Romantic sex doesn't work in video games (NSFW-ish)

[jfrost]

Sex should be banalized anyway. It shouldn't make headlines every time sex makes an appearance in a video game. It's a part of life, and should be treated as such. There will be tasteless depictions of it, but violence is tasteless (as well as it should be, mostly) all the time and it doesn't flare up any controversy. It should be like that with sex. Sometimes it will be done nicely, we'll just have to adjust to the 90% of the time it's gonna be poor.

[Forlorn Drifter]

In parts of the world (some of Europe comes to mind) naked women (and I guess men, idk) aren't really a bad thing that you should shield the younger ones from, you know, as long as their is no sex involved. It doesn't hurt them, so why do we Americans continue to go ballistic if some celebrity accidentally had her boob pop out of her dress during a super bowl even though we all see barely clothed women in the media, and around the streets?

Part of the American problem, I believe, has to do with the fact that we automatically associate nudity with sex. From those few actual Europeans I've been around, nudity was a much more open thing for them, while "sexy" lingerie made them more (though hardly at all) uncomfortable.

Honestly, romantic sex is an idea that only happens on extreme rare occasions, if at all. Movies especially try to sell the idea, but I've seen more loving and realistic scenes in horror movies and porn than I have on most "love movies".

[noiseredux]

I don't really understand why sex is games is so odd. Especially if you look at something like Heavy Rain that's very cinematic. We watch movies all the time with sex, nudity, violence, etc. Not sure why games should be thought of differently. They're entertainment. And they have ratings just like movies.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Sex may be fun, but it's not a game. That's all I've got to say.

[J T]

I'll have more to say on the topic later, but for now I'll just post this little conversation-piece:

http://racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 30#p633130

[Original_Name]

uhhhh. I think you're over-thinking it guy.

Hi, I'm Original_Name. I've been doing this for 1,000 posts now.

Hm... in response to a few of the recent posts in here, I understand that sex is a human expression that has different meanings across separate cultures, mentalities, and philosophies, and there's a massive disagreement as to whether it's over- or under-valued. Personally, I think it's a little bit of both, but I understand what you folks are getting at when you say "It's natural. If it weren't for all this society stuff we would be doing it constantly just like our ancestors probably did." I was trying to side-step the ethical issues in the discussion to get to the heart of what games as a medium can effectively convey, but even using the word "romantic" in combination with "sex" is so loaded that it leads people to assume a particular mentality about sex.

My own personal sexual philosophy aside, what I meant by "romantic sex" in this context was "sex that has significant personal meaning". I'm not talking about lighting candles on your wedding bed! I just mean "more than just something to do," y'know?

Yeah, the original post got way too long and convoluted, but I'm like, deathly ill with food-poisoning and have nothing better to do. And, again, Original_Name. 1,000 posts of this stuff, folks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9RQOzime50

[sabrage]

A Kinnect sex party game could be a lot of fun though.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/02/your-n ... x-parties/

[Menegrothx]

Sex may be fun, but it's not a game.

What about God of War? Or RapeLay?
I felt like I was inside the game when I had to tap that circle button and watch how the bed rocked back and forth. FMV QTE is the way of the future

[AppleQueso]

Sex may be fun, but it's not a game.

What about God of War? Or RapeLay?
I felt like I was inside the game when I had to tap that circle button and watch how the bed rocked back and forth. FMV QTE is the way of the future

I think the existence of those two things might qualify as the lowest points in gaming.

[J T]

uhhhh. I think you're over-thinking it guy.

Hi, I'm Original_Name. I've been doing this for 1,000 posts now.

I get the sense that you are saying that sex can't be properly simulated in a videogame, which I think is different than saying it doesn't work. I think that sex can work in a game because it can be an important plot point. Sex is an important aspect of how relationships develop, and it feels like your character is more of an adult if they have mature, sexual relationships.

For example, it's nothing fantastic, but I liked this sex scene in The Witcher 2:
(spoilers, obviously).

I liked it because it was rather casual/cavalier about the fact that there even was a sex scene and it demonstrated the playfully intimate nature of the relationship between these two characters. It's also a cutscene, not a QTE moment.

The QTEs in Heavy Rain laughably just don't feel right. Interactivity is not really important anymore in a scene like that. It's more about the characters development and any attempt to interactivize that scene is just likely to make it awkward. It would be better as a noninteractive cutscene.

The sex scenes in God of War, on the other hand, needed the QTE because they were meant to be silly and another example of how ridiculously over-the-top and super-manly Kratos is. Just a few button presses and the ladies go wild. It seemed appropriate to have QTEs when the game wasn't taking itself very seriously to begin with.

There is another aspect of videogame sex that is also weird, and that is conversation tree seduction. Dating sims work off of this and some modern RPGs use a similar technique. You have a few conversation choices to make and one sequence of choices will get you laid (or get a kiss or romantic outcome). This creates this weird dynamic where many gamers will just say anything to see the sex scene. This was taken to its ultimate creepy ends in Dungeoneer: Beautiful Escape. In this game you are a psychopath that lures people back into his home to torture them. It used the same conversation tree seduction gameplay device, but you realize that it really is just about manipulating the phrases to get what you want, which in that case was to find a new victim after fooling them into trusting you. It was creepy in that game, and now I think it's creepy in almost all dating sims.

As for accurate sexual simulation, I remember seeing a documentary in the 90s called Synthetic Pleasures. They had a scene about sex technologies and there was some research being done into using robotics to have sex over the internet. I have never seen anything about it since, but the idea was that you would chat with someone online, and you would be able to each remotely control sex toys that would activate on the other person over the internet. For example, I might have a glove that senses movement, and my partner might have a robotic hand on her breast that mimics my movements as they are transmitted over the interent. If this tech were to improve, you could theoretically have sex with someone else via robotic avatars.