origins was hilarious. They’d used some beautiful music over the top as my bloke got naked and did the nasty. Hilariously, his eyes rolled like he’d been drugged with rohypnol then sodomised by a sperm whale! It was so cringe-worthy I’d rather watch David Brent do “that dance” again, in The Office.
Less is certainly more when depicting the act in games. Simply implying, silhouetting, showing a glimpse of proceedings then tastefully cutting away. That would be fine right now. Especially as we’re still grappling with showing this degree of togetherness between characters on-screen.
Either that or do what that Sex Games disc did on the Amiga where you had to waggle the joystick like crazy so the animated girls fondled and jiggled each other’s breasts as quickly as possible! Quite the wrist-builder. Ha!
cc_star
You called?
Spence1115
I get why the sex scenes were there in Dragon Age, but yes, shittily done. Leilana singing first? Oh lord thats funny.
Porcupine_I
…he said sex *giggle*