Sex in videogames: It's time to grow up

At a time when we’re told by the industry that the average gamers are pushing 30 rather than 13 how is it that a pair of bare naked breasts and the thought of hardcore sex got more people riled up about Grand Theft Auto than the fact that is one of the most reprehensively violent games out there ? Let me explore the contradictions in gamer’s views on sex and violence.

Does anyone in the room remember Soldier of Fortune ? If not, allow me to refresh your memory : It was a series of first-person shooters of which the main selling point was that it quite realistically portrayed how the human body reacts to be shot.

The GHOUL system of body dismemberment had 26 zones in the original game and 36 in the sequel which portrayed in rather graphic detail all the different ways which one can take the human body apart using firearms. That was it - that was essentially what captivated the gaming world at the time : The fact that you could walk up to an opponent with a shotgun and take their head clean off.

Though arguments can be made about this creating a more realistic atmosphere essentially the fascination that was rampant at the time was in getting a couple of guys around a monitor and saying "Hey, watch this !" I didn’t think at the time that it advanced the way in which we play or experience videogames, but at the same time I didn’t buy the moralistic furore and cries that accompanied the game in more mainstream circles.

Fast forward to 2006 and we send young Mr. Wright off to the Game Developer Conference and he comes back wide eyed, jittery and talking about a game called "VirtuallyJenna". Who is this Jenna, I thought to myself, and what makes her so virtuous ? What genre is this game in ? "Umm, it’s what is known as a ’Poke the Doll’ game, Aaron." You what ? "Jenna [Jameson] is an adult movie star, and the game is about... err... poking her."

I had a sinking feeling at this point that my priest was going to get something good at confession this week and did some research (quiet down the back). "Poke the Doll" is a good way of putting it alright - VirtuallyJenna is a sex game, and the poking is done with an assortment of sex toys and a virtual male err, doll, for want of a better description.

VirtuallyJenna is, essentially, the Soldier of Fortune of sex games. In Soldier of Fortune you have the hardcore interactive bodily harm, and in VirtuallyJenna you have the hardcore interactive pornography. A difference between them is that I didn’t bat much of an eyelid at SoF, and passed it off as a fad, but, at first, I became quite morally outraged at the idea of VirtuallyJenna.

Most videogames have taken a quite tongue-in-cheek attitude towards sexual content where they include it, from Leisure Suite Larry to the great whipping boy Grand Theft Auto ; where even the "Hardcore Hot Coffee mod" featured a chap with his trousers on. But VirtuallyJenna takes a real stab at it, and pulls it off, which is what separates it from the more innocent approach of other games.

Morally speaking having sex with another consenting adult is a lot less ambiguous than killing somebody. Yet in the gaming community sex games are viewed in a far more ambiguous, even shady, light than violent games. Whereas the consensus with violent games is that they’re alright, there is no such consensus where sex in videogames is concerned.

Most of us will jump up and say that Soldier of Fortune and Grand Theft Auto are fine and do no harm, "they’re only a bit of fun", but then nervously shuffle our feet when presented with a sex game. Even if we don’t necessarily have a problem with it per se, we probably wouldn’t buy it, or perhaps even mainstream games with it included (say, GTA with a sex mini-game as graphic as VirtuallyJenna, rather than the more comical attempt which drew so much fire.)

Much of the problem in the past has stemmed from the fact that sex games have been junk, ala Lulu 3D ; but the funny fact is that most of the outrage which divided even parts of the gaming community in the summer of 2005 came when an exceptionally violent game, with the support of many for the inclusion of this violence, turned out to have a pair of bare breasts in it.

I recall the lawsuit being filed by a woman who had bought her grandson GTA3, but was appalled to find out that it apparently had hidden sexual content in it. Every hack in the known universe, myself included, put in jokes along the lines of "I don’t mind exposing my grandson to murdering prostitutes, but God Have Mercy if they take their clothes off." That may be the prudish attitude of one person, but from my own personal experience and from showing VirtuallyJenna to otherwise open-minded gamers I know that where we wouldn’t blink an eyelid at violence, we do at the very least make a double take on sex.

After thinking it through I don’t actually have a problem with VirtuallyJenna by itself. I would, however, have a problem if its sort of content were to make its way to mainstream games - and why shouldn’t it do that ? The reason the Hot Coffeegate scandal didn’t make waves in the UK, in a legislative sense at least, is because the game had the highest possible rating of 18, and so adding sex into the mix doesn’t make a difference. So how about if the next GTA-alike, or Soldier of Fortune, has a good bit of virtual pornography thrown in ? I don’t think I’d go for it, and I don’t know many who would. Violence is fine, but no sex thankyouverymuch.

We need to take a step back and have a serious think about this. The industry totems like to tell us that the average gamer is somewhere closer to 30 than 13, so there’s no issue in my mind of corrupting the minds of children. And heck, even if they do as they currently do and get their hands on the game before their time well, what do we prefer our kids doing first : Making love or making war ?

Games like VirtuallyJenna are bringing the idea of credible pornography to videogames just as games like Soldier of Fortune brought us from the arcade violence of Doom, which was called ultra-violent in its day let us not forget, to realistic, life-like violence. No longer can we be saved from the questions this raise by scoffing at simplistic and stupid games that tote their accurate boob physics and not much else as their raison d’être.

And also we have to consider, what about women ? If you thought figuring out how to make "normal" videogames that appeal to both sexes was difficult...

Personally I’m of the opinion that the industry is not yet mature enough to deal with sex in any serious way, shape or form. I think this is regrettable, as for one this will leave us with only the rather stereotypical Lula’s and Larry’s of this world to play with, and secondly because it says a lot about us in that we can deal with severed limbs, flame throwers and sawn-off shotguns but not sex.

It’s nice to see sex at the GDC, but in the end it is more a side-freak show that everyone goes along to so that we can get a few giggles, suggestive screenshots and half baked "Maybe in the future..." ideas from journalists and mainstream industry figures who really know better. In a mature world where we claim to be able to handle ultra-violent videogames in a grown-up manner we should too be able to talk about sex in videogames without batting an eyelid. Otherwise we look like a bunch of 16 year old geeks at heart who have never been kissed and who titter at the very idea. Heck, maybe we are.