One of those most insightful game-related sites on the Internet, The Escapist, is focusing on sex in games for this week’s set of editorial features. One article in particular stood out for me: Pressing The Right Buttons.
The author presents some mid-to-high level game concepts on how sex might be worked into a game context. He contends that, thus far in games, sex, in those rare instances where a developer is brave enough to weather the political backlash that always follows its portrayal, has been limited to either non-interactive cut scenes, such as in Mass Effect, or timed sequences of button presses, such as in God of War (which is a terrible example, but the best I could think of). His argument is that this removes the emotional involvement from the encounter, furthering the already cheap perception of sex that pervades the major gaming demographic of teenagers and young adults.
The author’s ideas for how to create in-depth gameplay around sex are quite interesting, and I’ll leave those points to his article. What I want to present here is a minor counterpoint to his argument against the way sex is currently presented in games. I say minor because, while I agree with his main point, I want to give a justification for why sex shows up in such a noninteractive context. I don’t necessarily believe it to be right.
Let’s look at sexuality as what all things as emotionally charged as sex fundamentally are: biological imperatives. Just as we get depressed and uncomfortable when we don’t get enough food, so too do we get when we don’t have enough sex. Remember that emotions exist to provide an instinctive impetus for us to perform certain beneficial actions, such as fighting for one’s life, sleeping, and eating. In the case of sex, we tend to form emotional bonds with sexual partners because it increases the likelihood of reproduction (or rather, those of our ancestors who did so tended to reproduce more effectively).
How are biological needs handled in games? You walk over a plate of food to eat it. You click a button to make your Sim go to the bathroom. You choose a menu item to have your character rest for the night. If we look at sex as just another biological imperative, then it makes sense that it show up in the same manner as the others, by viewing the act as given and moving on to the more interesting and less ordinary parts of life.
On the other hand, perhaps the Escapist author’s idea could be applied to other biological mundanities. We could use shoulder triggers to move a character’s jaw up and down while using an analog stick to make the character’s tongue move the food in his mouth around to improve chewing. We could time changes in sleeping positions during the night to optimize the amount of rest the character gets. We could use rhythmic button presses to relax the character’s bowels so he can go to the bathroom. Okay, maybe not everything needs to be a game.
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