Sex and Nudity in Video Games

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Since this has come up in teh BioWare message boards for Dragon Age many times, I wondered what you guys and gals thought of it. Do sex and nudity have a place in non-sex-based games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or Baldur's Gate?

 

Well everyone these days seems to think violence is acceptable but sex is not. Janet Jackson shows half a nipple on TV and the country goes haywire. Meanwhile people are dying everywhere on the news and no one bats an eyelid. I really struggle to see why sex is such a taboo subject when it is the most important thing for propagating a species, and indeed, is the main thing that distinguishes life from non-life. It's like censoring eating and breathing.

Anyway, back on topic - No, I don't have an issue with sex and nudity in the aforementioned games.

 

Sex is supposed to be a very personal experience, and a great many (even non religious) people would question the unnecessary inclusion of it anywhere.

Violence, on the other hand, is a major component of these games, sometimes the point exactly. Society has become accustomed to it, be it in movies, sports like boxing and MMA, or video games...

You can still play Wasteland without going to the three legged hooker. You can't do much in the game without shooting anyone. That's basically the difference...

 

Well, the problem is that sex (in the romantic sense of the word) requires more intelligence than violence. While hack & slash games are a dime-a-dozen, there are hardly any games that can deal with sex or romantic themes in a tasteful and intelligent manner. The adult and romantic themes added a lot to BG2 and were fairly well done, even though the sexual aspects were downplayed to some extent. The mods that add romance to the BG games mostly come off like poorly written romance novels. I'm not really sure if some game designers have the talent to deal with those kinds of themes.

 

It's hardly role playing if there isn't sex (no pun intended). How can have an immersing experience when you completely block out the most (biologically speaking) important aspect of life. I mean really, in our collective lives are we more likely to have sex with another human being or kill another human being?

Sex shouldn't be the focus of the game by any means and I should be able to get through the game without having to deal with it, but come on, it makes up a huge part of human psychology, it has its place in non-erotic video games.

 

Wait, you're not supposed to do both?

 

I concur with Tassadar and Ilmater's Suffering (not quite so much with martaug ). The lack of sexual themes in some games when they are so prevalent in normal life is rather striking. How many days go past when you don't come into contact with something designed to be provocative? And yet the inclusion of such things into games is viewed very dimly indeed. Seems to me to be a bit of a double standard.

@Chandos: That may be so, but the presence of such themes in everyday life continues unabated. A more forceful point is that denying game designers access to write about such subjects means that we also exclude ones done very well. Yes, some writers may do it badly, but some may do it very well indeed. We accept that some games are better than others, so why not let this be factored into our opinion of a game?

As an example, compare the roleplaying of a game like BG or Planescape with that of Diablo. Most people would agree that the former games were done well, while 'roleplaying' is not a word that jumps to mind when describing the Diablo-experience. Good writing always requires intelligence, regardless of subject matter.

I'm sure they would. However, not everyone views sex in the same way- I sincerely doubt prostitutes see it as a very personal experience. So why not include such subjects in the game for those who don't have a problem with them? Obviously, as a non-sex focussed game, indulging in these features should not be necessary so those who don't like them should not have to experience them if they don't want to.

 

Ok, two things. One, on the issue of sex vs. violence, sex was far less frequent of a topic in the timeperiod most of these games were written in (or would be in the setting for games like Fallout). Yes, sex was an important part, but for the most part it was reserved until you were married and more-or-less settled down. Specifically, the lack of ready access to contraceptives suggested that sex on a long, arduous adventure may be quite risky. On the other hand, there's a huge difference between a non-sexual romance and a sexual one, and both certainly have a place in story telling.

Item two is for nudity specifically. While sex may be an important story telling tool, nudity is not required. Compare the BG2 romances, in which you could have sex, with the ME romances, in which there was (could be?) nudity. Did ME gain significantly from the inclusion of nudity? Many argue it lost something because of it. This is actually comparable to violence in the inclusion of gore. How much gore is ok and how much is too much? There are plenty of games out there where there is no gore whatsoever, and many of them are quite good, but then I also loved Fallout 2, which had gore galore.

 

I find that sex and nudity in a video game generall detracts from the game. Too often it's just gratuitous sex or nudity stuck in to attract the teenage boys into playing the game for a quick peek (how anyone could be excited about computer generated T&A is beyond me).

I have only seen a very few games where sex was handled well (usually without showing anything graphic). I have yet to find a game where nudity was anything but gratuitous.

I'm certainly not a prude when it comes to sex and nudity (I've been in my share of questionable establishments ... and rather enjoyed myself). I just don't like when it feels forced in any form of entertainment just to boost sales. That goes for movies as well.

 

Should it be mandatory? Of course not. Should you be restricted from doing it? Equally no. Just stick a great big M on the bottom corner of the box and you're good to go.

 

I pretty much agree with what T2 said. Nudity is rarely done with class in games and usually comes across as crude and distracting. However handling sex without showing anything graphic can be a part of the gameplay, I mean fallout 2 would hardly feel the same without the prostitutes to show out the depravity of the post-nuclear world. The romances in BG2 were also done with class.

I actually have not played The Witcher or Mass Effect so I don't know how the explicit nudity in those games fits into the gameplay but somehow I doubt they fit overly well.

 

I'm not sure what you are saying here. It could be that your premise is wrong, if you are saying what I think you are (but you may be saying something different). If you are saying that sex and/or romance were not important topics in the Middle Ages, then I suggest you actually read some of the texts written in that time, instead of the caricature that Hollywood and the game designers have created of the MA. If you have not looked at the texts, I can suggest a few starting points:

_The Canterbury Tales_, by Chaucer - sexual themes abound. Also look at the Arthurian Legends, (Marie de France or De Troyes), which inform much of today's fantasy adventure, and are loaded with sexual and romantic themes. In the Arthurian Legends written in the Middle Ages, sex and romantic themes drive the plots of many of the tales. Adultery is a major theme of the High Middle Ages, and a lot of the literature which came out of the aristocratic courts of western and southern France (The Aquitaine), dealt with the problems and joys of "romance," adulterous or otherwise. The aristocratic knights of the MA were often inspired to combat, battles and tournaments (violence) by their "courtly ladies" - even if they were married to someone else at the time.

If you really want to go for the gusto, take a look at _The Decameron_ by Boccaccio. IMO, he verges on the Renassaince, but he is a contemporary of Chaucer's and often thought of as a medieval writer.

 

I find most of the sex and nudity in modern games to be gratuitous and unnecessary. So I don't play them. If producers want to include such stuff in their product, I don't think the government should forbid that inclusion, even though I personally think it's ridiculous and vile.

What I DO want the government to do is limit the sales of such material to adults. Children (and I'm thinking here of boys aged 10-17) who wish to play these games should not be able to attain them at will -- the government should make it mandatory for parents to have access to suficient information before the game is purchased. If a parent is OK with their kid playing the game, knowing full well what is featured in the game, then fine. If a parent would rather their child not be exposed to graphic material (be it nudity or violence) then the labelling should be clear enough that the parent can make an informed decision.

Of course this assumes parents are paying attention to what their kids are doing, which sadly is not always the case.

 

Umm, like there is now? All games are labelled nowadays especially the more explicit ones. All they serve to do is make the kiddies wnat them even more. Also, a kid that will get screwed up by a videogame, movie or music will get screwed up by something else even if those three things are removed.

 

In short no.

 

I don't see why sex or nudity should be more shocking than death and mutilation.

However if a designer cannot handle the theme discretly and maturely (with either sex or violence!) it should be completely optional and minimal if it is too challenging for the designers to avoid TEE HEE BOOBS! attitude that tends to be prominant in the gaming industry.

I do not object to either in my game as long as it is handled WELL.

And not combined

 

Aldeth, I was asking more in terms of style and tasefulness than legislation.

Chandos, what I meant is that, in a world where most people were illiterate and there were no 50 ft billboards with giant women in bikinis and lingerie, nor were there TV programs which frequently showed people necking and worse, the society was not nearly as saturated with sex as ours is today. To put it simply, sex didn't sell everything back then. Sure, the aristocracy may have enjoyed randy humor in literature, and I'm not about to assume that similar, if more crude, humor wasn't present in the lower classes, but sex didn't sell new carts, or food, or anything other than an occasional randy book.

 

That's because they were too busy actually having sex. People started having sex at younger age than they do now. But you see, in order to sell sex you have to show people what they are MISSING. One of the main reasons why sex is so restriced these days is because it is an excellent way of controlling people, or getting them to do what one wants.

I still suggest you look at one or two of the books I mentioned. It may help.

 

I've read them, but saying that means sex was rampant as a societal feature is like saying Fallout 2 indicates that violence and murder is an every-day occurance in today's society. Yes, people had sex at younger ages, but it was much more private. The vast majority of people didn't talk much or at all about their sex lives, and prostitutes didn't sell themselves on street corners. Remember, this was a culture where adultry was still a capital offense in many locations.

And are you actually saying that the opression of sex in society and then it's outlet in culture is all a vast conspiracy to control the public?

 

That indie-ish program where you stroke a bunny (using the techniques that are applicable to clitoral stimulation) comes to mind.

I suspect this has more to do with the restrictions on the availability of 'adult' games than an intrinsic lack of usability in, well, explicit sex. I'm fairly confident that there could be, say, the pornographic equivalent of a dungeon crawl. By which I don't mean naked chicks fornicating monsters to death, but rather something that boils down 'interactive adult entertainment' in the same way that Diablo distilled the RPG.

We haven't seen any such genre emerge (or if we have, I've never heard of it) probably because the overwhelming majority of gaming/interactive entertainment companies won't touch explicit sex with a ten foot pole, let alone make it an integral, core component of gameplay.