Sex and Nudity in Video Games

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OK, does anyone actually pay attention to the ads for video games?

In the last 10 minutes here on SP, I have seen two 3D renderings of scantilly-clad women. (Not that I'm complaining - it's just not anything new.)

Let's face it - video games are full of sexual inuendo. So to stop beating around the, umm, bush , I really don't see why taking it a step further is a big deal, especially when, in that same game, blowing someone's head off with an uzi is no big deal.

 

Because there's an entire industry dedicated to propagating (and profiting from) the notion that sexuality (among other things, of course) is bad, m'kay.

See: ye olde televangelist.

 

They didn't have to, cause everyone knew where to find them.

As for your other statement - try to imagine a time before the American Puritanical movement. And before you start with Catholicism in the MA, who in both Chaucer and Boccaccio were among the greatest fornicators? Hint: look at the 4th tale in the Decameron.

You are right Splunge, but we are not speaking of GTA here; there is an strange absence of it in fantasy games. Could it be that there really is a "fear of sex" associated with D&D geeks? I, for one, have never believed that old, harsh, media 'stereotype." But maybe game designers buy into it....

 

AMaster:

I think there's some stuff in Japan, actually. Dating sims or something.

I would actually believe the intelligence arguement because, looking at the RPGs out, many of them do not reflect a great deal of intellignece in anything other than number-crunching. Gore is often either avoided out of hand or handled with childish glee, most romances tend to be "Tee hee, you sexy", and even the main plots are old news at best. Bioware is a shining beacon of hope in this intellectual desert, and they've actually done some good romances.

Chandos:

As I said before, you do realize that these were not sociological treatises here, but baudy books for naughty gentry, don't you?

 

I remember being a bit shocked by the boobies of that half snake demon chick in Icewind Dale. That's not exactly, uh, titillating. Just more of a "damn, look at that freaky 8-armed demon chick hack my party to shreds!"

As far as sex and romance in a game, I've never cared for it much. Not a moral thing or religious thing -- it just seems forced, silly, artificial, and downright creepy much of the time. No thanks.

 

How are mammary glands related to sex? I've fallen off the wagon on this one...

...wait, let's go a little further shall we? Sex? What's that?

 

To clarify, I know there is a ratings system. I just want it enforced and not watered down later. Other than that, I believe in the invisible hand of the marketplace. If there's a market for the stuff, then who cares? No one is forcing anyone to buy it.

 

I'd dispute the good romances notion, actually. The last Bioware game I played was KOTOR, but regardless...the romances were decent. They added a bit to the games (BG2 and KOTOR). Beyond that? Meh. Mind, I've felt for a while that Bioware is hugely overrated. In terms of intelligence, their games are candles to the novas of Torment/Fallout/KOTOR2/Bloodlines.

Here endeth the digression.

Back to the point, yes, the (overwhelming?) majority of games in any genre are unimaginative, unintelligent, and so on. OTOH, the conventions they dutifully adhere tend to be fairly intelligent--at least insofar as they provide entertaining and/or addictive gameplay.

If, say, Blizzard/Relic/Valve/id(back in the day)/Stardock/Warren Spector/etc were exploring sexualized gameplay, I suspect we would have long ago had xxx Diablo/Warcraft/C&C/BG/MoO/etc. There are plenty of intelligent people, and even a fair number of intelligent companies, making games. There are rather fewer people, let alone intelligent people, making xxx games in the West.

Now, I don't know what xxx Diablo would look like. But then, I'm not an intelligent game designer.

 

Well, Im not really opposed to it so long as they do it tastefully. But, I know what the next generation of games designers looks like (at least in Brisbane) and i dont think thats going to be happening for a while.

Still, when it isnt done tastefully, I usually find it funny. And when it is unintentional, fricken hilarious.

(Warning, mature themes. Recommend you watch with adult supervision if you are under the age of 15)
Observe this clip about WoW: Kid caught wacking to WoW

 

Amaster, they don't just have dating sims in japan, they have full X rated games(if not XXX).
Just download the Bible Black game Torrent.
It has sex, demon worship,demon sex, tentacles AND human sacrifice(what else do you need?)
You probably won't play more than a half hour or so. They made a series of hentai after the game proved popular.

The japanese(not all) are a rather . . . . . . . . . unique group & thats saying something coming from someone as twisted as me.

 

I hope you are not saying that literature has no sociological purpose or meaning - that would be absurd. Otherwise, you appear to have a simplistic and one-dimensional view of fiction and poetry.

 

Sex and romance require greater standards of writing. Gore is getting easier all the time. Which will you see more of?

WEll, I no longer have the munchies after that comment...

TBA: If that's not staged, then I can only think WTF?

 

Romance, sex and by extension nudity are good as long as it:
1) Makes sense
2) Is not artificial, and
3) Doesn't suck.

So, games that include nudity just for the (as I have seen it described) wankbank customers are pretty stupid, and I've yet to see any game handling romance to a realistic degree. PS:T might be an exception but PS:T hardly deals with romance at all. And don't get started on BG2 - those suck.

BG2 romances could be boiled down to:
"BAAAAW I'M SO SCREWED UP. Do you want this romance to continue?"
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. No (terminates romance)

Yeah, not exactly tactful.

 

In short, yes. Baldur's Gate does not really have any sexual content and I have not played the other two, but let us look at a few examples. Would the following games be better if...
...you could not date your girlfiend in Rise of the Dragon?
...you could not have sex with your girlfriend in Fahrenheit?
...the romantic scene with your future wife was removed from Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven?
...all the sexual content was removed from Fallout 2?

I think not, all of them would probably be worse. But what about a more recent game like The Witcher, which is (in)famous for the mature content? The sex cards might be a bit too much, but after reading the first english translated book, I would say that the computer game is quite true to the source material.

 

If we applied the same standard to violence, practically every game ever would fail points 1 & 2.

 

Deathmage: I'd like to add one more point to judge the content. Is it tastefully done?

 

If violence and brutality is ok in video games, then sex and such should be as well. Its odd that "creating life" should be so taboo, when destroying life is perfectly ok. Allthough a warning should be stamped on the cover of the game though, to keep the bible-thumpers at bay. Nobody is forcing anyone to play games either. So If ADULTS want to play a game that contains sex, they should be allowed to.

 

If we can have sex and violence in other mediums of expression, I don't see why we can't have them in games as well. It's a pity that game developers have largely failed to portray these things in an especially good way (well, shooting things in an FPS is fun, but there are very few games that deal with the other aspects of violence than the rather standard for games competitive shooty deathness thing).

Bioware's sex/romance stuff is rather tacky, but seeing that their recent games are going for Hollywood-blockbuster pastiche it fits well enough into what they're doing and is appropriate. There's no inherent reason that there shouldn't be sex in games - that's silly. There's no set reason not to show it graphically either, though pointless sex scenes are annoying in any medium, IMO. If it adds anything to reinforce what the game is about, extend the story, etc. then absolutely yes there should be sex in the game. Why not?

 

Chandos, what I mean is that they are no more representative of common practice in their society than modern romance novellas are representative of every day life today. Do you look to soap operas for how modern society really works? Yes, there is some accurate depiction of modern society and this stuff wasn't complete make-believe, but it was an artificial focussing of all the really interesting stuff that probably ignored 99.9% of real life to distill it.

 

NOG - OK, now you are comparing the greatest literary talents and minds in western culture to "romance novel writers and soap operas." Wow, you are grasping. But let's just look at the history itself to see if Boccaccio and Chaucer may have been just a little accurate in their depictions of the clergy regarding what some may view as sexual misconduct. This is from the Decameron Web Resource Page:

It seems to me that they would pass the "historically accurate" test that you are so unwilling (to the point of absudity) to acknowledge as a historical trand upon which historians agree. The above statement has qualified with proper scholarly sources (as is footnoted in the text).

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/society/sex/sex-clergy.shtml

But I really want to look more closely at the "challenge" you present to literature by comparing it to the hack pop culture of today:

One of the reasons why these literary giants are so well thought of in literary cirlces and among scholars of the MA - and why they are taught in almost every high school and college as part of the regular curriculum - is their portrayal of human nature on a broader scale. The thing to keep in mind here is that no work of fiction, or poetry, occurs in a vacuum. All of us are, in many ways, the products of our own times; the same can be said for those who lived during the MA and the Renaissance - the times in which Boccaccio, Chaucer, Marie de France and others lived and crafted their literary works.
You of course went straight to the lowest common denominator in your remarks: TV soap operas.

Many writers do portray charcaters being themselves within their own times. This is also agreed upon by this comment on the Decameron Web Page:

This of course goes right to the heart of what we are arguing on this thread, that people, in the end, tend to behave in ways that are "natural" (like the desire to have sex). Therefore, to omit any romantic themes from games which are supposed to be "human role playing games" is rather artificial and unatural, given the natural state of how human beings generally behave - even the clergy during the MA.

I'm very disappointed at the level of argument you presented here, and IMO, it is intellectually dishonest to compare Boccaccio to TV Soaps, or Chaucer to a writer of "romance novels." Allow me to turn the argument to a higher denominator by comparing Boccaccio to Hemingway or Fitzgerald, or Steinbeck. It is agreed by many scholars that they are representative in many ways of their "Age." Of course they are somewhat specialized: F. Scott is representative of the "Jazz Age," and its decadence; Steinbeck on the exploitation of migrate workers and the underside of the American Dream.

And why not compare Chaucer to Pat Conroy? or John Updike? or Philp Roth? and then ask the question:

Why no, no I don't. I don't even watch soap operas. But I do read Steinbeck, and Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerlad and John Updike....