Sunday Symposium: Sex and sexuality

[Dog Pants]

I read an article on PC Gamer yesterday about how Bioware approaches sex in their games. They're moderately controversial, in as much as a mainstream dev company could be, and have been variously praised and criticised for having sex scenes, sex with aliens, and sex with members of the same sex. Oh boy, the amount of times I've used the word 'sex' so far, we're bound to get picked up by some Googlebot or other. Anyway, it's a subject which has never been handled particularly well in gaming. We're far better at fighting than loving, and for the most part anything sexy is limited to boob sliders and those weird simultaneous-tit-and-ass shots. Sexuality is rarely addressed in games, and when it is it almost always has a negative response.

For my part, I find sex in games to be handled pretty crudely. Enough for me to find it uncomfortable. There was a kind of thrill to chasing a love interest in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, but the climaxes of both (so to speak) were pretty underwhelming. The recent Wolfenstein, on the other hand, chucked in a sex scene which I found pretty jarring compared to the conveyor belt violence before and after. I'd have rather they left that one out. The Witcher handled it in a more mature way, quite graphic without seeming gratuitous for the most part, but I didn't like the game much so only got a cursory impression. Sexuality, on the other had, I think has been handled moderately well when the devs have dared to go there. The bisexual nature of the Bioware games was a bit too formless to me, I'd rather have had the characters defined in their sexuality, but it was pretty subtle and didn't seem forced. The two guys in Mass Effect 3 I actually thought were a brilliant touch - I didn't particularly give a shit about the progressive nature of it, to me it was a great example of attention to detail contributing to the immersion. They didn't make a big deal of it and it felt organic, like something in my brain went 'oh yeah, I know faaabulous guys in real life, seems a bit of a jarring omission in my games in retrospect.' I played Gone Home recently, and it only really occurred to me afterwards that I'd played a game which almost entirely focused on a girl coming out. It felt like a natural flow of the story. Now in hindsight I think it would have benefited from developing the fall and rise of their parents' relationship too, which is only really hinted at, to balance it out and make it a story about a family rather than a story about a teenage girl's sexuality, but it didn't bother me at the time. So yeah, I think that's it for me. Don't make a big deal out of it, treat sex and sexuality like the things they are - things that happen to people, rather than things that define them. Until then though, I'd rather they just didn't bother.

What do you people think? Should we have more or less of it in games? Should games steer clear of sexuality? Is it okay to put gratuitous tits in games designed for teenage boys and young men?

[Joose]

I think the problem with the way sex is included in games at the moment (in general at least) is that its treated like a goal to achieve. Its often the "reward" for having successfully gamed a relationship with an NPC, which in turn is usually quite forced and unrealistic. The whole "Congratulations! You have achieved SEX!" makes it all feel a bit icky to me. I don't think treating relationships as a competition where the winner gets to choose who to fuck is a particularly healthy idea to be promoting. I find it particularly weird that the people you are allowed to boink are usually referred to as "romance options". Romance? Really?

The Sims has got to be the weirdest implementation of relationships in gaming. Almost anyone will put out if you stand there shouting compliments at them for an hour or two. Its like some even more fucked up version of The Game.

I *quite* liked the fact that not everybody in Mass Effect was up for a sexing. It didnt fall into the trap of making all its characters slutty bisexuals just to pander to player choice: There were some characters who would never get with the players character because they just didnt swing that way. I was less keen on the fact that you could get it on with a bunch of the aliens, including one who the story had established needed a hermetically sealed suit to not die of all sorts of infections. So its dangerous for her to breathe normal air, but shooting alien love gunk into her ladyparts whilst slobbering your bacteria ridden saliva over her face somehow has no negative effects? Hmm.

Wolfenstein and the like, where there is just a sex scene shoved in the middle of the action for you to look at for a bit... well, i'm unbothered by them because although they are often a bit crass, they are no worse than most sex scenes in films.

Sexual orientation in games is a funny one. People often complain about the absurdly high proportion of Rugged Straight White Man protagonists in games. For the most part I think they are correct, but I did see someone point out once that as far as the straight bit goes, how do we know? I mean, going from purely the information given to you in the game can you say for absolute certainty that Doom Guy is straight? For that matter, i'm not certain you can be sure that Doom Guy is actually Rugged, White or male either. For all we know under all that armour its actually a glamorous black lesbian. It has absolutely no bearing on the story, so it just never gets addressed. We all just assume that everyone in gaming is straight unless specifically told otherwise. Even characters who have wives might not be straight. Bisexuality is a thing.

Like you say, I think ME3's male couple were done in exactly the right way: its just not a big deal.

SUDDEN QUOTE ATTACK!

There was a kind of thrill to chasing a love interest in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, but the climaxes of both (so to speak) were pretty underwhelming.

Just like in real life HEYOO!

The Witcher handled it in a more mature way

Hang on, wasn't Witcher the one with the collectable lady cards?

Until then though, I'd rather they just didn't bother.

Trouble is, something like this never improves without people trying stuff.

Should we have more or less of it in games?

More, but done better. Not as a goal or a reward, not as a bit of slightly shit titillation, just as a thing that happens in the real lives of real adults.

Should games steer clear of sexuality?

Fuck no. It doesn't need to be front and center of every story ever, and it doesn't need to be like some telly where every third person is homosexual (ok, we get it, you are sooo progressive, stop trying so damn hard). But it also shouldn't be avoided. Sometimes, some characters should be non-straight in some fashion. Basically, I think it should reflect reality; the majority of people are straight but some people are faaabulous. Its shouldn't be a big deal.

Is it okay to put gratuitous tits in games designed for teenage boys and young men?

Argh. I keep going back and forth on this one. On the one hand, there is gratuitous tits in *every other media ever*. Films, tv, books, hell even magazines, newspapers and music videos. Theres tits and arse all over the god damn place. On the other hand, just because everything else does it doesn't make it necessarily OK. Its perfectly plausible that its bad in all of them. But then, on another hand, I wouldn't want to impose any kind of censorship on games beyond what they already have: adult themes are ok for adults, young kids should probably not get a face full of bosom any more than they would on CBBC or whatever. But on the next hand of this argument octopus most of the boobs and bums are very much objectifying women, and at the risk of sounding all SJW I dont think thats ok. Our society is already not great at treating women as anything other than something to imagine having sex with and we could probably do with less things that encourage that view. I think if I have to settle on an opinion its that, like most things, titillation is fine in moderation. Having the occasional saucy wench isn't a problem. Having every woman you see pneumatic and near naked is a problem. Having ladies to oggle for no reason other than to oggle them is ... well, not a problem exactly. Just something that we would probably be better off without.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I hate this.

Joose is correct, on all fronts.

Games do not need to pull a torchwood, not everyone has to be a bit faaabulous. (incidentally, it was also painfully overbearing in torchwood)

Also humans have relationships, and actual sex. Generally, in that order. I think where games fail is they try to follow the 15 year old boy thing, where it's dick first, ask questions later.

[buzzmong]

The only game that I've played that's handled sexy fun times in a remotely half decent way is the Witcher 2. The first game had the silly cards thing, but the second is just all a bit more grown up about the subject. Sure there's some stuff like the prostitute shagging in the whore house which are unneeded (and entirely optional but do fit with the medieval time period), but in general a lot of the sex and general nudity in it does actually fit with the plot, especially the stuff with Geralt and Triss, rather than being in there for the sake of it or being "gamified" into a competition/achievement hunt.

I will however concede that the Playboy spread of Triss Merigold was a very odd PR exercise.

On the whole though, my biggest bug bear when it comes to sex and sexuality is when it's forced into a game simply because of the notion that sex sells and that I'm then forced to take part in it.

I also will say there's certainly a large problem with depictions of females in games as well. Quite often they at the very least have the daft visual design of the "ideal" female, often with a subservient personality to match, although the visual side seems to have started shifting recently to something more grounded in reality.

[FatherJack]

I don't think sex is necessary in games at all, unless it's actually part of the story, ie: you own a strip club or you get caught with another lover. Almost every execution has been clumsy as there are lines they can't cross without being pornographic, so they end up settling for awkward titillation. Even the games that cross that line never feel particularly erotic unless that sort of thing is your er..thing.

So I'd kind of prefer a montage of suggestive images, or a comic scene where the scenery keeps "accidentally" covering the naughty bits. Or just nothing at all about sex acts, just that you got together, maybe cohabited, lived happily. I don't need to see the actual sex act performed to know if two characters are a couple, even if one of those characters is supposed to be me, the same way that I really don't need to see people I know in life do that.

Like the dry humping that seems to happen at the end of every episode of Defiance, watching two video game characters get it on seems more ridiculous than anything else. It doesn't make me feel anything and as a plot device it doesn't offer much more than two characters going off together to another room.

I'm hardly a prude about such things and have spent many hours studying the Witcher romance cards and Mafia 2 Playboy pages (you know, in case there was a time-based achievement for that) and sometimes you just want some random nudity or wanton violence, the same as you would expect to get from a trashy film, but that's not really what we're referring to.


As for sexuality, that's done pretty badly almost everywhere, not just games. It either comes across as heavy-handed, preaching to the choir or just unrealistically portraying everyone as being some shade of bisexual. In games which have "romance options" it makes more sense that the NPCs should have some sort of predilection, unless the setting is unequivocally explained to be somewhere where that wouldn't be the case, such as perhaps a Roman orgy or the change-sex-at-will world of Iain M Bank's Culture. It shouldn't be a big deal in any case, you are what you are, but much is made of it.


The inter-species thing in Mass Effect kinda trumps that though. Like the Sontaran in Doctor Who who can't tell human girls from boys, worrying about the gender of your partner must seem ludicrously trivial compared to whether porking that hot-looking alien will actually kill you or not, never mind figuring out if you should be the porker or the porkee and what should go where.

I never let it go any further than "sharing air" with Tali, because to me that seemed like the most intense and personal thing we could do given the situation. I never pursued Miranda, despite her being the same species and visually attractive, because she was such a fucking horrible person.

There are unexplored possibilities even beyond what Mass Effect has given us, from the physically impossible through the taboo to the questionable. Some touch-telepaths might think shaking hands disgustingly forward, whereas others might spunk directly into your mind by way of polite greeting. Advanced species might consider mating with humans as depraved as with animals. Again though, less is probably more if any of these should be explored in a game - have the characters show affection for each other through dialogue and actions, but hint that they go off privately to have fun discovering what works for them on a physical level.

[Joose]

Stumbled across this yesterday. Surprisingly relevant:

[buzzmong]

That's excellent.