A short shallow overview of sex in videogames

Given the recent spread of the God of War II sex mini-game video and the probability that you’re reading this after however way you managed to celebrate Valentines, now seems to be a good time to try to see how sex is included in our favorite pastime: videogames.

This article will look at the many ways game developers, and sometimes even players, translate/insert all things pheromone/hormone-induced into pixels seen on our monitors. We’ll try to see why it’s there and why gags like “hot coffee” are an inevitability.

If you’re a puritanical prude, now would be a nice time to skip over this article. That aside, on to the big question: Why, oh why is there so much sex in videogames?

Get the rest of the article after the Jump!

Given the recent spread of the God of War II sex mini-game video and the probability that you’re reading this after however way you managed to celebrate Valentines, now seems to be a good time to try to see how sex is included in our favorite pastime: videogames.

This article will look at the many ways game developers, and sometimes even players, translate/insert all things pheromone/hormone-induced into pixels seen on our monitors. We’ll try to see why it’s there and why gags like “hot coffee” are an inevitability.

If you’re a puritanical prude, now would be a nice time to skip over this article. That aside, on to the big question: Why, oh why is there so much sex in videogames?

Sex sells
1UP’s feature on the secret history of sex in videogames describes Lara Croft’s assets as “rivals in a zeppelin race: enormous, triangular, reality defying”; combine those two big reasons with Lara’s British accent, martini glass figure, and her take no bull attitude, and you’ve got the start of the era of boob in video games.

Yeah, “cheesecake” designed to lure in pubescent teenage boys has had various 2d prototypes in videogames before, but Lara really launched the era.

After Lara, tiny bits of sexual tension and attraction found their way into almost every videogame and videogames keep having a story/excuse that would allow for the presence of scenes that will fire off hormones. Even Metal Gear Solid wasn’t safe. What? You don’t remember clothed yet still sexy Meryl? Perhaps developers started taking notice of the fact that most of their audience is of a demographic that appreciates such forms of entertainment.

The art of cheesecake was eventually perfected in Dead or Alive, and since then images in videogames have been accepted as reasonable excuses for young males to waste tissue paper.

Just so that we won’t be total pig-heads here, we’re also going to note that game developers, especially the Japanese, also recognize the power of hormones over females, and have thus done their best to make the males in their videogames as androgynous, as attractive or as emo manly as they can.

Do you really want us to do a door-to-door survey of female otakus/gamers and see how many posters of Leon, Cloud, Sephiroth, Link, Vincent Valentine, and Dante they’ve got up on their walls?

Sex makes sense
Some would argue that the inclusion of sexual themes/elements and even mini-games in certain games help add to the credibility of the fictional world that the game is set, and thus assist in immersing the player deeper into the game.

Would Grand Theft Auto, a game heavy in crime, illegal activity, and all things mafiosi be as fun or as believable if there weren’t any prostitutes in the game? Would PC RPG Fallout 2 feel as free, or as open-ended, if you weren’t able to play a prostitute, gain perks like Kama Sutra Master, sleep with a mob boss’ drugged-up daughter, or learn the opportune way to assassinate said mob boss by sleeping with his wife?

A whole lot of adult-oriented, mature-themed video games and videogame worlds just wouldn’t make sense if all things sexual was magically removed from the world.

Even the beloved and blocky Final Fantasy VII had a sequence in it rife with sexuality. Remember Don Corneo? You probably don’t. Any sane person would erase the image of a fat, pixelized, polygonal, crime-lord humping air. We’re willing to bet though, that you all fully remember the fact that in that same FFVII story-arc, Aeris was imprisoned in a dungeon filled with BDSM-related hardware.

Sex is funny
If the classic(er, not-so-classic) coming of age movie, “American Pie” is to be used as an example, then we think that it is safe to say that sex makes for a very entertaining and comedic topic.

Some like Leisure Suit Larry do it well. The console version of the classic “teenage giggle” franchise is a nice mix of sex-themed mini-games and comedy, and as gutter minded as it is at times, it’s a nice example that sex and laughs make for a good videogame.

Others though, aren’t really that good. The Guy Game is an example of what happens when “Girls Gone Wild” and quiz/party games that only make sense when drunk, meet one night in a motel and forget to use prophylactics. Maybe when you’re drunk, filled with cabbage and cheese, and high on burnt illegal plant life, the game will be better, maybe.

We don’t have the time to do a very detailed research, but most would agree that Custer’s Revenge is the granddaddy when it comes to sex in console videogames. From the crude pixels and the silliness involved, it’s probably safe to say that the sex in the game was just for gags. The developers were probably under the influence or were just looking to have a few laughs.

Custer’s Revenge is funny up to a certain point, but eventually (depending on your sense of taste) it gets old. But still, whenever you look at something like the controversial “hot coffee”, consider that perhaps the developers involved probably just did it for kicks or whatnot.

Anyhow, as long as television programming like ‘The Man Show” manages to attract an audience, sex will always be used as a comedic hook in many video games.

Sex is fun
Getting down and dirty with the opposite sex is a matter of communication. And as long as a medium allows folks of whatever sexual orientation to communicate with each other, they will eventually find ways to use said medium as an avenue for sexual exploration.

Hey, aside from being a primal drive, it’s fun. And a for a lot of folks, that’s the type of fun that they’re specifically looking for. Some folks just plainly prefer (or will, at the least, experiment with) getting off in virtual worlds – be it in present day Azeroth or in the ancient message boards of old school BBS systems.

People enjoy it, and when opportunity allows, they’ll even try to profit from it. We don’t want to go into details about it since it’s been talked to death already but we just can’t pass this opportunity to make note of two things. Firstly, people actually enjoyed the exploitation/geek-out-fest that was World of Whorecraft. Secondly, what was Anshe Chung again before she became a multi-millionaire land baroness/Second Life poster child? See? It’s all normal, even the rich folks are into it.

Now that console games are going online and friends lists, instant messaging, headsets, and cameras are now being implemented, we now wonder what Xbox Live will look like in a few years’ time.

Sex for **ck’s sex’s sake
Wikipedia defines pornography as the explicit representation of the human body or sexual activity with the goal of sexual arousal. Every medium of expression known to man has been used for pornography, from handwriting, to sculpture, to music, and video. Since games (in this case, videogames) are a medium of entertainment, why should it be safe from porn?

The answer of course is because the videogame is a medium that is socially seen as something that is targeted to children. We’ll leave this topic at this point for fear of attracting debates overratings systems, and the effectiveness of the ESRB.

The fact is that people will continue making pornographic videogames because there’s a demand. Just look at Japan, it’s had videogame hentai for years now, they’re even making porn (try Googling up Hizashi no Nakano) for the DS. In fact, thanks to importers and the Internet it’s so prominent that it seems like a pubescent rite of passage.

Having said all of these, we think it’s safe to say that sex in videogames is a given, an inevitable factor. Sex is found in videogames because it helps sell the games, because it’s fun – and can be funny – because people get bored or drunk and want to do something stupid, and because thousands upon thousands of hormone-powered adolescents need something to help them get through the day.

Perhaps social acceptance is all just a mater of degree – how blatantly sexual things are, and propriety – making sure people who are deemed by society to be too young to be exposed to it…aren’t.