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.
maniulo
If your game has a serious story (ala Heavy Rain etc), you need to have serious nudity in it, or none at all. I haven’t played HR but of course I’ve seen “that scene” and I think they pulled it off well. In the rest of the game, women are normally dressed and proportioned. HOWEVER, if the story of the game is just a stupid excuse to have some random strange people kick each other in the face and shoot fireballs from their hands (ala Street Fighter), why not use non-serious nudity as well? It’s not like Chun-Li’s outfit can ruin the immersion of Street Fighter for me. I am a man, I like looking at beautiful women, and I like looking at crudely-drawn and pixely beautiful women more than looking at crudely-drawn and pixely non-beautiful women. Is that so odd?
(I’m 27, by the way. Just letting you know ;] )
bunimomike
Yes, but there’s doing things tastefully then there’s justifying softcore porn like Dead or Alive. :-)
maniulo
Well yes, but that (or Larry, and there are probably more) are just games about sex, it’s not like they thought “Well we’re really proud of this great and well-balanced EA-sports-worthy beach volleyball game we made, now let’s add hundreds of slow-motion bouncing titties to make it sell better, even though it might annoy a few feminists who want to buy this game for the wonderful beach volleyball simulation”.
bunimomike
Agreed. The sooner people (and the developers) are honest enough to admit to this being the top-shelf equivalent of Club, Penthouse, Playboy, the better.
1) Game for titillation purposes? Be honest. Don’t dress it up as anything else.
2) “Proper” game with sex scene(s). Do them tastefully and don’t include them for the hell of it.
If we stick with that we’d be on a winner.
PoorPaddy89
I wrote an essay for the media part of my film course about Lara Croft, and there’s a huge amount of research that has been done on this subject. Interestingly, some studies indicate that playing as a woman can be part of a desire for men to crossdress and such.
I also read that the idea that ‘sex-sells’ is becoming less true, seeing as you see tits and ass and a growing amount of cock (pun not intended) everywhere, and people are becoming more and more desensitised to it. Also the ideas behind selling sex are all bullshit; if you wear Lynx, you are not going to immediately shag forty random ladies at the bar.
Unless you wear Old Spice.
DJ-Katy
I am absolutely fucking SICK of *everything* being over-sexualized, media is becoming worse and worse for it every day.
Advertising. TV. Movies. Video games. Magazines. Music. Everything is becoming rapidly very overtly sexual and it is totally unavoidable, actually to the point of being depressing. Why do we need to be bombarded constantly with sex? Little girls are dancing provocatively in music videos, all the lyrics have sexual metaphors or unnecessary moaning, you can’t turn on the radio or walk down the street past clothes advertising billboards without being hammered with it.
I think this is a growing problem in general and it certainly doesn’t send a good message either to young people or about the nature of our society in general. Of course, we should be liberal and be able to discuss sex openly, but I don’t like the way it is rammed down my throat every day. At all.
cc_star
Perfectly said.
bunimomike
Nicely put, Katy. Very much a time and a place to discuss sex, play games for adults, play adult games(!), keep children safe from certain aspects of society until they’re old enough to deal with things maturely and responsibly.
TSBonyman
The rudest game i ever saw was macfoxes.. modern games don’t come close..
Atlendor
Must have been something in the air yesterday:
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/9-games-that-had-sex-needlessly-shoehorned-into-them-/a-20100809145138383080#comment_content
warp10ck
Well the whole Mass Effect controversy in the States was probably the best PR that Bioware could get. The game sold pretty well and its a damn good game too.