Sex. Nookie. The Naked Mambo. Making the Beast With Two Backs. Go ahead, get all the blushing and giggling out of your system, because in this week’s issue, we’re going to be talking a lot about Doing the Nasty, Hiding the Sausage, and good old fashioned Humping.
Sex and gaming have been bedfellows for decades. When games were no more than text on a screen, sex was there. As games took their first tentative steps into the world of the visual, sex was there, though sometimes barely recognizable beneath its blocky and pixilated exterior. Gaming platforms grew more sophisticated, graphics took us into the Uncanny Valley and the internet opened wide the doors of global connectivity. Naturally, sex was there.
As the cultural spotlight falls on gaming, bringing what was once the digital equivalent of a secret handshake of a tightly knit club into full view of the public, sex has become a bit of an unwelcome guest. The intersection of sex and gaming is spoken of in scarcely disguised tones of disapproval, as unwelcome a pairing as peanut butter and squid. “Sure,” the thinking seems to go, “some people enjoy it, but there’s clearly no accounting for their tastes.”
The writers in this week’s issue take a hard (no pun intended) look at the topic of sex and videogames in an attempt to determine whether the two will ever be able to happily co-exist. In “Sex and Dragon Slaying,” Robert Marks suggests that modern gamemakers could learn a lot about the subtlety of sex by reviewing a game from the past. Colin Rowsell laments the information explosion that renders sexually innocent storytelling virtually impossible in “Tijuana Time.” In “Tap X for Pleasure,” Ronald Meeus tries to understand why the sex mini-games in God of War failed to create the kind of furor that resulted from Grand Theft Auto‘s “Hot Coffee” mod. Michael Deneen offers a few suggestions for how to implement sex in games in “Pressing the Right Buttons,” and in “Mario Golf as Foreplay,” Brendan Sears reveals how his desire to score in games perpetually prevents him from scoring in the sack.
Don’t forget to wrap that rascal,
