Having recently become a father, the issue of graphic and gratuitous violence in games has been in my thoughts lately. It probably says a lot about me that this leads me to wonder where all the games with sexual and romantic content are.
So, no, this isn’t an anti-violence screed, though I am thoroughly bored with bodies that explode and splatter in viscerally rendered 3d. It’s more of a pro-sex, or specifically sex-positive screed.
One of my favorite science fiction and fantasy authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, has stated that she is “still bemused by the prudishness of some SF readers when confronted with sex-positive scenes compared to the Romance-reader crowd, and this in a genre that includes some of the most repellent negative sex scenes I’ve ever read.”
The situation in gaming (the largest share of which is sci-fi or fantasy) is basically similar, with the medium caught between prudishness and repellence, with a heavy dose of exploitation thrown in. Hypersexualized costumes and beyond-barbie impossible 3d models for the female form are the norm, and when games include sex at all, it tends to be truly sophomoric: a series of “James Bond” style disposable sex objects, combined with mortal fear of being labeled porn: games like The Witcher and Mass Effect which still represent sex with a kiss and a fade to black.
Then there’s the sublimation of sex into violence, as in games that feature sexy semi-nude female “monsters” that die with orgasmic cries, going at least as far back as the succubi from the first Diablo, and the whole Laura Croft tradition of 3rd person games with impossibly top-heavy and jiggly girls shooting things. That genre reached an apex with the self-aware but hardly self-critical Bayonetta, a game about using pole-dancing inspired moves and “gun shoes” to kill angels.
There are a number of 3d sex “games” out there, mostly focussed on the tawdry idea of getting Laura Croft or someone like her to perform fellatio.
There are story and character driven games in the Japanese visual novel genre, some of which are quite remarkable for their plotlines and characterizations, but almost never for gameplay, which usually consists of a lot of reading and an occasional dialogue choice.
At the same time, these bishojo (“beautiful girl”) games are simultaneously cliche fests, mostly involving schoolgirls and canned characterizations based on famous and fetishized anime characters. Except for the rare yaoi (“boy’s love” or gay, mostly intended for a straight female audience) title that gets translated, these games are both very heteronormative and traditional to retrograde in their depiction of gender norms.
Japanese visual novels also include many of the most “repellent negative sex scenes” in gaming, fetishizing rape and “nonconsensual” sex, incest, bestiality, sexual harassment, sex addition, human sacrifice, and unrealistic notions of BDSM sexplay. Even the more pure and vanilla games tend to ascribe to the painfully outmoded Victorian view of women as asexual until seduced/corrupted, at which point they become nymphomaniacs.
Fantasy is fantasy, and if fantasies of using a rife with a sniper scope to blow someone’s head apart are acceptable, then sexual fantasies of domination, sadism, and even rape, must be equally acceptable. I have long been against censorship, and having a baby has not changed that.
This brings me at last to my goal: I want to draw attention to games that make sex, sexuality, and romance a major part of their story and (preferably) gameplay in a positive and healthy, or at least thought-provoking way.