Sex in Games

Added 02/24/2005 by Colin

Sex in games…one step forward, two steps back. BMX XXX releases, and brings with it a hailstorm of media attention pertaining to sex in video games. Leisure Suit Larry comes out, inciting parent advisory articles galore. And then, more recently, Playboy: The Mansion is shipped. Most, myself included, would have expected this to be yet another sexed-up, badly portrayed licensed game. Fortunately, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. There’s actually gameplay! There are objectives! There are unlockables! It’s almost as if the developers purposefully decided to make a good game! As shocking as the concept may be, it paid off. The game is actually fun (garnering a 7.8 from Talk Xbox), and is a good example of how “mature topic” games don’t have to be shelf fodder. As CNN and Fox so often enjoy saying, the video game demographic is growing up. Most gamers who grew up “jumping on turtles” on Nintendo have now moved onto shooting hookers in Grand Theft Auto and blowing away aliens in the Halo series. Gamers matured, but games didn’t for a long time.

A few years back, there was a big movement in the industry to combat this lack of growth. Sony marketed the original Playstation mostly towards adults by emphasizing frachises such as Grand Theft Auto and Devil May Cry as system sellers.. Most of the games were rated “M”, and the emphasis was on RPGs instead of platformers. There were still kids’ games, but it wasn’t nearly as focused as previous consoles. And then, 3 years ago, Microsoft launched the Xbox. It focused exclusively on older gamers at first. Major launch titles were Halo and Dead or Alive 3, not the kind of games little Timmy was going to get for Christmas. Then again, they were the kind of games that Joe Recently - Graduated - From - College - and - Earning - a - Decent - Salary - Plus - Plays - Games - Regularly would buy on impulse. Everything was looking good. As far as violent video games, the cat had long been let out of the bag. Ever since the release of Doom, violence has been the gaming grey area, grudgingly accepted by the mainstream press. Sex as a topic for games was strictly off limits. And, just like the industry had needed a violent game to break through that barrier, the gaming industry today also needs a sex-focused game to break through that barrier. Enter Activision, and a little BMX game called BMX XXX.

BMX XXX will go down in infamy as final proof that controversy does not mean good sales. Having only sold 32,000 copies (According to NPDfunworld, as cited in this CNNmoney article, it was a miserable failure commercially. However, despite its monetary and critical failings, it managed to do huge harm to the gaming industry’s image. It depicted an industry obsessed with peddling anything for a quick buck... Nothing could be farther from the truth, but that’s how the mainstream media picked up on it. The ESRB rating system, in place to prevent parents from buying their children inappropriate games, was completely ignored. All that mattered was the “filth” that the game industry was spreading. Other games before BMX XXX had included the same themes, hell, look at Duke Nukem! However, those games did so as a side note, whereas BMX XXX did so as the focus. Though a critical and fiscal failure, this proved to be a catalyst for change in the industry. The cat was out of the bag, and it didn’t feel like going back in.

After BMX XXX was released things went silent for a while. Most developers and publishers (besides Take-Two, and Grand Theft Auto) wanted to stay as far away from controversy as possible. Then Leisure Suit Larry came out. A game devoted to getting an average guy some action, it made no qualms about what it was. However, for what it was, it did it well. It was a throwback to the heyday of adventure games, and included some great writing that kept it from being taken seriously. It didn’t take itself serious, and that’s why it worked. There wasn’t much controversy over this one, because it wasn’t something people had not seen before. It was more America Pie or Animal House than anything else, and the cartoony art direction made it hard for anyone to take seriously. Overall it was a small improvement on the “mature” game front, but a big step forward in that it actually got decent scores, and managed not to raise too many eyebrows in the process.

Just recently, Playboy: The Mansion was released. Perhaps more than any other of these games, Playboy is an actual bona fide game. It’s fun to play, albeit repetitive. It uses its M rating in order to make the whole thing more interesting. It’s not just over the top sex for the sake of sex; it’s all there because it makes the game better. A game about Playboy simply must be dripping with sex and sexual innuendo. It’s Playboy. The magazine that started it all. It set the precedent for this country’s time honored tradition of porn, and directly lead to the anti-“smut” crusades of the 70’s. If you’re going to be playing a game about Hef and the Playboy mansion, there’s bound to be cleavage and lots of it, and this game doesn’t disappoint. It’s all there to add to the entire idea of building the Playboy mansion. Sure, you could make the game without any models and without anything that could be considered “controversial”, but who would buy it? As it stands, Playboy is a good game that despite some issues is worth the price of admission for once. A step in the right direction? You bet.

So, is the game industry progressing on its search for the “mature” bestseller? That’s what I thought, until I heard about a little gem called 7 Sins. Being published by Atari and developed by Monte Cristo, this is a game in which one of the major gameplay “features” is the ability to drug and rape your date. Of course, the date rape isn’t required, as the game is open-ended. The “mature” equivalent of Postal 2, 7 Sins is just asking for media uproar. Right when you think that everything is finally starting to get under control, and the industry is moving towards a larger mainstream appreciation, something like this is announced. Now, whether this game winds up actually being published is another question entirely, but the fact that Atari agreed to publish it doesn’t bode well. Grand Theft Auto at least had some fun ideas behind it, and look at all the real-life murder’s being blamed on it now. After this, every single instance of date rape will be blamed on the game industry. It will take years for the damage done by 7 Sins to be undone. Yet, in the end, will it matter?

The genie is out of the bottle as far as sex in games goes. The minute that BMX XXX was announced, the gaming industry was changed forever. And, just like the recording industry can’t turn back the clock on Napster, no amount of negative media can turn back the clock on mature games. And, just like id’s perennial hit Doom, this signals something more. More than just the game industry looking for the next big hit, this signals a fundamental change in American culture. Before Doom came out, violence was a topic hiding in the closet. Sure, movies such as The Terminator helped pave the way for violent media, but there was a racket raised about every individual movie release. The success of Doom signaled a change. A change from violence in movies and games as something to fear, to it being something to sit back and enjoy. It has been the foundation of practically every non-puzzle and platforming game since. No one can turn back the clock and erase Doom from the gaming scene. And, no one can keep console games from maturing even more. All we are waiting for is the right title. Playboy was a good start, but it wasn’t the kind of groundbreaking effort that is needed to break through to the mainstream. But, when a game does succeed based on a sex-sells formula, it will be a sign of our changing culture. Far more “mature” shows are shown today during prime time TV than there were 10 or 20 years ago. But, on the flipside of that is the Janet Jackson “Nipplegate” scandal last year. Just like violence was the monster in the closet 15 years ago, so is sex today. And, maybe like Doom 15 years ago, a video game will help let it out of the closet. Gamers are growing up, and games need to grow with them. Where there’s an audience, there’s a product. It’s just that, in this instance, none has stepped up to fill the void.